Ecology and Social Connections with Kathrine Starkweather
2026-10-13 12:00:00.000 +00:00

This is evolutionary psychology, the podcast. Actual evolutionary psychology? By actual evolutionary psychologists. I I was which are uh are are me, David Pinzhoff, and uh my co-host Dave Petrazuki. Yeah, and uh I was gonna say uh why why do why do you have a theory, a coordinating theory of why we say the podcast? Because unless your phone auto advanced, you know. That's true. It is redundant information. Yeah. Like You know what you're listening to. You clicked on it. Yeah, but it feels it feels compelling. I feel it compelled. It makes it feels like a a tidy bow on a package to say this at the beginning. Why do we do that? No, I I think there's a deeper psychological reason. Do you have a do you have an idea?

This is a I'm putting I this gotcha question for you, David. Oh no, it's interesting. Uh yeah, uh it's possible it's it's just kind of gets you in the right headspace and sets the tone or the or the vibe or whatever. That's possible. But I'm sure I like that idea. Probably my guess is that it's just inertia, that it's just a suboptimal equilibrium that we're sticking with out of pure convention, like the QWERTY keyboard. Are you familiar with that? Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think like at some point, uh maybe people didn't know what they were listening to when you were listening on the radio, for example. Like it's helpful to say what the show is. But now that we're in a post-radio world, it's it's no longer necessary, but we've retained

the convention for arbitrary reasons. Yeah. So uh so enjoy uh this arbitrary convention. Yep. Enjoy. David, today we talked to Katie Starkweather, who is uh recently uh anthro faculty here at UC Santa Barbara. Before that was at Mox Planck uh Leipzig. And um before that, I think in Chicago, she mentioned. Yeah, that's right. Does really cool work with um people who uh are boat dwellers, at least part of the time, in uh in Bangladesh. That's right. The Shodogore Boat Dwellers, uh fascinating um group of people that uh you will learn lots about, and I think they shed light on all sorts of things like loneliness, friendship, mating, childcare, uh division of labor, how uh aspects of the ecology can uh have uh effects on social systems.

Uh really fun and interesting conversation. Yeah. And I like you, we talked about something I would call barriers to social interaction, whether it's weather or ecology or being on a boat. And then also your um deep dive into coasts and the origin of firms and transaction costs. And I I really like that part too, David. Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I've been thinking a lot about Coast lately. Ronald Coast? I believe I believe Ronald, yes. Yeah. All right. So without further ado, you can hop on board the boat of uh this interview. Dive in. Enjoy. Uh we we've had many experimental psychologists, more recently philosophers, many field anthropologists. Um, although I sometimes wonder if anthropology is a

broader tent in the sense that you can have people who are both in anthropology departments but do very different things in terms of what their day-to-day work is like, but also where they go to the field or how they go to the field, or even just how they think about the the science and sort of what they do. Maybe as a way to start what you do, can you tell us a little bit about either what you're currently doing with respect to in the next year, physically, where do you go? Or what's the story of sort of how you slice up being an anthropologist um and where you go and sort of what you study for people who might not know the answer to that question about you. Yeah. Well that's a good question.

And you're you're right, anthropology is an extremely wide ranging wide wide ranging um field with lots of subfields and then you know subfields within subfields and everything. And even those of us in the same subfield do wildly different things sometimes. Um, you've had Amy Body on your podcast, I know, um, and Amy and I do very different things, even though sometimes the subject matters kind of, you know, uh overlap a little bit. So it's it's fun and it's interesting. Um, and I think that was probably part of what drew me into anthropology. Um, as well as I've always been really interested in, you know, humans and cultures and like why people do what they do and stuff like that. So um uh yeah, so I um the major well, all my field work, all my current

field work, and the major vast majority of the fieldwork that I've done um has been in rural Bangladesh. Um I work with a community of people there who are called Shodogore and they're traditionally boat dwelling, traditionally semi-nomadic, although their lifestyles are changing pretty rapidly. But I've been working there since 2011 was the first time I went. And then more, you know, sort of consistently since 2014. So I was there over the summer for a very short trip, about a week, to just kind of do logistics and things like that and see everybody. And then this coming year, I'm hoping to start a new project that is looking at the basically how women make decisions about sort of livelihood activities.

When faced with conditions of extreme heat. And then basically how those decisions, you know, about like how much time they're spending working in the heat and what the intensity of their activities are, and all those kinds of things, like the downstream effects of those on their health and nutritional condition and their families, too. So for now, um, I'm teaching uh this quarter, and so I'm here. Um, and i'm also you know going through the i rb process which is always a process right um institutional review board for those of you uh who are who are not uh who don't do them um and that is roughly speaking you have to explain to uh what is ostensibly a dispassionate set of people sitting in a building in Santa Barbara in this

case reviewing what research you're going to do in the future to make sure that you're not doing something like, you know, shocking puppies or something like that, roughly. Yeah, yeah. I haven't gotten into that my research yet. Yeah, exactly. And for anthropologists, sometimes um, some of us actually, since we work internationally, so like I have an IRB that I have to go through in Bangladesh as well. Um, actually, two review committees there. And so um the that's where the project is at right now. Um, but then I'm hopeful that I'll be going to the field a bit in um uh January to kind of get things kicked off. I have a field team there who's amazing and we've worked with for a long time. Um and so they'll I have two little kids.

Um it's my preference to be in the field as much as I can, but at the moment that's not, you know, really possible. And yeah, so I'm really lucky to have this great field team. So I'll my what usually when I have a big project running, um, I go back and forth as much as I can. I just make short trips there and um and then I'm in constant communication and have product managers and things like that on the ground there so that you know we can run it as smoothly as possible. But yeah, it's just it's kind of a lot of everything. And um, you know, trying to manage the international travel and having these really close relationships with people internationally as well as, you know, my family and my job here

in the US. It's tricky sometimes. Yeah. And we've had anthropologists on describing its two lives almost, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Am I am I correct in in saying that a common thread to a lot of your work is sort of an economic way of thinking and sort of applying the logic of costs and benefits and diminishing marginal utility to uh domains where those concepts wouldn't traditionally be applied, like childcare, uh um, you know, uh working in the heat, for example, uh and trying to understand how those economic changes, say, in the cost of working in the heat, might uh have ramifications throughout an entire culture. Um and so i uh am i correct? I sort of see your your work as kind of like um like a a social biological economics.

