WEBVTT 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:03.200 This is evolutionary psychology, the podcast. 00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:05.280 Actual evolutionary psychology? 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:07.760 By actual evolutionary psychologists. 00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:13.440 I I was which are uh are are me, David Pinzhoff, and uh my co-host Dave Petrazuki. 00:00:13.600 --> 00:00:18.960 Yeah, and uh I was gonna say uh why why do why do you have a theory, a coordinating theory 00:00:19.040 --> 00:00:20.480 of why we say the podcast? 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:24.480 Because unless your phone auto advanced, you know. 00:00:25.910 --> 00:00:26.550 That's true. 00:00:26.710 --> 00:00:28.150 It is redundant information. 00:00:28.310 --> 00:00:28.550 Yeah. 00:00:28.710 --> 00:00:30.630 Like You know what you're listening to. 00:00:30.790 --> 00:00:31.190 You clicked on it. 00:00:31.510 --> 00:00:33.030 Yeah, but it feels it feels compelling. 00:00:33.190 --> 00:00:33.990 I feel it compelled. 00:00:34.150 --> 00:00:38.870 It makes it feels like a a tidy bow on a package to say this at the beginning. 00:00:39.110 --> 00:00:39.750 Why do we do that? 00:00:41.990 --> 00:00:44.150 No, I I think there's a deeper psychological reason. 00:00:44.310 --> 00:00:45.590 Do you have a do you have an idea? 00:00:45.830 --> 00:00:48.340 This is a I'm putting I this gotcha question for you, David. 00:00:48.580 --> 00:00:49.300 Oh no, it's interesting. 00:00:49.380 --> 00:00:53.060 Uh yeah, uh it's possible it's it's just kind of gets you in the right headspace and sets 00:00:53.060 --> 00:00:54.500 the tone or the or the vibe or whatever. 00:00:54.580 --> 00:00:54.900 That's possible. 00:00:54.980 --> 00:00:56.580 But I'm sure I like that idea. 00:00:57.060 --> 00:01:02.580 Probably my guess is that it's just inertia, that it's just a suboptimal equilibrium that 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:05.780 we're sticking with out of pure convention, like the QWERTY keyboard. 00:01:05.860 --> 00:01:06.500 Are you familiar with that? 00:01:06.900 --> 00:01:07.780 Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:01:08.020 --> 00:01:12.390 Yeah, I think like at some point, uh maybe people didn't know what they were listening to 00:01:12.390 --> 00:01:13.830 when you were listening on the radio, for example. 00:01:14.070 --> 00:01:15.830 Like it's helpful to say what the show is. 00:01:16.150 --> 00:01:20.310 But now that we're in a post-radio world, it's it's no longer necessary, but we've retained 00:01:20.310 --> 00:01:21.910 the convention for arbitrary reasons. 00:01:22.230 --> 00:01:22.470 Yeah. 00:01:22.550 --> 00:01:26.390 So uh so enjoy uh this arbitrary convention. 00:01:26.710 --> 00:01:27.110 Yep. 00:01:27.270 --> 00:01:27.750 Enjoy. 00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:49.540 David, today we talked to Katie Starkweather, who is uh recently uh anthro faculty here 00:01:49.540 --> 00:01:50.740 at UC Santa Barbara. 00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:54.020 Before that was at Mox Planck uh Leipzig. 00:01:54.900 --> 00:01:59.220 And um before that, I think in Chicago, she mentioned. 00:02:00.110 --> 00:02:01.070 Yeah, that's right. 00:02:02.030 --> 00:02:08.030 Does really cool work with um people who uh are boat dwellers, at 00:02:08.030 --> 00:02:11.310 least part of the time, in uh in Bangladesh. 00:02:11.790 --> 00:02:12.030 That's right. 00:02:12.110 --> 00:02:17.870 The Shodogore Boat Dwellers, uh fascinating um group of people that uh you will 00:02:17.870 --> 00:02:23.200 learn lots about, and I think they shed light on all sorts of things like loneliness, 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:29.200 friendship, mating, childcare, uh division of labor, how uh aspects of the 00:02:29.200 --> 00:02:33.280 ecology can uh have uh effects on social systems. 00:02:33.440 --> 00:02:35.600 Uh really fun and interesting conversation. 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:36.000 Yeah. 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:40.400 And I like you, we talked about something I would call barriers to social interaction, 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:44.240 whether it's weather or ecology or being on a boat. 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:50.080 And then also your um deep dive into coasts and the origin of firms and transaction costs. 00:02:50.160 --> 00:02:52.000 And I I really like that part too, David. 00:02:52.350 --> 00:02:52.910 Oh, thank you. 00:02:52.990 --> 00:02:55.310 Yeah, no, I've been thinking a lot about Coast lately. 00:02:57.310 --> 00:02:57.950 Ronald Coast? 00:02:58.190 --> 00:02:59.550 I believe I believe Ronald, yes. 00:03:00.190 --> 00:03:00.590 Yeah. 00:03:00.990 --> 00:03:01.310 All right. 00:03:01.470 --> 00:03:07.310 So without further ado, you can hop on board the boat of uh this interview. 00:03:07.710 --> 00:03:08.350 Dive in. 00:03:08.990 --> 00:03:09.790 Enjoy. 00:03:14.590 --> 00:03:19.840 Uh we we've had many experimental psychologists, more recently 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:23.200 philosophers, many field anthropologists. 00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:29.200 Um, although I sometimes wonder if anthropology is a 00:03:29.200 --> 00:03:35.200 broader tent in the sense that you can have people who are both in anthropology departments 00:03:35.280 --> 00:03:41.040 but do very different things in terms of what their day-to-day work is like, 00:03:41.200 --> 00:03:45.630 but also where they go to the field or how they go to the field, or even just how they 00:03:45.630 --> 00:03:48.910 think about the the science and sort of what they do. 00:03:49.150 --> 00:03:54.750 Maybe as a way to start what you do, can you tell us a little bit about 00:03:55.070 --> 00:04:01.070 either what you're currently doing with respect to in the next year, 00:04:01.230 --> 00:04:02.910 physically, where do you go? 00:04:03.070 --> 00:04:09.000 Or what's the story of sort of how you slice up being an anthropologist um and where 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:13.320 you go and sort of what you study for people who might not know the answer to that question 00:04:13.480 --> 00:04:13.960 about you. 00:04:14.280 --> 00:04:14.840 Yeah. 00:04:15.640 --> 00:04:17.320 Well that's a good question. 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:23.720 And you're you're right, anthropology is an extremely wide ranging wide wide ranging um 00:04:23.720 --> 00:04:29.320 field with lots of subfields and then you know subfields within subfields and everything. 00:04:29.880 --> 00:04:35.350 And even those of us in the same subfield do wildly different things 00:04:35.510 --> 00:04:36.230 sometimes. 00:04:36.390 --> 00:04:41.510 Um, you've had Amy Body on your podcast, I know, um, and Amy and I do very different 00:04:41.510 --> 00:04:46.310 things, even though sometimes the subject matters kind of, you know, uh overlap a little 00:04:46.310 --> 00:04:46.470 bit. 00:04:46.550 --> 00:04:49.430 So it's it's fun and it's interesting. 00:04:49.590 --> 00:04:54.310 Um, and I think that was probably part of what drew me into anthropology. 00:04:54.550 --> 00:05:00.400 Um, as well as I've always been really interested in, you know, humans and cultures and 00:05:00.400 --> 00:05:02.960 like why people do what they do and stuff like that. 00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:09.200 So um uh yeah, so I um the major well, all my field work, all my current 00:05:09.200 --> 00:05:14.480 field work, and the major vast majority of the fieldwork that I've done um has been in 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:16.240 rural Bangladesh. 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:22.080 Um I work with a community of people there who are called 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:27.870 Shodogore and they're traditionally boat dwelling, traditionally semi-nomadic, 00:05:28.430 --> 00:05:31.550 although their lifestyles are changing pretty rapidly. 00:05:31.950 --> 00:05:36.590 But I've been working there since 2011 was the first time I went. 00:05:36.750 --> 00:05:41.390 And then more, you know, sort of consistently since 2014. 00:05:42.510 --> 00:05:48.030 So I was there over the summer for a very short trip, about a week, to just kind of do 00:05:48.030 --> 00:05:50.910 logistics and things like that and see everybody. 00:05:51.760 --> 00:05:57.600 And then this coming year, I'm hoping to start a new 00:05:57.600 --> 00:06:02.960 project that is looking at the 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:09.280 basically how women make decisions about sort of 00:06:09.280 --> 00:06:11.440 livelihood activities. 00:06:13.450 --> 00:06:16.410 When faced with conditions of extreme heat. 00:06:16.650 --> 00:06:21.690 And then basically how those decisions, you know, about like how much time they're spending 00:06:21.690 --> 00:06:26.010 working in the heat and what the intensity of their activities are, and all those kinds of 00:06:26.010 --> 00:06:31.930 things, like the downstream effects of those on their health and nutritional condition and 00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:33.610 their families, too. 00:06:34.730 --> 00:06:40.250 So for now, um, I'm teaching uh this quarter, and so I'm here. 00:06:40.490 --> 00:06:46.440 Um, and i'm also you know going through the i rb process which is always a process 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:52.440 right um institutional review board for those of you uh who are who are not uh who 00:06:52.440 --> 00:06:58.360 don't do them um and that is roughly speaking you have to explain to uh what 00:06:58.360 --> 00:07:04.040 is ostensibly a dispassionate set of people sitting in a building in Santa Barbara in this 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:08.650 case reviewing what research you're going to do in the future to make sure that you're not 00:07:08.650 --> 00:07:12.410 doing something like, you know, shocking puppies or something like that, roughly. 00:07:13.530 --> 00:07:14.090 Yeah, yeah. 00:07:14.250 --> 00:07:16.410 I haven't gotten into that my research yet. 00:07:18.090 --> 00:07:18.970 Yeah, exactly. 00:07:19.130 --> 00:07:24.410 And for anthropologists, sometimes um, some of us actually, since we work internationally, 00:07:24.570 --> 00:07:29.050 so like I have an IRB that I have to go through in Bangladesh as well. 00:07:29.370 --> 00:07:31.850 Um, actually, two review committees there. 00:07:31.930 --> 00:07:36.260 And so um the that's where the project is at right now. 00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:42.340 Um, but then I'm hopeful that I'll be going to the field a bit in um uh 00:07:42.340 --> 00:07:45.220 January to kind of get things kicked off. 00:07:45.380 --> 00:07:49.380 I have a field team there who's amazing and we've worked with for a long time. 00:07:49.540 --> 00:07:52.500 Um and so they'll I have two little kids. 00:07:52.740 --> 00:07:58.310 Um it's my preference to be in the field as much as I can, but at the moment that's not, 00:07:58.390 --> 00:07:59.590 you know, really possible. 00:08:00.470 --> 00:08:04.630 And yeah, so I'm really lucky to have this great field team. 00:08:04.790 --> 00:08:10.710 So I'll my what usually when I have a big project running, um, I go back and forth 00:08:10.710 --> 00:08:11.510 as much as I can. 00:08:11.590 --> 00:08:17.110 I just make short trips there and um and then I'm in constant communication and have 00:08:17.110 --> 00:08:21.980 product managers and things like that on the ground there so that you know we can run it as 00:08:21.980 --> 00:08:23.100 smoothly as possible. 00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:25.900 But yeah, it's just it's kind of a lot of everything. 00:08:25.980 --> 00:08:31.980 And um, you know, trying to manage the international travel and having these really close 00:08:31.980 --> 00:08:37.900 relationships with people internationally as well as, you know, my family and my job here 00:08:37.900 --> 00:08:38.540 in the US. 00:08:38.780 --> 00:08:39.980 It's tricky sometimes. 00:08:40.140 --> 00:08:40.220 Yeah. 00:08:40.300 --> 00:08:44.220 And we've had anthropologists on describing its two lives almost, you know. 00:08:44.620 --> 00:08:44.940 Yeah. 00:08:45.180 --> 00:08:45.740 Yeah. 00:08:45.980 --> 00:08:46.300 Yeah. 00:08:47.020 --> 00:08:52.850 Am I am I correct in in saying that a common thread to a lot of your work 00:08:52.850 --> 00:08:57.570 is sort of an economic way of thinking and sort of applying the logic of costs and benefits 00:08:57.650 --> 00:09:03.250 and diminishing marginal utility to uh domains where those concepts wouldn't traditionally 00:09:03.250 --> 00:09:09.170 be applied, like childcare, uh um, you know, uh working in the heat, for example, uh 00:09:09.250 --> 00:09:14.760 and trying to understand how those economic changes, say, in the cost of working in the 00:09:14.760 --> 00:09:19.000 heat, might uh have ramifications throughout an entire culture. 00:09:19.320 --> 00:09:21.400 Um and so i uh am i correct? 00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:27.320 I sort of see your your work as kind of like um like a a social biological economics. 00:09:27.480 --> 00:09:32.040 Um is is that a fair characterization or am I am I uh Yeah yeah, I think so. 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:33.720 I think so. 00:09:33.880 --> 00:09:36.600 Um I yes, I I would agree with that. 00:09:36.760 --> 00:09:42.650 I have not um I haven't applied any sort of formal models um to 00:09:42.650 --> 00:09:44.090 my work thus far. 00:09:44.170 --> 00:09:45.930 Um I would love to do that in the future. 00:09:46.010 --> 00:09:51.530 And my postdoc and I've been talking about um doing some optimal foraging modeling, um 00:09:51.690 --> 00:09:56.810 which be a, you know, that's a deep cut for the the anthropologists and evolutionary people 00:09:56.810 --> 00:09:57.370 out there. 00:09:57.610 --> 00:10:00.810 Um but uh yeah, no, I think that's fair. 00:10:00.890 --> 00:10:06.180 And I think um I would describe myself as a human behavioral ecologist, which is one of 00:10:06.180 --> 00:10:08.900 those sub-subfields of anthropology. 00:10:10.100 --> 00:10:15.780 And we sort of like to think about, you know, how does environment impact behavior? 00:10:15.940 --> 00:10:20.900 And then what are the kind of you know fitness or evolutionary effects of that on people's 00:10:21.060 --> 00:10:25.940 usually survival and you know, mating and reproduction and stuff, but we often use lots of 00:10:25.940 --> 00:10:27.940 proxies like growth and health. 00:10:28.990 --> 00:10:34.110 And one of the things that's always really necessary to consider are the constraints that 00:10:34.110 --> 00:10:35.150 people are facing. 00:10:35.310 --> 00:10:41.230 Um, and uh human behavioral ecology in general is drawn, you know, a lot of our 00:10:41.230 --> 00:10:46.190 models are drawn from behavioral economics and and development economics. 00:10:46.270 --> 00:10:50.270 Um, so yeah, it's kind of a natural, natural consequence, I think. 00:10:51.620 --> 00:10:56.180 One thing you mentioned, and we can get into more of the science, but at the outset, you 00:10:56.180 --> 00:10:57.780 mentioned boat dwelling. 00:10:58.100 --> 00:11:03.700 And I think for many of us, um, that's uh what um which is cool. 00:11:03.780 --> 00:11:08.340 And one of the great things about anthropology is it exposes you to a different way of 00:11:08.340 --> 00:11:10.260 living um or existing. 00:11:10.500 --> 00:11:14.820 Um can you unpack um what exactly that means? 00:11:15.380 --> 00:11:16.340 Yeah, yeah. 00:11:16.500 --> 00:11:22.390 Um, so this community, um, they if people go to my website, there are pictures, uh, 00:11:22.470 --> 00:11:26.070 which can be really helpful to visualize some of that sometimes. 00:11:26.310 --> 00:11:30.790 Um, but people are living on small, like very small houseboats. 00:11:31.030 --> 00:11:36.870 Um, they are, I think we measured the average is like 14 feet from 00:11:36.870 --> 00:11:37.830 end to end. 00:11:38.150 --> 00:11:42.870 Um, and then I don't remember the width exactly, but not very wide. 00:11:43.030 --> 00:11:48.720 Usually, like when I kind of am in a boat, it's like, you know, two of 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:50.240 me sort of wide. 00:11:50.880 --> 00:11:54.160 And that's sort, you know, with all of their things in the boat too. 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:57.680 So it's a little wider than that in, you know, absolute terms. 00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:03.840 Um, but they live people are in these communities have been moving on to the land pretty 00:12:03.840 --> 00:12:06.320 rapidly in the last few decades. 00:12:06.640 --> 00:12:12.030 Um, and it's been interesting to work there during that transition because I've seen that 00:12:12.030 --> 00:12:12.510 happen. 00:12:12.590 --> 00:12:18.190 And then I've also seen the people who kind of hang on to, you know, the 00:12:18.190 --> 00:12:19.550 boat lifestyle. 00:12:20.750 --> 00:12:22.990 And they do so for various reasons. 00:12:23.630 --> 00:12:28.910 But yeah, I mean, like living on the boat is every the whole family sleeps on the boat. 00:12:29.630 --> 00:12:34.000 If their families are way too big, sometimes they send like the dad and the older kids out 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.240 to the fishing boats to sleep there. 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:42.000 And they cook on the boat, they do their laundry on the boat, they kind of they do 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:42.880 everything there. 00:12:43.360 --> 00:12:49.040 And so it's a really interesting lifestyle and quite unique lifestyle. 00:12:50.810 --> 00:12:54.890 one of I don't know if this is what you were getting at or where you were headed, but I 00:12:54.890 --> 00:13:00.170 think one of the things that is challenging about that sometimes is well, how can we 00:13:00.170 --> 00:13:05.850 actually learn anything about what humans do or why humans do what they do 00:13:06.010 --> 00:13:11.930 from studying, you know, such a like unique and weird in some ways, not the, 00:13:12.010 --> 00:13:16.010 you know, not the Joe Henrik version of weird, but um population. 00:13:16.410 --> 00:13:22.020 Um, and it's been so that's yeah, it there are that's been 00:13:22.180 --> 00:13:24.580 a challenge, but it's been a fun challenge. 00:13:24.660 --> 00:13:30.580 And it's something I think about every time I do a project or write a paper because it's 00:13:30.580 --> 00:13:36.500 always, I'm always asking myself, what can we take away from this that is 00:13:36.500 --> 00:13:37.860 broadly applicable? 00:13:38.180 --> 00:13:43.220 And how do we frame this in a way that we're understanding something about humans as 00:13:43.220 --> 00:13:48.230 opposed to this one kind of like niche socio 00:13:48.390 --> 00:13:50.230 environmental circumstance. 00:13:50.550 --> 00:13:50.710 Yeah. 00:13:50.870 --> 00:13:52.390 I actually quite the opposite. 00:13:52.470 --> 00:13:54.310 I actually think, I mean, I was just curious. 00:13:54.470 --> 00:13:56.230 It was just the dumb version of the question. 00:13:56.630 --> 00:13:57.830 It was like my you know, reactive. 00:13:58.230 --> 00:13:59.190 Yeah, no, no, no, exactly. 00:13:59.430 --> 00:13:59.990 Reviewer two. 00:14:00.150 --> 00:14:00.550 Yeah, exactly. 00:14:00.710 --> 00:14:01.910 How do you know this generalized? 00:14:02.150 --> 00:14:07.510 No, I honestly I think if you put if you put people, uh human beings on a boat um in that 00:14:07.510 --> 00:14:10.070 circumstance, I think you're probably going to learn a lot about people. 00:14:10.230 --> 00:14:16.200 Um, in on the view that um, you know uh people react contingently to the 00:14:16.200 --> 00:14:21.560 environment, and so by looking at people in different environments, it both highlights the 00:14:21.560 --> 00:14:27.160 universals and also what isn't um in a way that you can't just 00:14:27.160 --> 00:14:33.080 mentally simulate until you um the rubber hits the rotor, in this case the the 00:14:33.080 --> 00:14:36.760 water in the raft or the the water in the wood. 00:14:36.840 --> 00:14:37.560 Yeah, yeah. 00:14:37.770 --> 00:14:41.930 Or how, you know, just the constraints of the local ecology and the way that you have to 00:14:41.930 --> 00:14:46.970 make a living, how that has ramifications on every aspect of of life. 00:14:47.210 --> 00:14:52.250 Um it's not just confined to the way you work, like it it affects social relationships, uh 00:14:52.330 --> 00:14:58.330 gender division of labor, uh childcare, uh lifestyles, uh the everything. 00:14:58.490 --> 00:15:04.320 Um and uh so I'm kind of curious about like, you know, what what do you see uh as 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:10.080 the ecological pressures that are uh number one leading to this this lifestyle this boat 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:15.760 dwelling lifestyle and then what are some of the ramifications that you see uh this 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:21.520 having yeah um that's a great question you really you really kind of hit all my like points 00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:27.520 of excitement there too um that's my job um yeah I think um 00:15:28.050 --> 00:15:33.490 the the ecological pressures that are leading to this lifestyle um from a 00:15:34.370 --> 00:15:39.970 like historical perspective, um I'm not sure. 00:15:40.210 --> 00:15:45.810 I I imagine that it is just the fact that Bangladesh is um 00:15:46.130 --> 00:15:49.250 a heavily riverine country. 00:15:49.490 --> 00:15:55.380 Um There's just there's so there's water everywhere and rivers and canals connect so many 00:15:55.380 --> 00:15:56.660 different parts of the country. 00:15:56.900 --> 00:16:02.820 And so I think that um, you know, again, I don't really know a lot about kind of 00:16:02.900 --> 00:16:08.740 the chicken and egg of the the um the decisions that have been made because 00:16:08.980 --> 00:16:14.830 subsistence um Choices and livelihood choices are 00:16:14.830 --> 00:16:20.430 often, you know, kind of part and parcel of the ecological pressures and the way that you 00:16:20.430 --> 00:16:22.270 move around and all that kind of stuff. 00:16:22.910 --> 00:16:25.630 But these communities are also known. 00:16:25.790 --> 00:16:30.910 So the word shotegore means business person or businessman, I think more specifically. 00:16:31.390 --> 00:16:35.020 And so women work primarily as traders, petty traders. 00:16:35.100 --> 00:16:40.300 They go out into the villages, they sell things to non-Shotegore people, women usually, um, 00:16:40.460 --> 00:16:44.140 and men and and their wives um catch fish. 00:16:44.460 --> 00:16:49.580 Um, but then they they keep some of those to eat for themselves and they also sell them in 00:16:49.580 --> 00:16:52.060 the markets in exchange for cash. 00:16:52.220 --> 00:16:57.430 Um, and so they have this um kind of lifestyle that and 00:16:57.430 --> 00:17:01.270 livelihoods that require them to have interactions with other people. 00:17:01.430 --> 00:17:06.790 And I think the living on the boats allows them to move to where the 00:17:06.790 --> 00:17:12.790 resources are, um, to you know, where the fish are at any given time, um, 00:17:13.030 --> 00:17:17.510 where the markets are, where they can sell things uh and make more money and such. 00:17:17.750 --> 00:17:21.560 Um currently, climate change is a huge 00:17:24.120 --> 00:17:25.960 creeping constraint. 00:17:27.640 --> 00:17:32.440 People have been, it's it's really interesting to go back because, you know, now that I've 00:17:32.440 --> 00:17:38.360 been working there for 12 years consistently, you can see where some of the earlier 00:17:38.360 --> 00:17:42.120 homes on the land were built, um, and you can see where the homes are now. 00:17:42.200 --> 00:17:48.150 And there's a like difference in how high up the land is from the water because people have 00:17:48.150 --> 00:17:54.150 been building, like building the land up more and more to try to avoid the blooding 00:17:54.150 --> 00:17:55.270 that happens. 00:17:56.070 --> 00:18:00.950 And so that's, you know, imposing constraints and it's going to continue to impose 00:18:00.950 --> 00:18:01.910 constraints on people. 00:18:02.070 --> 00:18:07.750 And I don't know what's going to happen if we'll see people who are in homes that are no 00:18:07.750 --> 00:18:12.880 longer viable because of rising water levels go back to living on the boats, 00:18:13.520 --> 00:18:19.280 or if we'll see them kind of opt to move inland, you know, to 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:22.400 move to the cities, like some other people in Bangladesh do. 00:18:22.800 --> 00:18:24.160 I'm not sure. 00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:29.440 But the other thing that's really going on for these guys on a on a regular basis is 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:30.640 seasonality. 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:36.850 Um And the dramatic differences in landscape between sort of the rainy 00:18:36.850 --> 00:18:39.730 and the dry season are shocking. 00:18:39.970 --> 00:18:40.450 Shocking. 00:18:40.610 --> 00:18:43.090 Like you wouldn't even know you were looking at the same place. 00:18:43.410 --> 00:18:45.650 I showed you pictures of the same area. 00:18:46.130 --> 00:18:50.850 Because every year, for like five or six months of the year, there's flooding and then 00:18:50.850 --> 00:18:56.800 landscape floods and it's kind of normal and natural and not natural it is natural but 00:18:56.800 --> 00:19:01.200 like people plan their agricultural seasons around this right so it's something that's been 00:19:01.200 --> 00:19:07.120 happening forever and it's because of um uh rainfall and also because of Himalayan snow 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:12.720 melt that happens um you know around April May um 00:19:13.230 --> 00:19:19.150 So that also has huge impacts on everyone in Bangladesh, 00:19:19.230 --> 00:19:25.230 but specifically on these communities, lifestyles and livelihoods, and how they divide 00:19:25.230 --> 00:19:28.750 labor by gender and how they socialize with each other. 00:19:29.310 --> 00:19:32.190 Those things have seem to have really major impacts. 00:19:32.270 --> 00:19:38.110 And that's one of the areas that my research has kind of attempted to delve into 00:19:38.190 --> 00:19:42.110 is to understand how those changes impact people's lives. 