Um is is that a fair characterization or am I am I uh Yeah yeah, I think so. I think so. Um I yes, I I would agree with that. I have not um I haven't applied any sort of formal models um to my work thus far. Um I would love to do that in the future. And my postdoc and I've been talking about um doing some optimal foraging modeling, um which be a, you know, that's a deep cut for the the anthropologists and evolutionary people out there. Um but uh yeah, no, I think that's fair. And I think um I would describe myself as a human behavioral ecologist, which is one of those sub-subfields of anthropology. And we sort of like to think about, you know, how does environment impact behavior? And then what are the kind of you know fitness or evolutionary effects of that on people's

usually survival and you know, mating and reproduction and stuff, but we often use lots of proxies like growth and health. And one of the things that's always really necessary to consider are the constraints that people are facing. Um, and uh human behavioral ecology in general is drawn, you know, a lot of our models are drawn from behavioral economics and and development economics. Um, so yeah, it's kind of a natural, natural consequence, I think. One thing you mentioned, and we can get into more of the science, but at the outset, you mentioned boat dwelling. And I think for many of us, um, that's uh what um which is cool. And one of the great things about anthropology is it exposes you to a different way of

living um or existing. Um can you unpack um what exactly that means? Yeah, yeah. Um, so this community, um, they if people go to my website, there are pictures, uh, which can be really helpful to visualize some of that sometimes. Um, but people are living on small, like very small houseboats. Um, they are, I think we measured the average is like 14 feet from end to end. Um, and then I don't remember the width exactly, but not very wide. Usually, like when I kind of am in a boat, it's like, you know, two of me sort of wide. And that's sort, you know, with all of their things in the boat too. So it's a little wider than that in, you know, absolute terms. Um, but they live people are in these communities have been moving on to the land pretty

rapidly in the last few decades. Um, and it's been interesting to work there during that transition because I've seen that happen. And then I've also seen the people who kind of hang on to, you know, the boat lifestyle. And they do so for various reasons. But yeah, I mean, like living on the boat is every the whole family sleeps on the boat. If their families are way too big, sometimes they send like the dad and the older kids out to the fishing boats to sleep there. And they cook on the boat, they do their laundry on the boat, they kind of they do everything there. And so it's a really interesting lifestyle and quite unique lifestyle. one of I don't know if this is what you were getting at or where you were headed, but I

think one of the things that is challenging about that sometimes is well, how can we actually learn anything about what humans do or why humans do what they do from studying, you know, such a like unique and weird in some ways, not the, you know, not the Joe Henrik version of weird, but um population. Um, and it's been so that's yeah, it there are that's been a challenge, but it's been a fun challenge. And it's something I think about every time I do a project or write a paper because it's always, I'm always asking myself, what can we take away from this that is broadly applicable? And how do we frame this in a way that we're understanding something about humans as opposed to this one kind of like niche socio

environmental circumstance. Yeah. I actually quite the opposite. I actually think, I mean, I was just curious. It was just the dumb version of the question. It was like my you know, reactive. Yeah, no, no, no, exactly. Reviewer two. Yeah, exactly. How do you know this generalized? No, I honestly I think if you put if you put people, uh human beings on a boat um in that circumstance, I think you're probably going to learn a lot about people. Um, in on the view that um, you know uh people react contingently to the environment, and so by looking at people in different environments, it both highlights the universals and also what isn't um in a way that you can't just mentally simulate until you um the rubber hits the rotor, in this case the the

water in the raft or the the water in the wood. Yeah, yeah. Or how, you know, just the constraints of the local ecology and the way that you have to make a living, how that has ramifications on every aspect of of life. Um it's not just confined to the way you work, like it it affects social relationships, uh gender division of labor, uh childcare, uh lifestyles, uh the everything. Um and uh so I'm kind of curious about like, you know, what what do you see uh as the ecological pressures that are uh number one leading to this this lifestyle this boat dwelling lifestyle and then what are some of the ramifications that you see uh this having yeah um that's a great question you really you really kind of hit all my like points

of excitement there too um that's my job um yeah I think um the the ecological pressures that are leading to this lifestyle um from a like historical perspective, um I'm not sure. I I imagine that it is just the fact that Bangladesh is um a heavily riverine country. Um There's just there's so there's water everywhere and rivers and canals connect so many different parts of the country. And so I think that um, you know, again, I don't really know a lot about kind of the chicken and egg of the the um the decisions that have been made because subsistence um Choices and livelihood choices are often, you know, kind of part and parcel of the ecological pressures and the way that you move around and all that kind of stuff.

But these communities are also known. So the word shotegore means business person or businessman, I think more specifically. And so women work primarily as traders, petty traders. They go out into the villages, they sell things to non-Shotegore people, women usually, um, and men and and their wives um catch fish. Um, but then they they keep some of those to eat for themselves and they also sell them in the markets in exchange for cash. Um, and so they have this um kind of lifestyle that and livelihoods that require them to have interactions with other people. And I think the living on the boats allows them to move to where the resources are, um, to you know, where the fish are at any given time, um,

where the markets are, where they can sell things uh and make more money and such. Um currently, climate change is a huge creeping constraint. People have been, it's it's really interesting to go back because, you know, now that I've been working there for 12 years consistently, you can see where some of the earlier homes on the land were built, um, and you can see where the homes are now. And there's a like difference in how high up the land is from the water because people have been building, like building the land up more and more to try to avoid the blooding that happens. And so that's, you know, imposing constraints and it's going to continue to impose constraints on people. And I don't know what's going to happen if we'll see people who are in homes that are no

longer viable because of rising water levels go back to living on the boats, or if we'll see them kind of opt to move inland, you know, to move to the cities, like some other people in Bangladesh do. I'm not sure. But the other thing that's really going on for these guys on a on a regular basis is seasonality. Um And the dramatic differences in landscape between sort of the rainy and the dry season are shocking. Shocking. Like you wouldn't even know you were looking at the same place. I showed you pictures of the same area. Because every year, for like five or six months of the year, there's flooding and then landscape floods and it's kind of normal and natural and not natural it is natural but

like people plan their agricultural seasons around this right so it's something that's been happening forever and it's because of um uh rainfall and also because of Himalayan snow melt that happens um you know around April May um So that also has huge impacts on everyone in Bangladesh, but specifically on these communities, lifestyles and livelihoods, and how they divide labor by gender and how they socialize with each other. Those things have seem to have really major impacts. And that's one of the areas that my research has kind of attempted to delve into is to understand how those changes impact people's lives. So what is what is the gender division of labor like there? Is it is it more like the the men are are primarily the the people fishing, and then the

women are the one who are the ones who try to sell that in the marketplace? Or is it more complicated than that? It's more complicated than that. It's interesting. Um, and it's um basically 95% of the men um fish and they fish either for like half of the year or all year long. Um, women are roughly split in half between fishers and traders. Um, and so it that seems to have the biggest effect on how households are dividing their labor. So, excuse me, in households where women fish, they always, almost always work with their husbands. They the couple takes their kids along and they're on a fishing boat all day, almost every day of the year. fishing is sometimes not super profitable during the dry season for these households.