00:19:42.860 --> 00:19:46.140 So what is what is the gender division of labor like there? 00:19:46.300 --> 00:19:51.420 Is it is it more like the the men are are primarily the the people fishing, and then the 00:19:51.420 --> 00:19:54.220 women are the one who are the ones who try to sell that in the marketplace? 00:19:54.380 --> 00:19:56.060 Or is it more complicated than that? 00:19:56.540 --> 00:19:58.140 It's more complicated than that. 00:19:58.300 --> 00:19:59.340 It's interesting. 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:05.070 Um, and it's um basically 95% of the men 00:20:05.230 --> 00:20:11.070 um fish and they fish either for like half of the year or all year 00:20:11.070 --> 00:20:11.390 long. 00:20:11.630 --> 00:20:17.310 Um, women are roughly split in half between fishers and traders. 00:20:17.710 --> 00:20:23.310 Um, and so it that seems to have the biggest effect on how 00:20:23.310 --> 00:20:25.390 households are dividing their labor. 00:20:25.630 --> 00:20:31.440 So, excuse me, in households where women fish, they always, almost always 00:20:31.600 --> 00:20:32.560 work with their husbands. 00:20:32.720 --> 00:20:37.920 They the couple takes their kids along and they're on a fishing boat all day, almost every 00:20:37.920 --> 00:20:38.960 day of the year. 00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:55.310 fishing is sometimes not super profitable during the dry season for these households. 00:20:55.470 --> 00:21:01.470 Um and trading is much more challenging during the rainy season because a lot of areas 00:21:01.470 --> 00:21:07.230 of um you know the rural villages are flooded and and women just can't access their their 00:21:07.230 --> 00:21:08.990 customer base, basically. 00:21:09.150 --> 00:21:14.980 Um and so in those households, they have um they change, they 00:21:14.980 --> 00:21:18.500 flip how they divide labor by season, or they often do. 00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:24.500 And so in the dry season or scar, excuse me, in the rainy season, um, men in 00:21:24.500 --> 00:21:29.220 those households will fish and they fish usually with other men, usually not with their 00:21:29.220 --> 00:21:30.580 wives and kids. 00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:35.860 Um and the women will often stay home and take care of kids, especially when they have 00:21:35.860 --> 00:21:36.820 little kids. 00:21:37.090 --> 00:21:42.690 Then they flip, and in the dry season, women are going out trading pretty intensively 00:21:43.170 --> 00:21:43.890 every day. 00:21:44.130 --> 00:21:49.490 And men, when they have little kids, men are staying home as the primary caregivers of 00:21:49.490 --> 00:21:54.450 their kids, which is really unusual from uh both of those things are unusual from a 00:21:54.450 --> 00:21:55.730 cross-cultural perspective. 00:21:55.890 --> 00:21:58.130 So it's it's been interesting. 00:21:59.200 --> 00:22:02.000 So what what causes the the flip? 00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:08.960 I um do you mean like so so what yeah so what is it about the difference between the the 00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:12.800 wet season and the dry season that makes it more advantageous to to flip the division of 00:22:12.800 --> 00:22:13.120 labor? 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:13.840 Yeah. 00:22:14.160 --> 00:22:20.000 So um in the wet season and the rainy season, um women because they're 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:25.040 mostly walking or they're accessing their customers by road, um 00:22:25.550 --> 00:22:31.550 When the the rainy season flooding happens, it just becomes really difficult for them 00:22:31.550 --> 00:22:36.190 to reach their customers because a lot of the like sort of smaller roadways will just be 00:22:36.190 --> 00:22:37.470 completely flooded. 00:22:37.710 --> 00:22:42.430 And the and people then either have to like who live in those homes that are now kind of 00:22:42.430 --> 00:22:48.360 isolated, either reach the main roads by their own boats, or they have like 00:22:48.360 --> 00:22:51.800 these tiny little bamboo bridges that people have to walk across. 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:57.560 And so women carrying these like big heavy baskets can't easily access any of those 00:22:57.560 --> 00:22:58.120 homes. 00:22:58.280 --> 00:23:04.200 So they can and they still do go trading sometimes in the rainy season, but then they have 00:23:04.200 --> 00:23:09.530 to travel farther away from home, um, You know, access different areas 00:23:10.330 --> 00:23:12.570 in the rural villages. 00:23:12.890 --> 00:23:17.690 And so when they have small kids, they just mostly opt not to do that. 00:23:18.650 --> 00:23:21.450 The opportunity cost is just way too high. 00:23:34.330 --> 00:23:38.720 Groups mean like boats, like houseboats and houses. 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:44.880 They have different like clusters of of uh Shodogore groups um throughout Motlab 00:23:45.520 --> 00:23:47.280 um and along the river. 00:23:47.600 --> 00:23:53.360 The river uh tends to the canals tend to dry up during the dry season, not 00:23:53.360 --> 00:23:55.840 entirely, but to some extent. 00:23:56.080 --> 00:24:01.330 And um and so the farther like upriver you are from 00:24:01.890 --> 00:24:05.410 the main river that flows through Motlob is called the Donagoda River. 00:24:05.570 --> 00:24:09.730 It meets up with the Megna River, which is one of the largest rivers in Bangladesh. 00:24:09.810 --> 00:24:10.610 It's huge. 00:24:11.010 --> 00:24:15.810 And so the closer you live to the Megna River, the more profitable fishing is all year 00:24:15.810 --> 00:24:16.130 round. 00:24:16.370 --> 00:24:21.090 And so those households that live down there tend to just fish year-round, husbands and 00:24:21.090 --> 00:24:21.730 wives. 00:24:21.970 --> 00:24:27.280 The farther away from the Magna you live, fishing is still really profitable in the rainy 00:24:27.280 --> 00:24:33.200 season, but is much more economically risky during the dry season, meaning 00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:37.840 you're far more likely to go out and get nothing than you are in the rainy season. 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:43.920 And so again, I think it's kind of an you know cost-benefit analysis here. 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:49.890 Um, and they need someone to care for their small children um and 00:24:50.210 --> 00:24:53.330 the husbands stay home and and do that. 00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:59.010 Um, and so it seems to be, I don't, I actually would love to do a study um that's that's 00:24:59.010 --> 00:25:04.930 sort of um uh measuring how the different changes in in environmental 00:25:04.930 --> 00:25:10.530 conditions and landscape kind of trigger a flip in the switch between strategies. 00:25:10.690 --> 00:25:16.530 Um I haven't done that yet, but it really seems to be a landscape and accessibility type of 00:25:16.530 --> 00:25:18.610 a thing that is triggering that. 00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:25.280 I mean it it really complicates this this narrative, which I'm sure you're familiar with, 00:25:25.360 --> 00:25:29.200 that men are um higher in risk taking uh proness. 00:25:29.760 --> 00:25:35.600 Um what your work shows is that uh number one, risk is 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:40.320 a far broader uh and and variegated category than than we might think. 00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:45.600 And there are many ecological pressures that could change, you know, what risks are taken 00:25:45.600 --> 00:25:47.670 by uh which sex. 00:25:49.510 --> 00:25:51.430 So I I'm I'm kind of curious. 00:25:51.590 --> 00:25:57.510 Is is the is it the idea that there's something about the um f physical 00:25:57.510 --> 00:26:03.270 treacherousness of of you know navigating terrain when it's when it's really wet that um 00:26:03.670 --> 00:26:08.790 that makes it more appealing for for men rather than women to go out and try to weather 00:26:08.790 --> 00:26:09.030 that? 00:26:09.190 --> 00:26:13.820 Is it more of like a uh willingness to brave these sort of physical dangers? 00:26:13.980 --> 00:26:19.740 And that when the risk shifts to uh more of an economic risk, then uh becomes more 00:26:19.740 --> 00:26:20.540 favorable to women? 00:26:20.620 --> 00:26:23.980 Is that sort of how you're you're carving it up or am I butchering this? 00:26:24.540 --> 00:26:25.420 Um no. 00:26:25.660 --> 00:26:31.100 And the the reason is that when men are fishing, they're on fishing boats. 00:26:31.340 --> 00:26:37.110 And so um I like I've had many conversations with people about, you know, how 00:26:37.110 --> 00:26:38.310 risky fishing can be. 00:26:38.550 --> 00:26:41.670 This fishing physically, this fishing is not risky. 00:26:41.910 --> 00:26:46.470 Um, if you know how to swim, like your biggest risk is you might accidentally fall in the 00:26:46.470 --> 00:26:47.350 water, right? 00:26:47.670 --> 00:26:49.990 I feel like you really need to know how to swim in this culture. 00:26:50.070 --> 00:26:51.270 I feel like you really do. 00:26:51.510 --> 00:26:51.750 Yes. 00:26:53.030 --> 00:26:53.350 Yes. 00:26:53.510 --> 00:26:57.840 And like it's interesting because teaching kids how to swim is a really like important 00:26:57.840 --> 00:26:58.240 thing. 00:26:58.400 --> 00:27:02.720 And I've seen, you know, and the dads mostly do it, and I've seen them do it, and it's 00:27:02.720 --> 00:27:03.760 super interesting. 00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:09.840 Um, and so the other thing that's interesting about uh so there 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:14.400 there would certainly be some physical, like quite a lot of physical risk, probably 00:27:14.400 --> 00:27:19.920 associated with trying to maintain the same kind of trading patterns in the 00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:21.120 rainy season. 00:27:21.360 --> 00:27:26.530 Um and I think the reality is that there is so little 00:27:27.250 --> 00:27:32.690 like the likelihood of benefit from maintaining from like having that kind of risk. 00:27:33.170 --> 00:27:38.690 Um, trying to cross the bamboo pole, like for instance, um, you're 00:27:39.090 --> 00:27:41.010 you might not make it across. 00:27:41.250 --> 00:27:44.850 When you do get across, like you might not make that much money. 00:27:45.010 --> 00:27:48.920 I and so I I think it is just a cost benefit thing. 00:27:49.080 --> 00:27:54.600 Women still do go trading, but they just access different areas of the villages, basically. 00:27:54.760 --> 00:27:59.880 They go to places where the flooding is is much less or they'll travel farther away. 00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:06.440 And so the interesting thing I think though about trading is that it actually 00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:11.800 from the perspective of how likely are you to get hurt? 00:28:12.040 --> 00:28:15.810 How likely are you to have something bad happen to you? 00:28:15.890 --> 00:28:21.810 Um, you know, get all of your things stolen or assaulted or something like that. 00:28:22.130 --> 00:28:24.610 Trading is a lot riskier. 00:28:25.170 --> 00:28:29.970 Um, and women usually travel in groups to try to mitigate that risk. 00:28:30.130 --> 00:28:35.890 Um, but even like they'll often get into a CNG, which is little motorized 00:28:35.890 --> 00:28:36.610 vehicle. 00:28:36.770 --> 00:28:42.210 Um, and it's risky riding in CNGs around rural Bangladesh. 00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:48.160 And so we've known uh women who've been in, you know, really bad accidents and then have 00:28:48.240 --> 00:28:51.600 like a physical disability for the rest of their lives. 00:28:51.760 --> 00:28:56.000 And so it is in every sense of the word, trading is riskier. 00:28:58.000 --> 00:29:02.080 And I think I don't know. 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:08.150 I mean, I think it is the reality that is just a kind of a cost-benefit, you 00:29:08.150 --> 00:29:09.590 know, analysis for them. 00:29:09.750 --> 00:29:14.870 Like we can make more money trading than our husbands can fishing on average. 00:29:15.110 --> 00:29:18.710 Um husbands really can't go trading. 00:29:18.870 --> 00:29:24.390 I mean, they do, they can go with their wives, um, but that's happens pretty rarely. 00:29:24.630 --> 00:29:30.630 Um, because there's this like unique little niche that is 00:29:30.630 --> 00:29:32.230 available to these women. 00:29:32.390 --> 00:29:38.080 Um Shonogore women don't generally don't practice perda, 00:29:38.320 --> 00:29:38.560 right? 00:29:38.640 --> 00:29:44.560 Which is the sort of cultural practice of um covering themselves, like covering their faces 00:29:44.560 --> 00:29:50.160 and their heads, um, but also not interacting with unrelated people or not 00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:56.160 traveling by themselves without, you know, a male relative, usually mostly staying 00:29:56.160 --> 00:29:56.640 at home. 00:29:56.800 --> 00:30:01.840 They don't have those kinds of cultural beliefs or restrictions for the most part. 00:30:02.240 --> 00:30:08.170 Um, Whereas the women who live in the villages are Muslim or Hindu 00:30:08.250 --> 00:30:13.850 and they do practice or they do have really strong cultural beliefs around 00:30:14.810 --> 00:30:20.650 women leaving their homes without a male relative, interacting with 00:30:20.650 --> 00:30:23.930 unrelated um men in particular. 00:30:25.360 --> 00:30:29.440 so it so they don't get to go to the markets very often. 00:30:29.600 --> 00:30:30.960 Um they rarely do. 00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:36.240 And so it's whereas the Shodogore women can leave their homes and can come into these other 00:30:36.240 --> 00:30:42.240 people's, you know, like uh yards basically uh or homes and sell these things 00:30:42.240 --> 00:30:42.560 to them. 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:48.560 And so it sets up this kind of perfect little cultural niche where like only women 00:30:48.560 --> 00:30:52.400 can sell to other women and these women can only buy from other women. 00:30:52.480 --> 00:30:57.690 Um, and so you know, because of of this, it's something that's available to 00:30:57.690 --> 00:31:03.050 Shotegore women that's not available to Shotegore men that's largely unavailable to 00:31:03.050 --> 00:31:04.410 everybody else. 00:31:04.650 --> 00:31:08.170 Um, and so, and they can make a lot of money while they're doing it. 00:31:08.330 --> 00:31:11.450 They can also lose money, um, they can lose a lot of money. 00:31:11.610 --> 00:31:16.970 Um, but I think they, for whatever reason, they've decided it's, you know, worth worth the 00:31:16.970 --> 00:31:17.450 risk. 00:31:17.690 --> 00:31:19.130 Um yeah. 00:31:19.740 --> 00:31:20.220 Interesting. 00:31:20.380 --> 00:31:26.300 I mean, so uh I I'm kind of curious about their sort of mating 00:31:26.380 --> 00:31:32.300 dynamics, because presumably those would play a a role in in the sort of uh 00:31:32.380 --> 00:31:36.860 in the in the perda you describe, where men are very protective of of women. 00:31:36.940 --> 00:31:41.020 And um you could spin an evolutionary story about how this has to do with paternity 00:31:41.020 --> 00:31:46.570 certainty and restricting um, you know, reducing the risk of you know um females 00:31:46.570 --> 00:31:48.170 encountering other males. 00:31:48.330 --> 00:31:54.330 Um and is that same pressure there and sort of male sexual proprietariness? 00:31:54.410 --> 00:31:56.250 Is that is that there in the Shogador? 00:31:56.650 --> 00:32:02.090 And it's just because the economic pressures are so high that uh it it just doesn't have an 00:32:02.090 --> 00:32:02.410 effect? 00:32:02.570 --> 00:32:08.010 Or or is it a an entirely different way of understanding uh meeting uh in that culture? 00:32:08.650 --> 00:32:09.850 The pressures are there. 00:32:10.010 --> 00:32:14.500 The pressures are there from mothers-in-law in particular. 00:32:14.740 --> 00:32:18.340 Um the mothers in law are the ones who are really concerned about it. 00:32:18.580 --> 00:32:23.860 Um but it seems to be the concerns seem to be 00:32:23.860 --> 00:32:26.820 greatest very early on in a marriage. 00:32:27.140 --> 00:32:32.980 Um like when and the age difference the age gap doesn't tend to be quite as large in the 00:32:32.980 --> 00:32:34.820 Shodogore marriages. 00:32:35.060 --> 00:32:40.770 Um they tend to have more love marriage, or love marriage is more common as opposed to 00:32:40.770 --> 00:32:46.210 arranged marriage than what you see in you know the rest of Bangladesh in general. 00:32:47.170 --> 00:32:51.090 And so there are cultural differences here. 00:32:51.250 --> 00:32:57.010 Um, but especially with like newly married young women, mothers-in-law are 00:32:57.010 --> 00:33:02.820 very, you know, uh careful to pay attention to what they're doing and who they're talking 00:33:02.820 --> 00:33:04.420 to and all that kind of stuff. 00:33:04.660 --> 00:33:09.620 Um and as they get older, this is what I've seen. 00:33:09.700 --> 00:33:12.020 This is kind of anecdotal evidence here. 00:33:12.260 --> 00:33:17.780 Um, the concerns, either the daughters-in-law gain more authority in the relationship 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:23.540 because they've had a baby or two, um, or they 00:33:23.570 --> 00:33:24.770 live on their own boat. 00:33:24.930 --> 00:33:30.930 Like the it nuclear families are living usually on their own because the boats are 00:33:30.930 --> 00:33:31.410 so small. 00:33:31.570 --> 00:33:36.850 And so it's also the case that like mothers-in-law have some control, but they don't have 00:33:36.850 --> 00:33:40.530 as much control because they're not living under the same roof, right? 00:33:40.850 --> 00:33:46.840 So yeah, as the women get older, they tend to be more likely to then, you 00:33:46.840 --> 00:33:52.840 know, become traders or have just less scrutiny of their behavior in general. 00:33:53.080 --> 00:33:58.520 The women themselves, though, are also concerned about 00:33:58.520 --> 00:34:02.920 things like, you know, assault and sexual assault when they're out trading. 00:34:03.240 --> 00:34:08.040 So especially if they're going somewhere that's new for them, they they almost always 00:34:08.040 --> 00:34:09.870 travel in a group, regardless. 00:34:10.030 --> 00:34:14.190 And then they're going to places that are that they've been before. 00:34:14.590 --> 00:34:18.190 So they'll kind of all go together to one place and then they spread out and go to 00:34:18.190 --> 00:34:21.070 different households to sell their goods. 00:34:21.390 --> 00:34:26.590 And if they're going to a new to them place, then they're more likely to stay close by with 00:34:26.590 --> 00:34:32.190 a friend so that they always have, you know, some amount of you know backup or protection 00:34:32.270 --> 00:34:34.590 or, you know, just accountability there. 00:34:35.150 --> 00:34:40.380 And I think the reality is that to some extent, these 00:34:40.460 --> 00:34:46.380 groups of, you know, these social groups also kind of function in a similar way in that 00:34:46.380 --> 00:34:50.700 everyone's kind of monitoring everybody else's behavior to some extent. 00:34:50.940 --> 00:34:55.100 Um but um, and polygyny is pretty uncommon. 00:34:55.180 --> 00:34:58.620 Um it's most marriage is mostly monogamous. 00:34:58.860 --> 00:35:04.710 Divorce is more common in the Shodogore households and somewhat more 00:35:04.710 --> 00:35:06.470 culturally acceptable too. 00:35:06.630 --> 00:35:11.030 Um and so, you know, so there is some of that certainly that that's going on. 00:35:11.190 --> 00:35:15.190 Um but yeah I think there's just these these cultural differences there. 00:35:15.350 --> 00:35:20.630 Um that that last point is interesting because uh just like from a cross-cultural not 00:35:20.710 --> 00:35:26.470 cross-cultural cross-species perspective, where you get monogamy often is where 00:35:26.630 --> 00:35:32.180 there's both male and female cooperative breeding or high investment. 00:35:32.660 --> 00:35:38.660 So like classically, things like birds, where the uh one bird will be on the nest while 00:35:38.660 --> 00:35:41.220 the other one is foraging, and vice versa. 00:35:41.460 --> 00:35:46.820 And it sounds a little bit, I mean, the principle's the same, um, is that maybe what higher 00:35:46.820 --> 00:35:51.700 rates of divorce mean is that this is a way of living where you really need to depend on 00:35:51.970 --> 00:35:53.010 your spouse. 00:35:53.170 --> 00:35:57.170 You really have to be a cooperative partner such that if it's not working, you know, it's 00:35:57.570 --> 00:36:02.050 we can't be a viable household if I can't trust you, depend on you. 00:36:02.290 --> 00:36:07.730 And so you can imagine like the culture um allows for divorce, given that 00:36:07.810 --> 00:36:11.490 practically people need to really trust and depend on who they're with. 00:36:12.050 --> 00:36:17.920 Yeah, I think that that is um a good characterization of what's going on for a lot of the 00:36:17.920 --> 00:36:18.560 households. 00:36:19.040 --> 00:36:24.960 That gets that is trickier for newly married couples or couples in which 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:29.600 the wife uh doesn't work outside the home and so she's entirely reliant on her husband for 00:36:29.600 --> 00:36:31.040 economic purposes. 00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:36.720 Um and and I think of course there's a lot of kind of, you know, 00:36:36.970 --> 00:36:42.730 individual variation um when it comes to these sorts of things um but i yeah 00:36:42.970 --> 00:36:48.730 there is a strong um basis so many 00:36:48.730 --> 00:36:54.730 of the aspects of their lives are based around the nuclear family um and 00:36:54.730 --> 00:37:00.570 cooperation economic cooperation childcare cooperation between um the 00:37:00.570 --> 00:37:06.460 spouses and um uh in right, uh it doesn't 00:37:06.460 --> 00:37:11.020 work well when that's you know, that gets broken down. 00:37:11.260 --> 00:37:15.500 Um and so I I do think that's a really strong motivator. 00:37:15.660 --> 00:37:21.260 Um and then we also talk about um, you know, the extent to which 00:37:22.380 --> 00:37:27.750 monogamy or uh is um kind of socially restricted, right? 00:37:27.830 --> 00:37:33.510 Or socially conscripted versus ecologically conscripted, meaning that it's simply too 00:37:33.510 --> 00:37:39.430 hard to maintain multiple spouses, and or you don't have, you know, the land or the 00:37:39.430 --> 00:37:43.830 resources to even like have multiple spouses live in your household. 00:37:43.990 --> 00:37:49.750 Um, and I think that is another huge driver of monogamy in these communities because it's 00:37:49.750 --> 00:37:55.640 just again, it comes back to the economic thing where it's like you just can't um make 00:37:55.800 --> 00:37:56.440 it work. 00:37:57.560 --> 00:37:57.800 Yeah. 00:37:58.040 --> 00:38:02.520 And the women are unwilling to do that if they're making the majority or more money than 00:38:02.520 --> 00:38:03.240 their spouses. 00:38:03.720 --> 00:38:05.160 So that helps too. 00:38:05.480 --> 00:38:05.720 Yeah. 00:38:05.800 --> 00:38:11.160 It's it's it is it's a lovely example of, I think I mean, for me at least, I will, I will 00:38:11.160 --> 00:38:17.000 um say uh one has this idea that, well, the way my culture makes a living is 00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:20.920 just the way it is, or we just it's purely just social tradition. 00:38:21.750 --> 00:38:27.190 But I think like the value of seeing different ways of making a living is that you really 00:38:27.190 --> 00:38:33.110 see that it is very much fitting with the ecology, to the point 00:38:33.110 --> 00:38:35.430 where even the way of making a living flips. 00:38:36.390 --> 00:38:40.950 And then you start to think, oh, maybe the way that we make a living, even or aspects of 00:38:40.950 --> 00:38:45.780 our culture that I assume are just social or somebody told people to do it, or this is the 00:38:45.780 --> 00:38:51.140 way we've always done it, is in fact a consequence of weird stuff like economics or how 00:38:51.140 --> 00:38:54.260 often we see people during the day. 00:38:54.500 --> 00:38:56.420 I actually that's a question I have for you. 00:38:56.580 --> 00:39:00.020 Uh one back to the simple question of living on a boat. 00:39:00.260 --> 00:39:06.250 I can imagine people wondering, well, how lonely or social is boat dwelling. 00:39:06.330 --> 00:39:08.250 Are there lots of other people around? 00:39:08.410 --> 00:39:12.250 If the kids want to play with other kids, do they jump in the water and go play with other, 00:39:12.330 --> 00:39:13.530 you know, go on someone else's belt? 00:39:13.690 --> 00:39:15.450 Like what what it how does that work? 00:39:16.010 --> 00:39:18.170 Yeah, um, well, this is a great question. 00:39:18.330 --> 00:39:22.970 And um we uh I've got uh some preliminary answers for you. 00:39:23.130 --> 00:39:27.610 Um so I just um I'm wrapping up sort of. 00:39:27.770 --> 00:39:33.740 We just wrapped up data collection last year, gosh, sometime recently, um, for 00:39:33.900 --> 00:39:39.740 a larger project, it kind of came, it was developed out of you know COVID 00:39:39.900 --> 00:39:40.620 and everything. 00:39:40.700 --> 00:39:45.740 Um, it's really about respiratory disease transmission, but there's a social network 00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:49.500 element to the project, which is kind of you know the one of the primary pieces. 00:39:49.580 --> 00:39:55.500 And so the idea is that we are um asking uh me and my uh 00:39:55.500 --> 00:40:01.490 colleague uh Ashley Hazel, who's at the University of California, San Francisco, um, And 00:40:01.490 --> 00:40:07.090 then our colleagues in Bangladesh are basically asking how do social 00:40:07.090 --> 00:40:09.650 networks change across seasons? 00:40:10.210 --> 00:40:13.730 Are they different for people who are living on boats versus living on the land? 00:40:13.810 --> 00:40:19.330 And we really expect those differences to uh matter seasonally. 00:40:20.610 --> 00:40:25.840 And uh and then and then what are the consequences of that for you know all kinds of other 00:40:25.840 --> 00:40:28.640 things about health and well-being and and stuff like that. 00:40:28.800 --> 00:40:34.080 Um and so we collected uh contact networks um 00:40:34.320 --> 00:40:40.160 weekly for a year produced insane amounts of data sounds easy 00:40:40.240 --> 00:40:46.080 wow sounds easy I know unbased um and yeah yeah and so we're still cleaning the 00:40:46.080 --> 00:40:50.590 data sets Um, but um yeah, I mean, like that's one of the big questions. 