Um and trading is much more challenging during the rainy season because a lot of areas of um you know the rural villages are flooded and and women just can't access their their customer base, basically. Um and so in those households, they have um they change, they flip how they divide labor by season, or they often do. And so in the dry season or scar, excuse me, in the rainy season, um, men in those households will fish and they fish usually with other men, usually not with their wives and kids. Um and the women will often stay home and take care of kids, especially when they have little kids. Then they flip, and in the dry season, women are going out trading pretty intensively every day. And men, when they have little kids, men are staying home as the primary caregivers of

their kids, which is really unusual from uh both of those things are unusual from a cross-cultural perspective. So it's it's been interesting. So what what causes the the flip? I um do you mean like so so what yeah so what is it about the difference between the the wet season and the dry season that makes it more advantageous to to flip the division of labor? Yeah. So um in the wet season and the rainy season, um women because they're mostly walking or they're accessing their customers by road, um When the the rainy season flooding happens, it just becomes really difficult for them to reach their customers because a lot of the like sort of smaller roadways will just be completely flooded. And the and people then either have to like who live in those homes that are now kind of

isolated, either reach the main roads by their own boats, or they have like these tiny little bamboo bridges that people have to walk across. And so women carrying these like big heavy baskets can't easily access any of those homes. So they can and they still do go trading sometimes in the rainy season, but then they have to travel farther away from home, um, You know, access different areas in the rural villages. And so when they have small kids, they just mostly opt not to do that. The opportunity cost is just way too high. Groups mean like boats, like houseboats and houses. They have different like clusters of of uh Shodogore groups um throughout Motlab um and along the river. The river uh tends to the canals tend to dry up during the dry season, not

entirely, but to some extent. And um and so the farther like upriver you are from the main river that flows through Motlob is called the Donagoda River. It meets up with the Megna River, which is one of the largest rivers in Bangladesh. It's huge. And so the closer you live to the Megna River, the more profitable fishing is all year round. And so those households that live down there tend to just fish year-round, husbands and wives. The farther away from the Magna you live, fishing is still really profitable in the rainy season, but is much more economically risky during the dry season, meaning you're far more likely to go out and get nothing than you are in the rainy season. And so again, I think it's kind of an you know cost-benefit analysis here.

Um, and they need someone to care for their small children um and the husbands stay home and and do that. Um, and so it seems to be, I don't, I actually would love to do a study um that's that's sort of um uh measuring how the different changes in in environmental conditions and landscape kind of trigger a flip in the switch between strategies. Um I haven't done that yet, but it really seems to be a landscape and accessibility type of a thing that is triggering that. I mean it it really complicates this this narrative, which I'm sure you're familiar with, that men are um higher in risk taking uh proness. Um what your work shows is that uh number one, risk is a far broader uh and and variegated category than than we might think.

And there are many ecological pressures that could change, you know, what risks are taken by uh which sex. So I I'm I'm kind of curious. Is is the is it the idea that there's something about the um f physical treacherousness of of you know navigating terrain when it's when it's really wet that um that makes it more appealing for for men rather than women to go out and try to weather that? Is it more of like a uh willingness to brave these sort of physical dangers? And that when the risk shifts to uh more of an economic risk, then uh becomes more favorable to women? Is that sort of how you're you're carving it up or am I butchering this? Um no. And the the reason is that when men are fishing, they're on fishing boats.

And so um I like I've had many conversations with people about, you know, how risky fishing can be. This fishing physically, this fishing is not risky. Um, if you know how to swim, like your biggest risk is you might accidentally fall in the water, right? I feel like you really need to know how to swim in this culture. I feel like you really do. Yes. Yes. And like it's interesting because teaching kids how to swim is a really like important thing. And I've seen, you know, and the dads mostly do it, and I've seen them do it, and it's super interesting. Um, and so the other thing that's interesting about uh so there there would certainly be some physical, like quite a lot of physical risk, probably

associated with trying to maintain the same kind of trading patterns in the rainy season. Um and I think the reality is that there is so little like the likelihood of benefit from maintaining from like having that kind of risk. Um, trying to cross the bamboo pole, like for instance, um, you're you might not make it across. When you do get across, like you might not make that much money. I and so I I think it is just a cost benefit thing. Women still do go trading, but they just access different areas of the villages, basically. They go to places where the flooding is is much less or they'll travel farther away. And so the interesting thing I think though about trading is that it actually from the perspective of how likely are you to get hurt?

How likely are you to have something bad happen to you? Um, you know, get all of your things stolen or assaulted or something like that. Trading is a lot riskier. Um, and women usually travel in groups to try to mitigate that risk. Um, but even like they'll often get into a CNG, which is little motorized vehicle. Um, and it's risky riding in CNGs around rural Bangladesh. And so we've known uh women who've been in, you know, really bad accidents and then have like a physical disability for the rest of their lives. And so it is in every sense of the word, trading is riskier. And I think I don't know. I mean, I think it is the reality that is just a kind of a cost-benefit, you know, analysis for them.

Like we can make more money trading than our husbands can fishing on average. Um husbands really can't go trading. I mean, they do, they can go with their wives, um, but that's happens pretty rarely. Um, because there's this like unique little niche that is available to these women. Um Shonogore women don't generally don't practice perda, right? Which is the sort of cultural practice of um covering themselves, like covering their faces and their heads, um, but also not interacting with unrelated people or not traveling by themselves without, you know, a male relative, usually mostly staying at home. They don't have those kinds of cultural beliefs or restrictions for the most part. Um, Whereas the women who live in the villages are Muslim or Hindu

and they do practice or they do have really strong cultural beliefs around women leaving their homes without a male relative, interacting with unrelated um men in particular. so it so they don't get to go to the markets very often. Um they rarely do. And so it's whereas the Shodogore women can leave their homes and can come into these other people's, you know, like uh yards basically uh or homes and sell these things to them. And so it sets up this kind of perfect little cultural niche where like only women can sell to other women and these women can only buy from other women. Um, and so you know, because of of this, it's something that's available to Shotegore women that's not available to Shotegore men that's largely unavailable to

everybody else. Um, and so, and they can make a lot of money while they're doing it. They can also lose money, um, they can lose a lot of money. Um, but I think they, for whatever reason, they've decided it's, you know, worth worth the risk. Um yeah. Interesting. I mean, so uh I I'm kind of curious about their sort of mating dynamics, because presumably those would play a a role in in the sort of uh in the in the perda you describe, where men are very protective of of women. And um you could spin an evolutionary story about how this has to do with paternity certainty and restricting um, you know, reducing the risk of you know um females encountering other males. Um and is that same pressure there and sort of male sexual proprietariness?

Is that is that there in the Shogador? And it's just because the economic pressures are so high that uh it it just doesn't have an effect? Or or is it a an entirely different way of understanding uh meeting uh in that culture? The pressures are there. The pressures are there from mothers-in-law in particular. Um the mothers in law are the ones who are really concerned about it. Um but it seems to be the concerns seem to be greatest very early on in a marriage. Um like when and the age difference the age gap doesn't tend to be quite as large in the Shodogore marriages. Um they tend to have more love marriage, or love marriage is more common as opposed to arranged marriage than what you see in you know the rest of Bangladesh in general.

And so there are cultural differences here. Um, but especially with like newly married young women, mothers-in-law are very, you know, uh careful to pay attention to what they're doing and who they're talking to and all that kind of stuff. Um and as they get older, this is what I've seen. This is kind of anecdotal evidence here. Um, the concerns, either the daughters-in-law gain more authority in the relationship because they've had a baby or two, um, or they live on their own boat. Like the it nuclear families are living usually on their own because the boats are so small. And so it's also the case that like mothers-in-law have some control, but they don't have as much control because they're not living under the same roof, right?