00:40:50.750 --> 00:40:56.430 Um, and then I've got a um, I'm gonna be working with Mike Gervin, my colleague at UCSB, 00:40:56.590 --> 00:41:00.510 our colleague at UCSB, um, who's really interested in social aging. 00:41:00.750 --> 00:41:06.670 And we're gonna be running um an interview uh that he um is that's is being run 00:41:06.670 --> 00:41:12.350 across cultures that's looking at older people and how socially isolated versus integrated 00:41:12.350 --> 00:41:12.910 they are. 00:41:13.070 --> 00:41:18.680 Um uh so but my suspicions, um, my my anecdotal evidence 00:41:18.680 --> 00:41:23.800 suggests that um people become more 00:41:23.800 --> 00:41:26.200 isolated during the rainy season. 00:41:26.920 --> 00:41:32.680 Um and that, and it's not entire like 00:41:32.760 --> 00:41:38.040 you're not entirely isolated, but you are isolated with, you know, maybe one or two other 00:41:38.010 --> 00:41:40.090 households or families, right? 00:41:40.250 --> 00:41:44.890 Um, and you're also not fully isolated in the sense that you couldn't go, like, you know, 00:41:45.050 --> 00:41:48.090 spend five minutes to get in your boat and go see someone else. 00:41:48.170 --> 00:41:49.690 And people do that all the time. 00:41:50.170 --> 00:41:56.170 But you are isolated in the sense that it takes more effort to actually go visit other 00:41:56.170 --> 00:41:58.810 people or to, you know, socialize with people. 00:41:59.050 --> 00:42:03.980 In the dry season, you see because a lot because the flooding recedes, and so there's a lot 00:42:03.980 --> 00:42:06.220 more like open land that's available. 00:42:06.380 --> 00:42:09.180 And so you see people gathering on the land. 00:42:09.340 --> 00:42:14.540 Um, kids are playing together, adults are socializing, you know, all kinds of stuff. 00:42:14.700 --> 00:42:20.060 Um, and then in the rainy season, a lot of that um is reduced. 00:42:20.540 --> 00:42:25.570 And um, and so yeah, so I think there is a huge seasonal element to this. 00:42:25.730 --> 00:42:27.730 Um, and it it depends again. 00:42:27.810 --> 00:42:31.090 Uh, people do people find ways to get around this. 00:42:31.170 --> 00:42:35.170 Um, they'll all dock their fishing boats at the same place at the end of every day. 00:42:35.410 --> 00:42:38.610 Um, or and then they'll all go to the tea stall together. 00:42:38.850 --> 00:42:42.530 Um, because fishing itself is is pretty isolating. 00:42:42.770 --> 00:42:46.770 You're only on your fishing boat with your spouse and kids. 00:42:47.170 --> 00:42:52.880 Um, but uh yeah, and kids do jump in the water and swim together and play, and 00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:53.840 it's very cute. 00:42:54.080 --> 00:42:59.920 Um but yeah, I mean I I think there is a real major seasonal um 00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:01.040 distinction there. 00:43:01.280 --> 00:43:07.280 And uh the extent to which this is impacting people um and their sort of health 00:43:07.280 --> 00:43:11.570 and well-being, happiness, um, feelings of loneliness and isolation. 00:43:11.730 --> 00:43:16.370 That I'm not sure, but hopefully we'll have some answers to in the near future. 00:43:16.690 --> 00:43:16.850 Yeah. 00:43:17.010 --> 00:43:20.850 It's funny because I know I know you lived in Germany too, but even just the minimal 00:43:20.850 --> 00:43:24.850 cultural difference between going back and forth from Germany to US and car culture versus 00:43:24.850 --> 00:43:25.010 not. 00:43:25.170 --> 00:43:25.410 Yes. 00:43:25.650 --> 00:43:30.660 Um I actually this is sounding very f familiar of you know driving in a car every day, 00:43:30.820 --> 00:43:33.380 working at home, living in a nuclear family household. 00:43:33.540 --> 00:43:38.020 So I actually I think, you know, contrary to your concern earlier, I mean I think in a 00:43:38.020 --> 00:43:43.860 sense this highlights that every culture has, you know, seasonality or 00:43:44.020 --> 00:43:49.540 constraints of how often do you see people, how can you actually um uh have the opportunity 00:43:49.540 --> 00:43:54.370 to hang out with people, to play with people, to how do you what is what is your work like? 00:43:54.530 --> 00:43:55.970 Are you isolated or social? 00:43:56.210 --> 00:44:02.050 And we we all need to, you know, figure out out how to um square the circles 00:44:02.050 --> 00:44:05.410 when our work may be more isolating than we want it to be. 00:44:05.570 --> 00:44:08.050 Um or if not, we are a little bit miserable. 00:44:08.130 --> 00:44:09.330 And that's really interesting. 00:44:09.490 --> 00:44:09.810 Yeah. 00:44:09.890 --> 00:44:10.050 Yeah. 00:44:10.530 --> 00:44:10.770 Yeah. 00:44:10.850 --> 00:44:16.800 I mean there are a lot of parallels um in the US, maybe maybe less 00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:20.960 so for those of us in California where seasonality is a little bit less extreme. 00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:26.080 But um, you know, in wintertime in the Midwest, you're just not seeing as many people, 00:44:26.240 --> 00:44:26.480 right? 00:44:26.640 --> 00:44:29.360 I mean, yeah, on a farm, yeah, exactly. 00:44:29.840 --> 00:44:30.080 Yeah. 00:44:30.480 --> 00:44:35.280 Or even like in the city, like, you know, it's cold, everybody's grumpy, it gets dark 00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:35.600 early. 00:44:35.680 --> 00:44:40.530 So no one is, you know, lingering outside of school to chat with each other, kids aren't 00:44:40.530 --> 00:44:42.050 having outdoor play dates, right? 00:44:42.130 --> 00:44:46.450 There's there's a pretty big shift in in our behavior too seasonally. 00:44:46.690 --> 00:44:51.890 Um and yeah, so it it's really it is one of those kind of human universal things if you 00:44:51.890 --> 00:44:53.170 really squint your eyes at it. 00:44:53.410 --> 00:44:54.050 Yeah, yeah. 00:44:54.610 --> 00:44:55.170 It's interesting. 00:44:55.330 --> 00:44:55.570 Yeah. 00:44:55.650 --> 00:45:00.130 I mean, um, yeah, there's a lot of work on on the so-called uh loneliness epidemic, you 00:45:00.130 --> 00:45:03.890 know, depending on on which numbers you look at, at least, you know, in particular in the 00:45:03.890 --> 00:45:08.060 US, um uh rates of loneliness seems to seem to be on the rise. 00:45:08.300 --> 00:45:12.220 Um, and to me, you know, this always raised the question of like, why? 00:45:12.380 --> 00:45:15.420 Like, why don't people just call their friends or just get together? 00:45:15.500 --> 00:45:16.300 Like, it's not hard. 00:45:16.380 --> 00:45:17.020 I don't understand. 00:45:17.100 --> 00:45:19.420 Like, if you're feeling lonely, there's a very clear solution. 00:45:19.500 --> 00:45:20.700 You you have access to it. 00:45:20.860 --> 00:45:24.220 It's like if like people are like dying of thirst in the desert, and there's like water 00:45:24.220 --> 00:45:24.620 right there. 00:45:24.780 --> 00:45:26.380 It's like, what's the problem here? 00:45:26.620 --> 00:45:28.300 The water's right there, just get it, you know. 00:45:28.380 --> 00:45:34.070 Like, um But I think w uh you're describing to me 00:45:34.070 --> 00:45:39.590 the sorts of barriers, ecological barriers, that make it harder for people to hang out with 00:45:39.590 --> 00:45:45.270 people, uh um the idea I'm starting to have now is that um getting 00:45:45.270 --> 00:45:48.790 together and socializing uh entails costs, right? 00:45:49.110 --> 00:45:54.950 It entails costs and time, effort, energy, perhaps physical risk if you're uh braving 00:45:55.030 --> 00:45:59.190 um, you know, dangerous uh circumstances like rainfall. 00:45:59.500 --> 00:46:05.260 Um so it may be that, you know, um when the costs of 00:46:05.260 --> 00:46:08.860 socializing are high, you know, you get less socializing. 00:46:09.020 --> 00:46:13.020 And it may be that one of the causes of of loneliness isn't so much that like there's water 00:46:13.020 --> 00:46:14.860 there within reach and people aren't reaching it. 00:46:14.940 --> 00:46:18.700 It's that just the costs of of getting together with other people have increased. 00:46:18.860 --> 00:46:22.780 You know, like even living here in LA, um, you know, there's there's a lot of traffic and 00:46:22.780 --> 00:46:24.410 people are situated further apart. 00:46:24.490 --> 00:46:27.450 And so, like, I'm gonna go hang out with someone, I better really like that person. 00:46:27.610 --> 00:46:28.170 Like, no. 00:46:33.210 --> 00:46:33.610 I know. 00:46:33.770 --> 00:46:36.570 That was one of my least favorite things about living in Chicago. 00:46:38.570 --> 00:46:39.770 I never got to see anyone. 00:46:39.850 --> 00:46:44.250 Like, I never saw my colleagues outside of work because it's an hour in the car to see 00:46:44.250 --> 00:46:44.810 them, right? 00:46:44.970 --> 00:46:47.440 So which, you know, I don't know. 00:46:47.600 --> 00:46:48.960 That that was not for me. 00:46:49.040 --> 00:46:50.480 Um, other people like that. 00:46:51.600 --> 00:46:51.760 Right. 00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:52.000 Yeah. 00:46:52.080 --> 00:46:56.160 And it makes me think that like we perhaps one of the reasons why we don't see these 00:46:56.160 --> 00:47:01.760 loneliness issues arising in more small scale societies is just because the barriers to 00:47:01.760 --> 00:47:02.880 socializing aren't there. 00:47:03.040 --> 00:47:05.600 Like you're already living amongst people that are already there. 00:47:05.760 --> 00:47:10.400 It takes no effort to like, you know, reach out and tap them on the back or, you know, say 00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:10.960 something. 00:47:11.200 --> 00:47:16.830 Um and uh because just the barriers and and the costs are so low, you get 00:47:16.990 --> 00:47:18.030 more socializing. 00:47:18.110 --> 00:47:22.350 It it goes it goes back to this this fundamental economic logic, you know, that that that 00:47:22.350 --> 00:47:23.870 we started off the podcast with. 00:47:24.510 --> 00:47:30.350 It also reminds me a lot of I I've been um mulling over this this cool um 00:47:30.750 --> 00:47:36.670 uh economics paper, this famous paper um by Ronald Coase called the Coase uh Theorem. 00:47:36.820 --> 00:47:40.740 Uh, and and what he discovered is that there's this fundamental principle at the heart of 00:47:40.740 --> 00:47:43.380 economics, which is this idea of transaction costs. 00:47:43.700 --> 00:47:49.460 Um, and these are the silent invisible the invisible costs that um are required for a 00:47:49.460 --> 00:47:54.340 buyer and a seller to find each other and make a mutually beneficial deal. 00:47:54.580 --> 00:47:58.820 And uh you know, prior to uh Coase coming along, economists just kind of didn't see that 00:47:58.890 --> 00:48:00.330 and just kind of took that for granted. 00:48:00.410 --> 00:48:03.050 Like you know, people can mutually benefit by trading. 00:48:03.130 --> 00:48:03.770 Why don't they do it? 00:48:03.930 --> 00:48:05.530 Well, because there are all these costs, right? 00:48:05.930 --> 00:48:09.370 Uh they the the the buyer and seller have to know that the other one exists. 00:48:09.450 --> 00:48:10.330 They have to know where they are. 00:48:10.410 --> 00:48:12.170 They have to meet up at the same time and place. 00:48:12.330 --> 00:48:16.650 They're costs and sort of and bargaining uh and and reaching a mute mutually beneficial 00:48:16.650 --> 00:48:16.890 deal. 00:48:16.970 --> 00:48:20.490 There are costs in in trust and ensuring that if I give you the money, you'll give me what 00:48:20.490 --> 00:48:21.050 I paid for. 00:48:21.370 --> 00:48:26.490 There are all these uh silent invisible costs that that exist that that that have to be 00:48:26.490 --> 00:48:30.660 there in order for um a a marketplace to even exist, right? 00:48:30.900 --> 00:48:31.060 Yeah. 00:48:31.460 --> 00:48:37.380 And the major reason why marketplaces exist is because the transaction 00:48:37.380 --> 00:48:38.980 costs have come down. 00:48:39.140 --> 00:48:43.780 And the major reason why uh businesses exist is because they minimize transaction costs. 00:48:43.940 --> 00:48:48.260 It's much the transaction costs are much lower if I'm working with the same people every 00:48:48.260 --> 00:48:52.190 day and I have a stable employee that's working for me than if I'm literally contracting 00:48:52.190 --> 00:48:56.270 out every task that my business has to do with and finding a different person and signing a 00:48:56.350 --> 00:48:57.870 different contract for every little thing. 00:48:58.030 --> 00:49:01.550 If I just have a stable set of people I'm always working with, that reduces the transaction 00:49:01.550 --> 00:49:01.870 costs. 00:49:02.030 --> 00:49:06.430 And that's why you have things like companies instead of just a bunch of contracts, right? 00:49:06.750 --> 00:49:07.390 Right, right. 00:49:07.550 --> 00:49:13.360 Um, and so I'm beginning to think like talking to you, um, that 00:49:13.360 --> 00:49:16.560 there's kind of like a transaction cost theory of loneliness. 00:49:16.720 --> 00:49:22.480 Um, and and and and the same logic that's that's that governs economic growth also governs 00:49:22.480 --> 00:49:23.600 social growth. 00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:27.680 Um, and that when the transaction costs are down, people engage in the activity. 00:49:27.760 --> 00:49:30.480 And when they're high, you know, they can't. 00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:31.600 Right. 00:49:31.920 --> 00:49:33.920 Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. 00:49:34.080 --> 00:49:39.440 Uh and the other thing that I was thinking about too, um uh is uh that for 00:49:40.110 --> 00:49:45.790 lots of people who live outside of the US and kind of outside of major cities around the 00:49:45.790 --> 00:49:51.470 world, so many people are living in multi-generational households. 00:49:51.790 --> 00:49:57.550 So many people are, I mean, again, aside from some of the like 00:49:57.550 --> 00:50:03.320 weird exceptions, um Most people get married and have kids. 00:50:05.160 --> 00:50:11.160 The barriers are either completely like non-existent because you 00:50:11.160 --> 00:50:17.080 live in the same household with people who you can socialize with, or just so 00:50:17.080 --> 00:50:17.960 low, right? 00:50:18.120 --> 00:50:22.570 That like it's just not, this is not something you're facing on a regular basis. 00:50:22.730 --> 00:50:28.490 And so maybe there are slightly higher costs to seeing your friends um or your brother or 00:50:28.490 --> 00:50:29.690 your sister or whatever. 00:50:29.850 --> 00:50:35.610 Um, but those costs are still pretty low, especially if you live in, you know, the same 00:50:35.610 --> 00:50:39.770 place, um, same group or or you know, location or whatever. 00:50:39.930 --> 00:50:45.240 Um, But but still, I mean, like I think humans spent the majority of our 00:50:45.240 --> 00:50:50.680 evolutionary history living in contexts where those costs were 00:50:50.920 --> 00:50:54.760 exceedingly low, if not completely non-existent, right? 00:50:55.000 --> 00:51:01.000 And so it's like we're trying to navigate these things alongside, like it's it's 00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:06.050 not, you know, it's the costs are in time and energy and all that kind of stuff. 00:51:06.210 --> 00:51:09.490 They're also in like, um, you know, what you're giving up. 00:51:09.650 --> 00:51:09.890 Right. 00:51:10.050 --> 00:51:14.450 So if you're gonna travel an hour to see someone, that means an hour that you're not doing 00:51:14.450 --> 00:51:15.090 something else. 00:51:15.250 --> 00:51:15.490 Um. 00:51:16.290 --> 00:51:22.130 And so yeah, I think it's like we we just our our way of living has increased 00:51:22.130 --> 00:51:27.920 those costs so dramatically um that we don't even, you know, we don't know what we're 00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:28.560 doing anymore. 00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:31.600 I think it's really bad for us too. 00:51:31.840 --> 00:51:32.080 Yeah. 00:51:32.160 --> 00:51:38.000 And I I think there's uh a prescriptive element to this too, which is sort of either in 00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:43.280 your own life or if you have the position of, you know, you're you're thinking about well 00:51:43.360 --> 00:51:48.670 how do how do I build a better institution or a better I'm a planner or something, you 00:51:48.670 --> 00:51:48.830 know. 00:51:48.910 --> 00:51:52.430 I don't know how often people think about, well, what is the interaction cost? 00:51:52.590 --> 00:51:56.990 I mean, there's this idea of like third places, and there are some people doing it. 00:51:57.070 --> 00:52:00.830 But I mean, you know, usually we're like, well, you know, how many cars can we fit in this 00:52:00.830 --> 00:52:01.710 parking lot? 00:52:02.030 --> 00:52:07.550 We're not asking, um, well, what are the barriers to social or economic 00:52:07.550 --> 00:52:11.230 interaction that we're creating as an incidental byproduct? 00:52:11.440 --> 00:52:12.800 And maybe we should, you know. 00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:16.800 I mean, I think this is an argument for one of the values of social science and 00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:22.480 anthropology and psychology is that the this issue of if I'm designing something, 00:52:22.640 --> 00:52:26.640 I should be thinking about what or even, you know, how where do I want to live? 00:52:26.800 --> 00:52:29.280 What kind of neighborhood do I want to live in if I'm lucky enough? 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:31.840 Or how could we make our neighborhood better? 00:52:32.080 --> 00:52:37.920 Um or you know, yeah, what what are ways to lower my own social interaction costs if I 00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:38.560 feel lonely? 00:52:39.370 --> 00:52:40.650 Yeah, absolutely. 00:52:40.810 --> 00:52:42.330 I think that's a great point. 00:52:42.730 --> 00:52:43.050 Yeah. 00:52:43.290 --> 00:52:48.410 I mean, uh not to get on my own hobby horse, but it reminds me of my my own work on humor. 00:52:48.570 --> 00:52:52.890 Um and you could think of, you know, the the uh the function of humor is reducing the 00:52:52.890 --> 00:52:56.570 transaction costs of coordination and communication with another person. 00:52:56.730 --> 00:53:00.720 Because when every anytime you attempt to communicate or collaborate with someone, there is 00:53:00.720 --> 00:53:05.120 the possibility of uh mix-ups of I say one thing and you think I mean a different thing, or 00:53:05.120 --> 00:53:08.800 we're supposed to be taking on different roles, and I get the roles mixed up, or you know, 00:53:08.880 --> 00:53:14.640 I get uh I I you know uh I speak too quickly or too slowly, or um, I use the wrong 00:53:14.640 --> 00:53:17.280 body language or the wrong gestures or or whatever. 00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:21.600 There are all these ways that we can become mixed up or or misaligned, and that gums up the 00:53:21.600 --> 00:53:25.040 gears of us, you know, fruitfully collaborating and communicating with each other. 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:28.800 And so there would have been selection pressure to detect those kinds of mix-ups and to 00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:34.070 find and to find the detection rewarding and pleasurable and to signal and create uh a 00:53:34.070 --> 00:53:37.830 common awareness that we that we're mixed up and to try to get us back on the same page. 00:53:37.990 --> 00:53:41.350 I think that's what laughter is about, the sort of the sort of signal that we're sending. 00:53:41.430 --> 00:53:47.110 And so I think humor is one of the ways in which we have evolved to reduce the transaction 00:53:47.110 --> 00:53:52.740 costs of mutual uh benefit and collaboration by evolving these mechanisms for detecting 00:53:52.740 --> 00:53:56.420 when we're out of sync or when we're misaligned and for signaling and sharing the signal uh 00:53:56.420 --> 00:53:57.620 to get us back on the same page. 00:53:57.700 --> 00:53:59.780 And we find that very rewarding and and pleasurable. 00:53:59.860 --> 00:54:04.020 And that's one of the ways one of the reasons why I think laughter brings people together 00:54:04.100 --> 00:54:05.940 and humor brings people together. 00:54:06.500 --> 00:54:11.060 But there are probably many other uh adaptations that that evolve for this purpose of uh 00:54:11.140 --> 00:54:15.540 you know reducing the costs of of social interaction and uh increasing the benefits. 00:54:15.860 --> 00:54:16.180 Yeah. 00:54:16.390 --> 00:54:17.190 yeah, yeah. 00:54:17.350 --> 00:54:18.790 That's an interesting point. 00:54:19.270 --> 00:54:19.910 I love it. 00:54:20.630 --> 00:54:26.070 Uh Katie, um, when you come back from the field or in in the um 00:54:26.550 --> 00:54:31.990 in the transition either year to year or over time, 00:54:32.950 --> 00:54:38.870 what if there's probably many things, but what are the things that having gone through this 00:54:39.190 --> 00:54:44.740 two uh different uh very different existences transition, 00:54:45.700 --> 00:54:50.660 what do you when you come back home, wherever home is, uh now Santa Barbara, but you know, 00:54:50.740 --> 00:54:56.580 or just um what what do you is are there things that you particularly notice? 00:54:57.060 --> 00:55:01.380 Maybe that the ground is stable now and you're not on a boat rocking all the time. 00:55:01.860 --> 00:55:07.540 Or or maybe more more um you know, are there things you're like, oh I realize now that 00:55:07.780 --> 00:55:12.390 this thing that I I wasn't looking at as a idiosyncrasy. 00:55:12.550 --> 00:55:16.870 Now I see it as an idiosyncrasy because I've seen that it can be different elsewhere. 00:55:18.070 --> 00:55:19.670 Yeah, wow, that's a good question. 00:55:21.750 --> 00:55:22.870 It is, yeah. 00:55:23.110 --> 00:55:26.310 Um there's a lot of uh metacognition requirements. 00:55:26.950 --> 00:55:27.670 Yeah, exactly. 00:55:27.830 --> 00:55:28.150 Yeah. 00:55:28.470 --> 00:55:32.870 Um yeah, I I think I I don't know. 00:55:33.190 --> 00:55:37.580 I think um I certainly 00:55:39.340 --> 00:55:45.180 I have like, you know, kind of little things that I've noticed every every once in a while 00:55:45.260 --> 00:55:46.060 when I come home. 00:55:46.220 --> 00:55:51.980 One of them, they're not always really positive, uh, but one of them is like um when I I 00:55:51.980 --> 00:55:53.260 think I came back one time. 00:55:53.420 --> 00:55:55.500 I think I was in the LA airport. 00:55:55.660 --> 00:55:57.710 Um, this was before I was living here. 00:55:57.790 --> 00:56:00.590 So it was, you know, I was uh transferring somewhere else. 00:56:00.670 --> 00:56:04.190 Um, and you know, you come back from an international flight, so you have to pick up your 00:56:04.190 --> 00:56:07.390 luggage and then recheck it before you, you know, transfer. 00:56:07.870 --> 00:56:11.950 Um, and there was just tons of luggage everywhere. 00:56:12.110 --> 00:56:17.630 I forget where I was coming from, but I had two huge suitcases that I was bringing with me. 00:56:17.790 --> 00:56:22.820 And they had gotten buried under other people's luggage on the conveyor belt, and no one 00:56:22.820 --> 00:56:24.820 helped me get my bags out. 00:56:24.980 --> 00:56:27.300 And I just thought, like, what is happening? 00:56:27.460 --> 00:56:31.780 Like, if I had been back in Bangladesh, everyone would have been helping me, you know, and 00:56:31.780 --> 00:56:34.180 that like they do that for each other. 00:56:34.500 --> 00:56:39.700 Um, even though it's like when you're in the airport in Taka, you're in a mega city 00:56:39.700 --> 00:56:42.900 airport, like people do not know each other, right? 00:56:42.980 --> 00:56:45.060 Um, they certainly don't know me. 00:56:45.220 --> 00:56:51.150 Um, and it's just a a like a way of life there that you are 00:56:51.150 --> 00:56:55.950 like kind and courteous to other people, in large part, you know, not always and not 00:56:55.950 --> 00:57:00.830 entirely, but just like that there are these small things that you do for other people. 00:57:01.230 --> 00:57:07.150 Um, and I think to a large extent, you know, our kind of individualism has 00:57:07.150 --> 00:57:13.060 really screwed us up in a lot of those kinds of ways where we just we think we don't have 00:57:13.060 --> 00:57:16.180 to rely on anyone else or we don't want to have to rely on anyone else. 00:57:16.340 --> 00:57:20.660 So we don't so you know don't go out of our way to help others all the time. 00:57:20.740 --> 00:57:20.820 Yeah. 00:57:20.980 --> 00:57:22.820 Um especially if we don't know them. 00:57:22.980 --> 00:57:26.980 Um and I I think um you know there are obviously reasons for that. 00:57:27.140 --> 00:57:30.180 Like we could come up with a whole evolutionary story about that. 00:57:30.340 --> 00:57:35.620 Um but but at the same time, right, like it's it's not entirely true that we don't need 00:57:35.620 --> 00:57:36.580 other people here. 00:57:36.900 --> 00:57:39.780 We this is a story that we have told ourselves. 00:57:39.930 --> 00:57:44.650 Um, and I think it's just a story there that is not really plausible. 00:57:44.890 --> 00:57:49.770 Um, it's very apparent in everyday life how much you need other people and how many other 00:57:49.770 --> 00:57:54.090 people you have around you, you know, how often you're around family members and all those 00:57:54.090 --> 00:57:59.930 kinds of things that I think just you know leads to these kind of small 00:58:00.010 --> 00:58:02.570 but not insignificant differences. 00:58:03.130 --> 00:58:08.920 Um And so yeah, it's it's little things like that, I think, that really kind of strike 00:58:08.920 --> 00:58:09.160 me. 00:58:09.400 --> 00:58:09.640 Yeah. 00:58:09.800 --> 00:58:13.960 And to your point, and what our point we were talking about earlier, it's also, I mean, the 00:58:13.960 --> 00:58:19.960 individual people in LA here in this example, it's it's also 00:58:19.960 --> 00:58:24.760 the evolved psychology interacting with, you know, it's doing a cost benefit analysis, 00:58:24.840 --> 00:58:25.000 right? 00:58:25.080 --> 00:58:31.010 And so it's that there's been some set of circumstances that you know have just you know, 00:58:31.170 --> 00:58:36.370 if people want to be more friendly or social, maybe there's been a slap on the wrist both 00:58:36.530 --> 00:58:40.930 as experiences, or you're just kind of absorbing the ambient norms. 