So yeah, as the women get older, they tend to be more likely to then, you know, become traders or have just less scrutiny of their behavior in general. The women themselves, though, are also concerned about things like, you know, assault and sexual assault when they're out trading. So especially if they're going somewhere that's new for them, they they almost always travel in a group, regardless. And then they're going to places that are that they've been before. So they'll kind of all go together to one place and then they spread out and go to different households to sell their goods. And if they're going to a new to them place, then they're more likely to stay close by with a friend so that they always have, you know, some amount of you know backup or protection

or, you know, just accountability there. And I think the reality is that to some extent, these groups of, you know, these social groups also kind of function in a similar way in that everyone's kind of monitoring everybody else's behavior to some extent. Um but um, and polygyny is pretty uncommon. Um it's most marriage is mostly monogamous. Divorce is more common in the Shodogore households and somewhat more culturally acceptable too. Um and so, you know, so there is some of that certainly that that's going on. Um but yeah I think there's just these these cultural differences there. Um that that last point is interesting because uh just like from a cross-cultural not cross-cultural cross-species perspective, where you get monogamy often is where

there's both male and female cooperative breeding or high investment. So like classically, things like birds, where the uh one bird will be on the nest while the other one is foraging, and vice versa. And it sounds a little bit, I mean, the principle's the same, um, is that maybe what higher rates of divorce mean is that this is a way of living where you really need to depend on your spouse. You really have to be a cooperative partner such that if it's not working, you know, it's we can't be a viable household if I can't trust you, depend on you. And so you can imagine like the culture um allows for divorce, given that practically people need to really trust and depend on who they're with. Yeah, I think that that is um a good characterization of what's going on for a lot of the

households. That gets that is trickier for newly married couples or couples in which the wife uh doesn't work outside the home and so she's entirely reliant on her husband for economic purposes. Um and and I think of course there's a lot of kind of, you know, individual variation um when it comes to these sorts of things um but i yeah there is a strong um basis so many of the aspects of their lives are based around the nuclear family um and cooperation economic cooperation childcare cooperation between um the spouses and um uh in right, uh it doesn't work well when that's you know, that gets broken down. Um and so I I do think that's a really strong motivator. Um and then we also talk about um, you know, the extent to which

monogamy or uh is um kind of socially restricted, right? Or socially conscripted versus ecologically conscripted, meaning that it's simply too hard to maintain multiple spouses, and or you don't have, you know, the land or the resources to even like have multiple spouses live in your household. Um, and I think that is another huge driver of monogamy in these communities because it's just again, it comes back to the economic thing where it's like you just can't um make it work. Yeah. And the women are unwilling to do that if they're making the majority or more money than their spouses. So that helps too. Yeah. It's it's it is it's a lovely example of, I think I mean, for me at least, I will, I will

um say uh one has this idea that, well, the way my culture makes a living is just the way it is, or we just it's purely just social tradition. But I think like the value of seeing different ways of making a living is that you really see that it is very much fitting with the ecology, to the point where even the way of making a living flips. And then you start to think, oh, maybe the way that we make a living, even or aspects of our culture that I assume are just social or somebody told people to do it, or this is the way we've always done it, is in fact a consequence of weird stuff like economics or how often we see people during the day. I actually that's a question I have for you. Uh one back to the simple question of living on a boat.

I can imagine people wondering, well, how lonely or social is boat dwelling. Are there lots of other people around? If the kids want to play with other kids, do they jump in the water and go play with other, you know, go on someone else's belt? Like what what it how does that work? Yeah, um, well, this is a great question. And um we uh I've got uh some preliminary answers for you. Um so I just um I'm wrapping up sort of. We just wrapped up data collection last year, gosh, sometime recently, um, for a larger project, it kind of came, it was developed out of you know COVID and everything. Um, it's really about respiratory disease transmission, but there's a social network element to the project, which is kind of you know the one of the primary pieces.

And so the idea is that we are um asking uh me and my uh colleague uh Ashley Hazel, who's at the University of California, San Francisco, um, And then our colleagues in Bangladesh are basically asking how do social networks change across seasons? Are they different for people who are living on boats versus living on the land? And we really expect those differences to uh matter seasonally. And uh and then and then what are the consequences of that for you know all kinds of other things about health and well-being and and stuff like that. Um and so we collected uh contact networks um weekly for a year produced insane amounts of data sounds easy wow sounds easy I know unbased um and yeah yeah and so we're still cleaning the

data sets Um, but um yeah, I mean, like that's one of the big questions. Um, and then I've got a um, I'm gonna be working with Mike Gervin, my colleague at UCSB, our colleague at UCSB, um, who's really interested in social aging. And we're gonna be running um an interview uh that he um is that's is being run across cultures that's looking at older people and how socially isolated versus integrated they are. Um uh so but my suspicions, um, my my anecdotal evidence suggests that um people become more isolated during the rainy season. Um and that, and it's not entire like you're not entirely isolated, but you are isolated with, you know, maybe one or two other households or families, right? Um, and you're also not fully isolated in the sense that you couldn't go, like, you know,

spend five minutes to get in your boat and go see someone else. And people do that all the time. But you are isolated in the sense that it takes more effort to actually go visit other people or to, you know, socialize with people. In the dry season, you see because a lot because the flooding recedes, and so there's a lot more like open land that's available. And so you see people gathering on the land. Um, kids are playing together, adults are socializing, you know, all kinds of stuff. Um, and then in the rainy season, a lot of that um is reduced. And um, and so yeah, so I think there is a huge seasonal element to this. Um, and it it depends again. Uh, people do people find ways to get around this.

Um, they'll all dock their fishing boats at the same place at the end of every day. Um, or and then they'll all go to the tea stall together. Um, because fishing itself is is pretty isolating. You're only on your fishing boat with your spouse and kids. Um, but uh yeah, and kids do jump in the water and swim together and play, and it's very cute. Um but yeah, I mean I I think there is a real major seasonal um distinction there. And uh the extent to which this is impacting people um and their sort of health and well-being, happiness, um, feelings of loneliness and isolation. That I'm not sure, but hopefully we'll have some answers to in the near future. Yeah. It's funny because I know I know you lived in Germany too, but even just the minimal

cultural difference between going back and forth from Germany to US and car culture versus not. Yes. Um I actually this is sounding very f familiar of you know driving in a car every day, working at home, living in a nuclear family household. So I actually I think, you know, contrary to your concern earlier, I mean I think in a sense this highlights that every culture has, you know, seasonality or constraints of how often do you see people, how can you actually um uh have the opportunity to hang out with people, to play with people, to how do you what is what is your work like? Are you isolated or social? And we we all need to, you know, figure out out how to um square the circles when our work may be more isolating than we want it to be.

Um or if not, we are a little bit miserable. And that's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there are a lot of parallels um in the US, maybe maybe less so for those of us in California where seasonality is a little bit less extreme. But um, you know, in wintertime in the Midwest, you're just not seeing as many people, right? I mean, yeah, on a farm, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or even like in the city, like, you know, it's cold, everybody's grumpy, it gets dark early. So no one is, you know, lingering outside of school to chat with each other, kids aren't having outdoor play dates, right? There's there's a pretty big shift in in our behavior too seasonally. Um and yeah, so it it's really it is one of those kind of human universal things if you

really squint your eyes at it. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, um, yeah, there's a lot of work on on the so-called uh loneliness epidemic, you know, depending on on which numbers you look at, at least, you know, in particular in the US, um uh rates of loneliness seems to seem to be on the rise. Um, and to me, you know, this always raised the question of like, why? Like, why don't people just call their friends or just get together? Like, it's not hard. I don't understand. Like, if you're feeling lonely, there's a very clear solution. You you have access to it. It's like if like people are like dying of thirst in the desert, and there's like water right there. It's like, what's the problem here?

The water's right there, just get it, you know. Like, um But I think w uh you're describing to me the sorts of barriers, ecological barriers, that make it harder for people to hang out with people, uh um the idea I'm starting to have now is that um getting together and socializing uh entails costs, right? It entails costs and time, effort, energy, perhaps physical risk if you're uh braving um, you know, dangerous uh circumstances like rainfall. Um so it may be that, you know, um when the costs of socializing are high, you know, you get less socializing. And it may be that one of the causes of of loneliness isn't so much that like there's water there within reach and people aren't reaching it.

It's that just the costs of of getting together with other people have increased. You know, like even living here in LA, um, you know, there's there's a lot of traffic and people are situated further apart. And so, like, I'm gonna go hang out with someone, I better really like that person. Like, no. I know. That was one of my least favorite things about living in Chicago. I never got to see anyone. Like, I never saw my colleagues outside of work because it's an hour in the car to see them, right? So which, you know, I don't know. That that was not for me. Um, other people like that. Right. Yeah. And it makes me think that like we perhaps one of the reasons why we don't see these loneliness issues arising in more small scale societies is just because the barriers to

socializing aren't there. Like you're already living amongst people that are already there. It takes no effort to like, you know, reach out and tap them on the back or, you know, say something. Um and uh because just the barriers and and the costs are so low, you get more socializing. It it goes it goes back to this this fundamental economic logic, you know, that that that we started off the podcast with. It also reminds me a lot of I I've been um mulling over this this cool um uh economics paper, this famous paper um by Ronald Coase called the Coase uh Theorem. Uh, and and what he discovered is that there's this fundamental principle at the heart of economics, which is this idea of transaction costs.

Um, and these are the silent invisible the invisible costs that um are required for a buyer and a seller to find each other and make a mutually beneficial deal. And uh you know, prior to uh Coase coming along, economists just kind of didn't see that and just kind of took that for granted. Like you know, people can mutually benefit by trading. Why don't they do it? Well, because there are all these costs, right? Uh they the the the buyer and seller have to know that the other one exists. They have to know where they are. They have to meet up at the same time and place. They're costs and sort of and bargaining uh and and reaching a mute mutually beneficial deal. There are costs in in trust and ensuring that if I give you the money, you'll give me what

I paid for. There are all these uh silent invisible costs that that exist that that that have to be there in order for um a a marketplace to even exist, right? Yeah. And the major reason why marketplaces exist is because the transaction costs have come down. And the major reason why uh businesses exist is because they minimize transaction costs. It's much the transaction costs are much lower if I'm working with the same people every day and I have a stable employee that's working for me than if I'm literally contracting out every task that my business has to do with and finding a different person and signing a different contract for every little thing. If I just have a stable set of people I'm always working with, that reduces the transaction

costs. And that's why you have things like companies instead of just a bunch of contracts, right? Right, right. Um, and so I'm beginning to think like talking to you, um, that there's kind of like a transaction cost theory of loneliness. Um, and and and and the same logic that's that's that governs economic growth also governs social growth. Um, and that when the transaction costs are down, people engage in the activity. And when they're high, you know, they can't. Right. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Uh and the other thing that I was thinking about too, um uh is uh that for lots of people who live outside of the US and kind of outside of major cities around the world, so many people are living in multi-generational households.

So many people are, I mean, again, aside from some of the like weird exceptions, um Most people get married and have kids. The barriers are either completely like non-existent because you live in the same household with people who you can socialize with, or just so low, right? That like it's just not, this is not something you're facing on a regular basis. And so maybe there are slightly higher costs to seeing your friends um or your brother or your sister or whatever. Um, but those costs are still pretty low, especially if you live in, you know, the same place, um, same group or or you know, location or whatever. Um, But but still, I mean, like I think humans spent the majority of our evolutionary history living in contexts where those costs were

exceedingly low, if not completely non-existent, right? And so it's like we're trying to navigate these things alongside, like it's it's not, you know, it's the costs are in time and energy and all that kind of stuff. They're also in like, um, you know, what you're giving up. Right. So if you're gonna travel an hour to see someone, that means an hour that you're not doing something else. Um. And so yeah, I think it's like we we just our our way of living has increased those costs so dramatically um that we don't even, you know, we don't know what we're doing anymore. I think it's really bad for us too. Yeah. And I I think there's uh a prescriptive element to this too, which is sort of either in

your own life or if you have the position of, you know, you're you're thinking about well how do how do I build a better institution or a better I'm a planner or something, you know. I don't know how often people think about, well, what is the interaction cost? I mean, there's this idea of like third places, and there are some people doing it. But I mean, you know, usually we're like, well, you know, how many cars can we fit in this parking lot? We're not asking, um, well, what are the barriers to social or economic interaction that we're creating as an incidental byproduct? And maybe we should, you know. I mean, I think this is an argument for one of the values of social science and anthropology and psychology is that the this issue of if I'm designing something,

I should be thinking about what or even, you know, how where do I want to live? What kind of neighborhood do I want to live in if I'm lucky enough? Or how could we make our neighborhood better? Um or you know, yeah, what what are ways to lower my own social interaction costs if I feel lonely? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point. Yeah. I mean, uh not to get on my own hobby horse, but it reminds me of my my own work on humor. Um and you could think of, you know, the the uh the function of humor is reducing the transaction costs of coordination and communication with another person. Because when every anytime you attempt to communicate or collaborate with someone, there is the possibility of uh mix-ups of I say one thing and you think I mean a different thing, or

we're supposed to be taking on different roles, and I get the roles mixed up, or you know, I get uh I I you know uh I speak too quickly or too slowly, or um, I use the wrong body language or the wrong gestures or or whatever. There are all these ways that we can become mixed up or or misaligned, and that gums up the gears of us, you know, fruitfully collaborating and communicating with each other. And so there would have been selection pressure to detect those kinds of mix-ups and to find and to find the detection rewarding and pleasurable and to signal and create uh a common awareness that we that we're mixed up and to try to get us back on the same page. I think that's what laughter is about, the sort of the sort of signal that we're sending.

And so I think humor is one of the ways in which we have evolved to reduce the transaction costs of mutual uh benefit and collaboration by evolving these mechanisms for detecting when we're out of sync or when we're misaligned and for signaling and sharing the signal uh to get us back on the same page. And we find that very rewarding and and pleasurable. And that's one of the ways one of the reasons why I think laughter brings people together and humor brings people together. But there are probably many other uh adaptations that that evolve for this purpose of uh you know reducing the costs of of social interaction and uh increasing the benefits. Yeah. yeah, yeah. That's an interesting point.