00:58:41.170 --> 00:58:46.930 So um I think one of the points of this whole discussion is it's not impossible to change 00:58:46.930 --> 00:58:51.570 it, you know, like if you if you but it's it's a it's the psychology and the social 00:58:51.570 --> 00:58:55.170 structure, but it's not like you have to change the whole culture, you can just have a 00:58:55.170 --> 00:59:00.720 small, small local cues can completely change how social or friendly or 00:59:00.720 --> 00:59:03.280 interactive the cost of interaction, as David said, you know. 00:59:03.360 --> 00:59:03.600 Yeah. 00:59:03.920 --> 00:59:07.280 Like if you were wearing, I don't know, an Eagles jersey and somebody else with an Eagles 00:59:07.360 --> 00:59:09.360 jersey and you're like, hey, hey, help me out. 00:59:09.440 --> 00:59:11.440 And you know, um, that's a terrible example. 00:59:11.520 --> 00:59:13.040 Um J Jamie Kremsman. 00:59:13.280 --> 00:59:13.840 I think that would do it. 00:59:14.080 --> 00:59:19.200 I think that would probably um but uh but yeah, but but but the point is like it's not 00:59:19.200 --> 00:59:23.600 magical or ethereal, right, to change things or even humor, as David said, you know, or 00:59:23.600 --> 00:59:25.040 just anything in common. 00:59:25.270 --> 00:59:27.510 Um, but sometimes it does require that. 00:59:27.670 --> 00:59:27.990 Yeah. 00:59:28.310 --> 00:59:28.950 Right, right. 00:59:29.030 --> 00:59:31.750 I mean, we're looking for commonalities with other people all the time. 00:59:31.830 --> 00:59:33.270 And I mean, I'm from Nebraska. 00:59:33.350 --> 00:59:37.670 So also my opinion on how friendly and helpful we should be to other people is entirely 00:59:37.670 --> 00:59:38.630 skewed by that. 00:59:38.710 --> 00:59:38.950 Yes. 00:59:39.110 --> 00:59:43.750 Um, but it's also the case that if I see someone with a Nebraska t-shirt on, I get very 00:59:43.750 --> 00:59:45.830 excited and immediately want to go talk to them. 00:59:46.150 --> 00:59:46.390 Right. 00:59:46.550 --> 00:59:47.110 So exactly. 00:59:47.270 --> 00:59:52.660 Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're doing that kind of stuff all the time and partially possibly it's 00:59:52.660 --> 00:59:58.580 because we assume that that similarity we have with someone else will reduce the cost um 00:59:58.900 --> 01:00:04.180 or reduce you know uh the risk that we're taking with that interaction at least yeah I'm 01:00:04.180 --> 01:00:07.620 from Buffalo New York and I would say we're also a friendly people. 01:00:07.940 --> 01:00:09.540 The weather can kill you there too. 01:00:09.620 --> 01:00:13.860 That's always my feeling of of banding together and being fairly friendly. 01:00:14.180 --> 01:00:14.420 Yeah. 01:00:14.660 --> 01:00:16.610 I I don't think that's a bad theory at all. 01:00:17.090 --> 01:00:18.850 I'm good on board with that. 01:00:19.250 --> 01:00:19.490 Yeah. 01:00:19.570 --> 01:00:23.170 No, I've I've I've been thinking a lot about the the case of of the jersey or or the 01:00:23.170 --> 01:00:27.970 superficial similarity or and and the role of that and in bringing people together. 01:00:28.050 --> 01:00:33.890 And I've been trying to do some game theory of uh work on um on alliances and and that is 01:00:33.890 --> 01:00:37.490 also a problem of uh of transaction costs or or coordination costs. 01:00:37.810 --> 01:00:42.760 If you think about it if you're trying to form an in-group and an out group um uh there are 01:00:42.760 --> 01:00:47.240 a huge number of permutations and even a small number of people, small group of people, uh, 01:00:47.320 --> 01:00:51.400 of who could theoretically be in the in-group and who could theoretically be in the 01:00:51.400 --> 01:00:51.800 outgroup. 01:00:51.960 --> 01:00:56.120 I mean, it's just the logic of combinatorics and factorials, just like huge number of 01:00:56.120 --> 01:00:56.760 possibilities. 01:00:56.920 --> 01:01:01.720 And in order for us to successfully form an in-group and an all-out group, we all have to 01:01:01.720 --> 01:01:03.400 agree on who's in and who's out. 01:01:03.560 --> 01:01:04.600 And that's really hard to do. 01:01:04.760 --> 01:01:06.440 That's a really challenging coordination problem. 01:01:06.600 --> 01:01:11.670 And what wearing the same jersey does is it is a huge uh solution to that problem. 01:01:11.830 --> 01:01:13.030 Oh, we're all wearing the same jersey. 01:01:13.190 --> 01:01:14.230 Okay, we're the in-group. 01:01:14.550 --> 01:01:18.710 And it just massively collapses the space of possibilities down to a manageable number. 01:01:18.790 --> 01:01:23.270 And I think that is largely the function of these superficial similarities that is that it 01:01:23.270 --> 01:01:26.710 helps us solve this coordination problem of who's who's on our side, who's on the other 01:01:26.710 --> 01:01:28.550 side, who's the in-group, who's the out group. 01:01:28.710 --> 01:01:33.510 We're just going to make it easy for each other by uh creating common knowledge of uh 01:01:33.840 --> 01:01:37.440 similarities even if they're entirely superficial they can still serve that function. 01:01:37.680 --> 01:01:42.240 Yeah and it's also it's also what the constitution of the group is you know it's not like 01:01:42.400 --> 01:01:46.880 Jersey therefore you know like I think this is like a sexual interaction or you're gonna 01:01:46.880 --> 01:01:50.160 come live with me or I have to like take care of you for my forever. 01:01:50.240 --> 01:01:54.160 It's like no we might like hang out or talk for a second and it coordinates about that. 01:01:54.240 --> 01:01:57.520 Like I don't want to approach somebody at an airport and then think like oh they're 01:01:57.520 --> 01:02:01.430 actually in really bad straits and now I have to take care of them the rest of my life, 01:02:01.510 --> 01:02:06.070 which is I think like one of the hindrances for dealing with homeless people, which is like 01:02:06.070 --> 01:02:07.430 sad but rational. 01:02:07.510 --> 01:02:11.270 You know, I think like that's part of the evolved psychology is like I'm gonna be 01:02:11.270 --> 01:02:16.870 responsible for dealing with a really hard situation that I only have 10 minutes and $10 01:02:17.190 --> 01:02:17.750 to deal with. 01:02:17.830 --> 01:02:20.150 And that's too little in both ways. 01:02:20.310 --> 01:02:22.870 So I think also just yeah, sorry, Katie, go ahead. 01:02:22.950 --> 01:02:23.030 Yeah. 01:02:23.270 --> 01:02:26.340 Oh no, I was gonna say, and I mean, you guys are both dads. 01:02:26.420 --> 01:02:29.940 So I don't know if this is the same for dads, but I feel like this is something that 01:02:29.940 --> 01:02:32.100 happens with moms a lot. 01:02:32.820 --> 01:02:37.460 Um, you know, like in in settings like airports or parks or something like that, you know, 01:02:37.620 --> 01:02:42.820 you have you have kids, there's this kind of um, I don't know, level of of 01:02:43.140 --> 01:02:48.900 in-group trust that you have with someone, um, where it's like, I could totally ask this 01:02:48.900 --> 01:02:53.730 person to like hold my place in line while I go like run and you know, help my child really 01:02:53.730 --> 01:02:54.130 quickly. 01:02:54.290 --> 01:02:59.970 Or like I could even like, I mean, I've had people in the grocery store offer to like 01:03:00.210 --> 01:03:03.090 hold my child before. 01:03:03.250 --> 01:03:08.370 Um, or you know, like watch her while I go like pick something up that I forgot, right? 01:03:08.530 --> 01:03:14.050 Um and um and while I don't usually take them up on that, um, it is something where like 01:03:14.220 --> 01:03:18.940 if they also had kids or they were also holding a baby, then it's like this honest signal 01:03:18.940 --> 01:03:22.460 that I know that this person is a generally trustworthy person. 01:03:22.540 --> 01:03:22.780 Yeah. 01:03:22.940 --> 01:03:23.260 Right. 01:03:23.340 --> 01:03:29.340 Um, and so I think, you know, again, it it it happens on smaller 01:03:29.340 --> 01:03:31.660 scales and on larger scales a lot. 01:03:31.740 --> 01:03:33.660 And it's it's it's really important. 01:03:34.140 --> 01:03:34.460 Yeah. 01:03:34.670 --> 01:03:35.710 No, I I I get that. 01:03:35.790 --> 01:03:39.390 I I I don't know, David, but for me, yeah, no, I experienced that as well. 01:03:39.710 --> 01:03:45.550 And it's almost like kind of uh like parents are especially parents of young 01:03:45.550 --> 01:03:48.430 kids, you know, it's all we're we're all you're sort of closed. 01:03:49.790 --> 01:03:51.470 Yeah, you're kind of like, okay, I see you, I see you. 01:03:51.550 --> 01:03:51.710 Yeah. 01:03:51.870 --> 01:03:56.990 And if like your kid ran off, you know, like it's even in a second, you know, or or even I 01:03:56.990 --> 01:04:02.440 mean, this reminds me even where there's been situations where I'm closer to somebody 01:04:02.440 --> 01:04:07.000 else's kid who's in a clearly like if they ran out, they would get hurt. 01:04:07.480 --> 01:04:11.800 And just like a second of like me contact like eye contact with the other parent, it's 01:04:11.800 --> 01:04:14.680 like, no, okay, if they did that, I would get them, you know, like that. 01:04:15.160 --> 01:04:15.480 Yeah. 01:04:15.720 --> 01:04:20.360 Or at the playground, like um, I've you know, I've kind of got eyes on this kid and like, 01:04:20.440 --> 01:04:24.520 you know, their parent knows that like they're on their way, but if something happens, like 01:04:24.600 --> 01:04:25.720 I'm gonna step in, right? 01:04:25.800 --> 01:04:26.200 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:04:26.360 --> 01:04:26.680 Yeah. 01:04:26.990 --> 01:04:27.390 Yes. 01:04:27.550 --> 01:04:27.710 Yeah. 01:04:27.790 --> 01:04:28.030 Yeah. 01:04:28.270 --> 01:04:33.070 No, it speaks to, you know, an interesting thing about human psychology is that we don't 01:04:33.070 --> 01:04:38.590 merely find our own offspring uh cute or uh nieces and nephews cute. 01:04:38.670 --> 01:04:41.150 We find pretty much every kid and maybe 01:04:46.990 --> 01:04:50.590 about Well David, do you feel like more that way since you're like became a parent? 01:04:50.860 --> 01:04:53.900 Like do you I've I've always found kids pretty cute, I think. 01:04:54.220 --> 01:04:54.540 Yeah, yeah. 01:04:54.780 --> 01:04:58.140 I mean, there's clearly individual differences, there's clearly parenting brain that gets 01:04:58.140 --> 01:04:58.780 turned on. 01:04:59.580 --> 01:04:59.740 Sure. 01:04:59.900 --> 01:05:05.740 I I wouldn't say that um becoming a dad has made me find other people's kids more more 01:05:05.740 --> 01:05:06.300 cute. 01:05:06.540 --> 01:05:08.060 Um I don't know. 01:05:08.140 --> 01:05:08.700 Do you have a lot of people? 01:05:08.860 --> 01:05:09.820 Yeah, no, I I agree with that. 01:05:09.980 --> 01:05:10.460 No, no, no. 01:05:10.540 --> 01:05:15.420 I I I think it's all the other stuff where we're that we're talking about sort of that as 01:05:15.420 --> 01:05:20.650 opposed to like this is just aesthetically acute thing, which whatever. 01:05:20.810 --> 01:05:24.970 Now it's sort of like, you know, I'm in parenting mode, such that, like, you know, when I 01:05:25.050 --> 01:05:30.970 I'm I'm in the role of parent, of I'm the, I'm the older, more mature 01:05:30.970 --> 01:05:31.850 control system. 01:05:32.010 --> 01:05:37.850 I'm keyed in and attentive to kids and what's going on with the kids and if something 01:05:37.850 --> 01:05:38.730 is needed. 01:05:38.970 --> 01:05:43.930 And other parents are also doing that, and we're co-registering that we're all in this 01:05:43.930 --> 01:05:44.650 together. 01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:49.240 and if there's a really high cost benefit situation or even mundane, but we can all 01:05:49.240 --> 01:05:55.000 coordinate a little bit to to to keep doing this job of keeping these little not always 01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:59.640 helpless but still relatively neotonous things from really hurting themselves or getting in 01:05:59.640 --> 01:06:00.360 a bad situation. 01:06:00.440 --> 01:06:00.680 Yeah. 01:06:00.920 --> 01:06:01.080 Yeah. 01:06:01.320 --> 01:06:03.320 You would make a great show to go dad. 01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:08.120 Maybe I'll move there if that doesn't work here in LA. 01:06:09.720 --> 01:06:10.600 That's awesome. 01:06:10.840 --> 01:06:11.160 Yeah. 01:06:11.320 --> 01:06:11.640 Yeah. 01:06:11.800 --> 01:06:12.200 Yeah. 01:06:12.440 --> 01:06:12.840 Yeah. 01:06:13.080 --> 01:06:13.400 Yeah. 01:06:13.430 --> 01:06:13.830 Yeah. 01:06:13.990 --> 01:06:19.510 I mean it is really interesting because um there's just a lot of like um I mean, certainly 01:06:19.590 --> 01:06:23.830 this is true in our lives, but it's also the case with the the Shotogore families. 01:06:23.910 --> 01:06:29.670 Like the dads are when the moms are at work, they're gone and maybe there's a 01:06:29.670 --> 01:06:31.190 grandma around somewhere, right? 01:06:31.270 --> 01:06:35.990 Or something, but the dads are in charge and they are like 01:06:37.080 --> 01:06:41.960 you know, I mean, like they're bringing their kids to like have not uh not little play, but 01:06:41.960 --> 01:06:44.040 basically effectively little play dates, right? 01:06:44.120 --> 01:06:48.600 With the other um kids whose dads are also taking care of them. 01:06:48.760 --> 01:06:54.600 There's a lot of solidarity, there's a lot of you know of of social bonding, I think that 01:06:54.600 --> 01:06:59.960 happens around these kind of shared circumstances that they have, and um 01:07:00.520 --> 01:07:06.250 and a lot of very strong sort of norms and expectations around how 01:07:06.250 --> 01:07:11.690 people should behave as parents in general, but as dads in particular. 