I love it. Uh Katie, um, when you come back from the field or in in the um in the transition either year to year or over time, what if there's probably many things, but what are the things that having gone through this two uh different uh very different existences transition, what do you when you come back home, wherever home is, uh now Santa Barbara, but you know, or just um what what do you is are there things that you particularly notice? Maybe that the ground is stable now and you're not on a boat rocking all the time. Or or maybe more more um you know, are there things you're like, oh I realize now that this thing that I I wasn't looking at as a idiosyncrasy. Now I see it as an idiosyncrasy because I've seen that it can be different elsewhere.

Yeah, wow, that's a good question. It is, yeah. Um there's a lot of uh metacognition requirements. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um yeah, I I think I I don't know. I think um I certainly I have like, you know, kind of little things that I've noticed every every once in a while when I come home. One of them, they're not always really positive, uh, but one of them is like um when I I think I came back one time. I think I was in the LA airport. Um, this was before I was living here. So it was, you know, I was uh transferring somewhere else. Um, and you know, you come back from an international flight, so you have to pick up your luggage and then recheck it before you, you know, transfer. Um, and there was just tons of luggage everywhere.

I forget where I was coming from, but I had two huge suitcases that I was bringing with me. And they had gotten buried under other people's luggage on the conveyor belt, and no one helped me get my bags out. And I just thought, like, what is happening? Like, if I had been back in Bangladesh, everyone would have been helping me, you know, and that like they do that for each other. Um, even though it's like when you're in the airport in Taka, you're in a mega city airport, like people do not know each other, right? Um, they certainly don't know me. Um, and it's just a a like a way of life there that you are like kind and courteous to other people, in large part, you know, not always and not entirely, but just like that there are these small things that you do for other people.

Um, and I think to a large extent, you know, our kind of individualism has really screwed us up in a lot of those kinds of ways where we just we think we don't have to rely on anyone else or we don't want to have to rely on anyone else. So we don't so you know don't go out of our way to help others all the time. Yeah. Um especially if we don't know them. Um and I I think um you know there are obviously reasons for that. Like we could come up with a whole evolutionary story about that. Um but but at the same time, right, like it's it's not entirely true that we don't need other people here. We this is a story that we have told ourselves. Um, and I think it's just a story there that is not really plausible.

Um, it's very apparent in everyday life how much you need other people and how many other people you have around you, you know, how often you're around family members and all those kinds of things that I think just you know leads to these kind of small but not insignificant differences. Um And so yeah, it's it's little things like that, I think, that really kind of strike me. Yeah. And to your point, and what our point we were talking about earlier, it's also, I mean, the individual people in LA here in this example, it's it's also the evolved psychology interacting with, you know, it's doing a cost benefit analysis, right? And so it's that there's been some set of circumstances that you know have just you know,

if people want to be more friendly or social, maybe there's been a slap on the wrist both as experiences, or you're just kind of absorbing the ambient norms. So um I think one of the points of this whole discussion is it's not impossible to change it, you know, like if you if you but it's it's a it's the psychology and the social structure, but it's not like you have to change the whole culture, you can just have a small, small local cues can completely change how social or friendly or interactive the cost of interaction, as David said, you know. Yeah. Like if you were wearing, I don't know, an Eagles jersey and somebody else with an Eagles jersey and you're like, hey, hey, help me out. And you know, um, that's a terrible example.

Um J Jamie Kremsman. I think that would do it. I think that would probably um but uh but yeah, but but but the point is like it's not magical or ethereal, right, to change things or even humor, as David said, you know, or just anything in common. Um, but sometimes it does require that. Yeah. Right, right. I mean, we're looking for commonalities with other people all the time. And I mean, I'm from Nebraska. So also my opinion on how friendly and helpful we should be to other people is entirely skewed by that. Yes. Um, but it's also the case that if I see someone with a Nebraska t-shirt on, I get very excited and immediately want to go talk to them. Right. So exactly. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're doing that kind of stuff all the time and partially possibly it's

because we assume that that similarity we have with someone else will reduce the cost um or reduce you know uh the risk that we're taking with that interaction at least yeah I'm from Buffalo New York and I would say we're also a friendly people. The weather can kill you there too. That's always my feeling of of banding together and being fairly friendly. Yeah. I I don't think that's a bad theory at all. I'm good on board with that. Yeah. No, I've I've I've been thinking a lot about the the case of of the jersey or or the superficial similarity or and and the role of that and in bringing people together. And I've been trying to do some game theory of uh work on um on alliances and and that is also a problem of uh of transaction costs or or coordination costs.

If you think about it if you're trying to form an in-group and an out group um uh there are a huge number of permutations and even a small number of people, small group of people, uh, of who could theoretically be in the in-group and who could theoretically be in the outgroup. I mean, it's just the logic of combinatorics and factorials, just like huge number of possibilities. And in order for us to successfully form an in-group and an all-out group, we all have to agree on who's in and who's out. And that's really hard to do. That's a really challenging coordination problem. And what wearing the same jersey does is it is a huge uh solution to that problem. Oh, we're all wearing the same jersey.

Okay, we're the in-group. And it just massively collapses the space of possibilities down to a manageable number. And I think that is largely the function of these superficial similarities that is that it helps us solve this coordination problem of who's who's on our side, who's on the other side, who's the in-group, who's the out group. We're just going to make it easy for each other by uh creating common knowledge of uh similarities even if they're entirely superficial they can still serve that function. Yeah and it's also it's also what the constitution of the group is you know it's not like Jersey therefore you know like I think this is like a sexual interaction or you're gonna come live with me or I have to like take care of you for my forever.

It's like no we might like hang out or talk for a second and it coordinates about that. Like I don't want to approach somebody at an airport and then think like oh they're actually in really bad straits and now I have to take care of them the rest of my life, which is I think like one of the hindrances for dealing with homeless people, which is like sad but rational. You know, I think like that's part of the evolved psychology is like I'm gonna be responsible for dealing with a really hard situation that I only have 10 minutes and $10 to deal with. And that's too little in both ways. So I think also just yeah, sorry, Katie, go ahead. Yeah. Oh no, I was gonna say, and I mean, you guys are both dads.

So I don't know if this is the same for dads, but I feel like this is something that happens with moms a lot. Um, you know, like in in settings like airports or parks or something like that, you know, you have you have kids, there's this kind of um, I don't know, level of of in-group trust that you have with someone, um, where it's like, I could totally ask this person to like hold my place in line while I go like run and you know, help my child really quickly. Or like I could even like, I mean, I've had people in the grocery store offer to like hold my child before. Um, or you know, like watch her while I go like pick something up that I forgot, right? Um and um and while I don't usually take them up on that, um, it is something where like

if they also had kids or they were also holding a baby, then it's like this honest signal that I know that this person is a generally trustworthy person. Yeah. Right. Um, and so I think, you know, again, it it it happens on smaller scales and on larger scales a lot. And it's it's it's really important. Yeah. No, I I I get that. I I I don't know, David, but for me, yeah, no, I experienced that as well. And it's almost like kind of uh like parents are especially parents of young kids, you know, it's all we're we're all you're sort of closed. Yeah, you're kind of like, okay, I see you, I see you. Yeah. And if like your kid ran off, you know, like it's even in a second, you know, or or even I mean, this reminds me even where there's been situations where I'm closer to somebody

else's kid who's in a clearly like if they ran out, they would get hurt. And just like a second of like me contact like eye contact with the other parent, it's like, no, okay, if they did that, I would get them, you know, like that. Yeah. Or at the playground, like um, I've you know, I've kind of got eyes on this kid and like, you know, their parent knows that like they're on their way, but if something happens, like I'm gonna step in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, it speaks to, you know, an interesting thing about human psychology is that we don't merely find our own offspring uh cute or uh nieces and nephews cute. We find pretty much every kid and maybe about Well David, do you feel like more that way since you're like became a parent?

Like do you I've I've always found kids pretty cute, I think. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's clearly individual differences, there's clearly parenting brain that gets turned on. Sure. I I wouldn't say that um becoming a dad has made me find other people's kids more more cute. Um I don't know. Do you have a lot of people? Yeah, no, I I agree with that. No, no, no. I I I think it's all the other stuff where we're that we're talking about sort of that as opposed to like this is just aesthetically acute thing, which whatever. Now it's sort of like, you know, I'm in parenting mode, such that, like, you know, when I I'm I'm in the role of parent, of I'm the, I'm the older, more mature control system. I'm keyed in and attentive to kids and what's going on with the kids and if something

is needed. And other parents are also doing that, and we're co-registering that we're all in this together. and if there's a really high cost benefit situation or even mundane, but we can all coordinate a little bit to to to keep doing this job of keeping these little not always helpless but still relatively neotonous things from really hurting themselves or getting in a bad situation. Yeah. Yeah. You would make a great show to go dad. Maybe I'll move there if that doesn't work here in LA. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it is really interesting because um there's just a lot of like um I mean, certainly this is true in our lives, but it's also the case with the the Shotogore families.

Like the dads are when the moms are at work, they're gone and maybe there's a grandma around somewhere, right? Or something, but the dads are in charge and they are like you know, I mean, like they're bringing their kids to like have not uh not little play, but basically effectively little play dates, right? With the other um kids whose dads are also taking care of them. There's a lot of solidarity, there's a lot of you know of of social bonding, I think that happens around these kind of shared circumstances that they have, and um and a lot of very strong sort of norms and expectations around how people should behave as parents in general, but as dads in particular. And there's just this really strong cultural norm that you are an attentive and

affectionate dad. And again, there's individual differences, certainly, but by and large, that's that's the vibe there. And it seems to be quite important, especially if your kid, for example, falls out of the boat or somebody else's kid falls, right? Like you have to be attentive. So interesting. Um, yeah. I I will say that one thing that has changed after after becoming a dad is that is the level of outrage I feel toward people who are bad dads or bad parents. Like I I didn't feel that at all before before becoming, but now like if someone is is like mistreating a child or especially their own child, like man, that just really just disgusts me and and creates a sense of loathing that is is totally new for me.

I don't know if if if that resonates with you, Dave. Uh I mean I'm pretty high in moral outrage at a baseline. Um people people who know me well are laughing are laughing right now. So um if anything, I feel like it's kind of chilled me out a little bit. Or I'm just like, but I don't know. I I actually I don't know, David. I don't know if I also don't see a lot of bad fortunately I I don't actually see a lot of bad parenting. Um but I don't see a lot of parents Well, yeah, no, I think I I do see a lot of parents like, you know, dropping on and off school and things like that, but I don't fortunately I don't see a lot of bad parenting. I don't I don't know, David. I I I don't know. I don't know.

Oh maybe I just have I live in a different with yeah I I I know like celebrities word phlanderers and you know right oh I drug addictions and just totally neglecting it's an LA Santa Barbara difference. In Santa Barbara we're just still fine. Yeah. When I hear horror stories like that of, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I I did that. No, there are things like um, you know, something like somebody yeah, like a a drug user, famous person who had young kids, the the simulating could I imagine doing that actually post being a parent? It's like, no, that's an alien situation to me in a way that wasn't as visceral probably before being a parent. Um yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. And especially I mean the economics here are are different as well because the

entertainment industry you have to be gone for months at a time if you're on a shoot. Uh and so that that could be like really um you know hard. I can't, I mean, honestly, like being away from from my daughter for like more than a few days, like it just it kills me. Like I'm imagining having to be away for months at a time. And you know, when I see people just being really blasé about that or using it as an excuse to be a neglectful parent, like, oh boy, it just makes me blood boil, you know. Yeah, anyway. I have a lot more patience for parents uh who are like at the playground on their phone now than I think I used to because now I'm like, oh I get that. Like your kid is finally playing. And I, you know, like this may be your only chance during the day to chill out and not have

to like be on the malt. Yes. Yes. Yes. I try not to do it too much, but sometimes it's like, I gotta take a minute here, guys. Like I need a break. So exactly put on your oxygen mask first, is the way we talked about it. Katie, uh this is yeah, this is fantastic. Um are there any things that um or maybe that you want to point people toward that they might not know after this conversation? Like, is there um I mean we'll put it we can put a website and thing, but is there anything kind of in c as we're wrapping up here that you wanted to make sure to flag or mention that we might not have covered yet as it relates to either something you're doing or something you're excited about, you know, whatever, anything.

Yeah. I do think I was thinking about the conversation we had about risk earlier. Um, and I think one of the things that I failed to mention that I should have mentioned, um, which is a hobby horse of my own, I suppose, um, is that I think one of the reasons, kind of going back to these, you know, sex or gender differences and risk preferences and risk taking, um, I think one of the pitfalls that we as evolutionary researchers um you know are susceptible to a lot. And one of the things that I see in the literature all the time is we get so used to comparing women and men to one another. And it's often the case that when we do that, uh for in many different sorts of realms of life, that what it looks like is that men have all this sort of variability, right?

And that men are lots of men are doing different things. If we just sort of think about parenting and fatherhood, right? But there's a lot more variation in what um how men across cultures and probably throughout history father and how they invest in their kids than when we look at women. But I think that what happens when we do that is we end up washing out a lot of the variability in what women are doing. Right. And so when we're thinking about, well, women sh are more, you know, uh risk averse than men, well, but we still might assume or we could test a hypothesis that would say that sure, on average, that's probably true, but that if we actually sort of look at the, you know, um all the women in the world,

um, that there is going to be a range. Um, and that there will be cultural differences, certainly, and ecology and and sort of social circumstances and culture will play a major role in shaping those differences, but that I think we often fail to examine a lot of the variability in what women are doing because we so often compare what they do to what men do. And in some spaces, anyway, that has gotten kind of, you know, like whitewashed into saying, like, well, it's just not as interesting, or it's not as as worthy of study, or that this variation is not evolutionarily relevant because when, you know, because of the comparison between the two. And so that again, like that's my personal hobby horse.

Um, and something that I always come back to when I'm talking about women's work in particular, their livelihoods, their economic work specifically, as well as childcare, um, and kind of thinking about from an evolutionary perspective, we know that women do different things. Why do they do these different things? How are they different? And what are the sort of you know fitness costs and benefits of them doing all these different things? And so trying to focus more on the variation among women than kind of the comparison between men and women, because I think that remains a kind of underexplored area that I'm obviously personally really passionate about. So that's kind of that's like the driving force between basically all of my research.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. That's great. And of course, natural selection cares a whole lot about the variability within women. I mean, like that's literally a whole entire class of selection pressures. Natural selection is just not like what's the difference between men and women. It's also there's a lot of difference with you know with between within each sex that natural selection sees and cares about. And that reminds me, Brenda Bowser mentioned that uh early in one of our earlier episodes. She just kind of off-handedly, but I think very importantly, and it stuck with me, and what you said reminded me was women's reproductive success. It's less variable than men, but it's still there.

There is variability in women's reproductive success. Yeah, right. And I was just like, oh honestly, I was kind of like, oh yeah, duh. Like I can so that was even me um not really thinking about that. And of course there is. And of course that's a huge selection pressure and and of course an important thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think when we talk about, and I I I have I've read a lot of evolutionary psychology, but I don't want to speak for evolutionary psychologists. Um, but I think this is certainly true for anthropologists, which is that when we um talk about the fitness benefits or the evolutionary benefits of particular types of behavior. Who like, who are we thinking about being the beneficiary of that?

It's often men. And the reason is because you say it's often because men's reproductive success is more variable than women's. And so we kind of, I think for a long time, the evolutionary anthropologists, the behavioral ecologists got stuck in this trap or rut of always thinking about like, how is this thing like um polyandry? So I, you know, have done a little bit of work with polyandry at women's multiple mating. Um, and for a long time, the question was: how is this beneficial to men? And because it's really hard to think about how that can be beneficial for men, although, you know, see your previous episode with Brooks Shelza and all of her work. Um it it like we the question was largely ignored about how this would be

beneficial to women, um, or that it was just assumed that it wouldn't be. Um, and so it was, you know, for a long time just kind of passed over that that women may actually benefit from having multiple partners at the same time. And so yeah, I think, I think we, that's an important thing for people to keep in mind when they're talking about evolutionary things in kind of broad terms and how things are beneficial and things like that. I think we always have to follow up by saying beneficial to whom or to what group. Because that really does change the calculus of the argument and of the cost-benefit analysis quite a lot, frankly. Yeah. All right. On that note, yeah, that's a good way to wrap it up.

Starting where we started, David's summary of this is all roughly this beautiful, difficult, um, and it sounds like often very wet um um foray into like looking at a uh different slice compared to what the three of or the two of us are used to anyway, um, of humanity, but looking at from this cost-benefit lens. Um, but as you say, Katie, um just really, you know, we we always, whenever we have an anthropologist on, you know, the running joke is the thank you for your service, but it is it's it's just it's really cool um because we do get to see ourselves and what human beings are like. It's just a it's a fun, um um evocative um and very interesting um place. Um and uh it sounds like um it just sounds like a really interesting um way

to have a career. And so thanks for sharing it with us. It's really fun and it is very sweaty. It's not always wet, always very sweaty. Oh my goodness. Well, Santa Barbara is very low humidity. So maybe that's your karma is you get to go to a low humidity place. Yeah, I'll accept that. Except maybe not this year because of El Nino, but still I'm sure it's nothing compared to It's pretty humid today. No, no, no, nothing compared to Banglarash. No, people get very concerned about the amount of sweat that I think that's always fun and embarrassing. Yeah. Um thank you guys. Yeah, thank you so much. This was wonderful. It was super fun. I really enjoyed talking to you guys and nerding out about evolutionary theory.

It's always great. Why we're here. Always a blast. David, that was that was lovely. Yeah, that was a fun conversation. Yeah. Uh let's do it again. Yeah, let's do it again. I mean, not the same conversation. You understand. We should just do it do the exact same one, try to look at the transcript and memorize it and just have a an exact replica. That sounds super fun, yeah. I think that would be a you know a really cool thing to do. Uh I just saw um I don't know if this is the time to bring it up, I just saw Dan Conroy beam in his office and there was a picture of a um a bighorn sheep um in his uh um uh on his computer and I said is that in turkey and he looked at me like I was crazy because he thought I asked him is that a turkey and

I thought I thought he had a much too high opinion of my knowledge of megafauna's geographic range, such that it would be crazy to think that a bighorn sheep would be in Turkey. And then we laughed, and I thought this is a perfect example of David Pinsoff's mix up theory of humor because he thought I needed my eyes examined, and I thought Dan had much too high of an opinion of my of the distribution of megafauna. But anyway, it was a funny anecdote. I thought I would share it with you, David. That's a great yeah. No, that's a beautiful piece of evidence that is consistent with the theory. I love it. Yeah. So, um anyway, the um the I I really like this this episode reminded me of several of the anthropology episodes

where I feel like I will always retain one of the things I learned from this is that looking at the way people make a living in a different way sheds light on human nature. Um and I thought that was really cool. Yeah, for sure. So if you want that kind of thing to keep happening, listener, Uh you can leave us a kind review. Check us out on Patreon, social media stuff. Uh anything else, Dave? Get it get us uh get get our gear. Do we have gear? No, we don't. I mean, I'm starting to teach a class this quarter. Um, if you want to look into gear, let me know. Or if or if you listener, if listener, yeah, yeah. Well, I think we gotta, I mean, maybe if our Patreon money gets gets pretty high, we'll we'll get some cool gear.

But th you can do um no inventory gear you can have a no inventory gear store such that there are I've looked this up because of other podcasts that are similarly small scale that I enjoy. And what you can do is you can just have a store that no you you've never made the t shirt. But if somebody wants the t shirt, they order it and then it's so s trivial to print the shirt that they just wait till somebody orders it. So we could have all kinds of things that um I mean I don't know about all kinds of things, but um wow. That's a beautiful example of the reduction of transaction costs exactly discussed in the show. Okay. Yeah. Yeah maybe we should do that. Well if you have ideas for gear, um, let us know.

If you have any other ideas about guests or feedback, let us know. Evolutionary psychology, the podcast car. Like you can have that car, like a like a race car, like a NASCAR. Exactly. You could just print that on the car and buy the car. Yes, exactly. That'd be pretty good. Oh god, that's gonna happen with corporation logos at some point, isn't it? It kinda already is is with the car company. It already has but I mean I think the logos are all over the nest with a lot of s advertising space on cars. Anyway, don't do that. Nobody listen. We could bumper stickers. I think I just reinvented bumper stickers. We could just get in the podcast bumper stickers. Yeah. Pretty easy. Yeah. Although we wouldn't want to cause any accidents.

You know, someone might you know try to ram some oh the evolutionary psychology fan. I'm gonna or they might they might try to ask them a question. They're like, I have a question. They roll down their window at the design of the human mind. Yeah, I'm curious where what do you think is the evolutionary function of nostalgia? Oh, it's green light. All right. See you later. Yeah. Which model do you think will better explain like the fate of humanity with AI? Is it Rogers Paradox or ideal free distribution? Like which good good traffic light conversation. Exactly. We should have an AI episode on if for no other reason then it's the flavor of the week. And also before the AI kills us all. Just to trigger.

Just to trigger. All right. Um, well, if the over AI overlords haven't gotten to you yet, enjoy your week. And uh yeah, David, we should have a an AI episode too. Yeah, that would be fun. Okay. Episode for sure. Cool. All right. See everybody next week. Take it easy.