01:07:12.170 --> 01:07:17.050 And there's just this really strong cultural norm that you are an attentive and 01:07:17.050 --> 01:07:19.290 affectionate dad. 01:07:19.450 --> 01:07:24.170 And again, there's individual differences, certainly, but by and large, that's that's the 01:07:24.170 --> 01:07:25.130 vibe there. 01:07:25.860 --> 01:07:30.820 And it seems to be quite important, especially if your kid, for example, falls out of the 01:07:30.820 --> 01:07:33.140 boat or somebody else's kid falls, right? 01:07:33.220 --> 01:07:34.900 Like you have to be attentive. 01:07:35.060 --> 01:07:36.100 So interesting. 01:07:36.260 --> 01:07:36.980 Um, yeah. 01:07:37.460 --> 01:07:41.700 I I will say that one thing that has changed after after becoming a dad is that is the 01:07:41.700 --> 01:07:45.860 level of outrage I feel toward people who are bad dads or bad parents. 01:07:46.180 --> 01:07:50.660 Like I I didn't feel that at all before before becoming, but now like if someone is is like 01:07:50.950 --> 01:07:56.150 mistreating a child or especially their own child, like man, that just really just 01:07:56.390 --> 01:08:00.710 disgusts me and and creates a sense of loathing that is is totally new for me. 01:08:00.790 --> 01:08:02.870 I don't know if if if that resonates with you, Dave. 01:08:03.590 --> 01:08:07.910 Uh I mean I'm pretty high in moral outrage at a baseline. 01:08:08.070 --> 01:08:12.070 Um people people who know me well are laughing are laughing right now. 01:08:12.310 --> 01:08:15.990 So um if anything, I feel like it's kind of chilled me out a little bit. 01:08:16.630 --> 01:08:18.470 Or I'm just like, but I don't know. 01:08:18.550 --> 01:08:20.240 I I actually I don't know, David. 01:08:20.320 --> 01:08:26.160 I don't know if I also don't see a lot of bad fortunately I I don't actually see a lot of 01:08:26.160 --> 01:08:27.040 bad parenting. 01:08:27.200 --> 01:08:32.320 Um but I don't see a lot of parents Well, yeah, no, I think I I do see a lot of parents 01:08:32.400 --> 01:08:36.160 like, you know, dropping on and off school and things like that, but I don't fortunately I 01:08:36.160 --> 01:08:37.520 don't see a lot of bad parenting. 01:08:37.680 --> 01:08:38.720 I don't I don't know, David. 01:08:38.800 --> 01:08:39.730 I I I don't know. 01:08:39.890 --> 01:08:40.210 I don't know. 01:08:40.370 --> 01:08:44.690 Oh maybe I just have I live in a different with yeah I I I know like celebrities word 01:08:44.930 --> 01:08:49.890 phlanderers and you know right oh I drug addictions and just totally neglecting it's an LA 01:08:49.970 --> 01:08:50.770 Santa Barbara difference. 01:08:50.930 --> 01:08:52.450 In Santa Barbara we're just still fine. 01:08:53.570 --> 01:08:53.730 Yeah. 01:08:53.970 --> 01:08:57.490 When I hear horror stories like that of, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:08:57.650 --> 01:08:58.850 No, no, I I did that. 01:08:59.010 --> 01:09:04.770 No, there are things like um, you know, something like somebody yeah, like a a drug user, 01:09:04.930 --> 01:09:10.760 famous person who had young kids, the the simulating could I 01:09:10.760 --> 01:09:14.040 imagine doing that actually post being a parent? 01:09:14.280 --> 01:09:19.640 It's like, no, that's an alien situation to me in a way that wasn't as 01:09:19.640 --> 01:09:22.360 visceral probably before being a parent. 01:09:22.600 --> 01:09:24.280 Um yeah, that's true. 01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:25.080 Yeah. 01:09:25.160 --> 01:09:25.320 Yeah. 01:09:25.720 --> 01:09:28.520 And especially I mean the economics here are are different as well because the 01:09:28.520 --> 01:09:31.960 entertainment industry you have to be gone for months at a time if you're on a shoot. 01:09:32.360 --> 01:09:36.010 Uh and so that that could be like really um you know hard. 01:09:36.090 --> 01:09:39.530 I can't, I mean, honestly, like being away from from my daughter for like more than a few 01:09:39.530 --> 01:09:41.050 days, like it just it kills me. 01:09:41.450 --> 01:09:43.930 Like I'm imagining having to be away for months at a time. 01:09:44.090 --> 01:09:48.250 And you know, when I see people just being really blasé about that or using it as an excuse 01:09:48.250 --> 01:09:51.770 to be a neglectful parent, like, oh boy, it just makes me blood boil, you know. 01:09:51.930 --> 01:09:52.810 Yeah, anyway. 01:09:53.210 --> 01:09:58.380 I have a lot more patience for parents uh who are like at the playground on their phone now 01:09:58.460 --> 01:10:02.220 than I think I used to because now I'm like, oh I get that. 01:10:03.980 --> 01:10:05.980 Like your kid is finally playing. 01:10:06.300 --> 01:10:11.500 And I, you know, like this may be your only chance during the day to chill out and not have 01:10:11.500 --> 01:10:12.860 to like be on the malt. 01:10:13.260 --> 01:10:13.580 Yes. 01:10:13.740 --> 01:10:14.140 Yes. 01:10:14.300 --> 01:10:14.620 Yes. 01:10:14.860 --> 01:10:18.860 I try not to do it too much, but sometimes it's like, I gotta take a minute here, guys. 01:10:19.260 --> 01:10:20.700 Like I need a break. 01:10:21.580 --> 01:10:25.870 So exactly put on your oxygen mask first, is the way we talked about it. 01:10:27.710 --> 01:10:30.270 Katie, uh this is yeah, this is fantastic. 01:10:30.510 --> 01:10:36.510 Um are there any things that um or maybe that you want to point people toward 01:10:36.510 --> 01:10:39.150 that they might not know after this conversation? 01:10:39.390 --> 01:10:44.190 Like, is there um I mean we'll put it we can put a website and thing, but is there anything 01:10:44.270 --> 01:10:49.070 kind of in c as we're wrapping up here that you wanted to make sure to flag or mention that 01:10:49.070 --> 01:10:53.780 we might not have covered yet as it relates to either something you're doing or something 01:10:53.780 --> 01:10:56.100 you're excited about, you know, whatever, anything. 01:10:56.180 --> 01:10:56.740 Yeah. 01:10:57.220 --> 01:11:03.060 I do think I was thinking about the conversation we had about risk earlier. 01:11:03.140 --> 01:11:07.540 Um, and I think one of the things that I failed to mention that I should have mentioned, 01:11:07.620 --> 01:11:13.380 um, which is a hobby horse of my own, I suppose, um, is 01:11:13.380 --> 01:11:18.430 that I think one of the reasons, kind of going back to these, you know, sex or gender 01:11:18.430 --> 01:11:24.270 differences and risk preferences and risk taking, um, I think one of the 01:11:26.110 --> 01:11:31.550 pitfalls that we as evolutionary researchers um 01:11:32.350 --> 01:11:35.790 you know are susceptible to a lot. 01:11:36.030 --> 01:11:41.710 And one of the things that I see in the literature all the time is we get so 01:11:41.710 --> 01:11:45.800 used to comparing women and men to one another. 01:11:46.040 --> 01:11:51.880 And it's often the case that when we do that, uh for in many different sorts of realms 01:11:51.880 --> 01:11:57.640 of life, that what it looks like is that men have all this sort of variability, right? 01:11:57.800 --> 01:12:00.360 And that men are lots of men are doing different things. 01:12:00.440 --> 01:12:03.560 If we just sort of think about parenting and fatherhood, right? 01:12:03.720 --> 01:12:09.480 But there's a lot more variation in what um how men across 01:12:09.480 --> 01:12:15.070 cultures and probably throughout history father and how they invest in their 01:12:15.070 --> 01:12:18.430 kids than when we look at women. 01:12:18.990 --> 01:12:24.830 But I think that what happens when we do that is we end up washing out a lot of 01:12:24.830 --> 01:12:27.630 the variability in what women are doing. 01:12:27.870 --> 01:12:28.190 Right. 01:12:28.350 --> 01:12:33.710 And so when we're thinking about, well, women sh are more, you know, uh risk averse than 01:12:33.710 --> 01:12:39.400 men, well, but we still might assume or we could test a 01:12:39.400 --> 01:12:45.320 hypothesis that would say that sure, on average, that's probably true, but that if we 01:12:45.320 --> 01:12:51.160 actually sort of look at the, you know, um all the women in the world, 01:12:51.240 --> 01:12:53.400 um, that there is going to be a range. 01:12:53.480 --> 01:12:59.320 Um, and that there will be cultural differences, certainly, and ecology and and sort of 01:12:59.320 --> 01:13:04.970 social circumstances and culture will play a major role in shaping those differences, 01:13:05.370 --> 01:13:11.210 but that I think we often fail to examine a lot of the variability in 01:13:11.210 --> 01:13:17.050 what women are doing because we so often compare what they do to what 01:13:17.050 --> 01:13:17.690 men do. 01:13:17.930 --> 01:13:23.530 And in some spaces, anyway, that has gotten kind of, you know, like 01:13:23.840 --> 01:13:28.960 whitewashed into saying, like, well, it's just not as interesting, or it's not as as worthy 01:13:28.960 --> 01:13:34.960 of study, or that this variation is not evolutionarily relevant because when, 01:13:35.040 --> 01:13:37.200 you know, because of the comparison between the two. 01:13:37.360 --> 01:13:41.360 And so that again, like that's my personal hobby horse. 01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:46.320 Um, and something that I always come back to when I'm talking about women's work in 01:13:46.320 --> 01:13:51.760 particular, their livelihoods, their economic work specifically, as well as childcare, um, 01:13:51.920 --> 01:13:57.690 and kind of thinking about from an evolutionary perspective, we know that 01:13:57.690 --> 01:13:58.970 women do different things. 01:13:59.210 --> 01:14:01.130 Why do they do these different things? 01:14:01.690 --> 01:14:02.890 How are they different? 01:14:03.050 --> 01:14:07.370 And what are the sort of you know fitness costs and benefits of them doing all these 01:14:07.370 --> 01:14:07.930 different things? 01:14:08.090 --> 01:14:13.610 And so trying to focus more on the variation among women than 01:14:13.930 --> 01:14:19.450 kind of the comparison between men and women, because I think that remains a kind of 01:14:19.500 --> 01:14:24.860 underexplored area that I'm obviously personally really passionate about. 01:14:25.820 --> 01:14:30.700 So that's kind of that's like the driving force between basically all of my research. 01:14:31.020 --> 01:14:32.220 Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. 01:14:32.300 --> 01:14:32.620 That's great. 01:14:32.700 --> 01:14:36.300 And of course, natural selection cares a whole lot about the variability within women. 01:14:36.380 --> 01:14:39.900 I mean, like that's literally a whole entire class of selection pressures. 01:14:40.460 --> 01:14:43.340 Natural selection is just not like what's the difference between men and women. 01:14:43.420 --> 01:14:47.530 It's also there's a lot of difference with you know with between within each sex that 01:14:47.530 --> 01:14:49.130 natural selection sees and cares about. 01:14:49.290 --> 01:14:53.770 And that reminds me, Brenda Bowser mentioned that uh early in one of our earlier episodes. 01:14:53.930 --> 01:14:57.930 She just kind of off-handedly, but I think very importantly, and it stuck with me, and what 01:14:57.930 --> 01:15:01.050 you said reminded me was women's reproductive success. 01:15:01.210 --> 01:15:03.210 It's less variable than men, but it's still there. 01:15:03.370 --> 01:15:05.050 There is variability in women's reproductive success. 01:15:05.210 --> 01:15:05.610 Yeah, right. 01:15:06.090 --> 01:15:09.130 And I was just like, oh honestly, I was kind of like, oh yeah, duh. 01:15:09.210 --> 01:15:13.060 Like I can so that was even me um not really thinking about that. 01:15:13.220 --> 01:15:14.260 And of course there is. 01:15:14.340 --> 01:15:20.260 And of course that's a huge selection pressure and and of course an 01:15:20.260 --> 01:15:20.660 important thing. 01:15:20.740 --> 01:15:21.140 Yeah. 01:15:21.540 --> 01:15:21.780 Yeah. 01:15:21.860 --> 01:15:26.660 Well, and I think when we talk about, and I I I have I've read a lot of evolutionary 01:15:26.660 --> 01:15:29.540 psychology, but I don't want to speak for evolutionary psychologists. 01:15:29.620 --> 01:15:34.980 Um, but I think this is certainly true for anthropologists, which is that when we um 01:15:35.650 --> 01:15:41.570 talk about the fitness benefits or the evolutionary benefits of particular types of 01:15:41.570 --> 01:15:42.450 behavior. 01:15:44.210 --> 01:15:48.370 Who like, who are we thinking about being the beneficiary of that? 01:15:48.530 --> 01:15:49.650 It's often men. 01:15:49.890 --> 01:15:54.370 And the reason is because you say it's often because men's reproductive success is more 01:15:54.370 --> 01:15:55.570 variable than women's. 01:15:55.730 --> 01:16:00.680 And so we kind of, I think for a long time, the evolutionary anthropologists, the 01:16:00.680 --> 01:16:06.600 behavioral ecologists got stuck in this trap or rut of always thinking about like, how 01:16:06.600 --> 01:16:09.400 is this thing like um polyandry? 01:16:09.560 --> 01:16:14.120 So I, you know, have done a little bit of work with polyandry at women's multiple mating. 01:16:14.280 --> 01:16:19.960 Um, and for a long time, the question was: how is this beneficial to men? 01:16:20.350 --> 01:16:25.390 And because it's really hard to think about how that can be beneficial for men, although, 01:16:25.470 --> 01:16:29.470 you know, see your previous episode with Brooks Shelza and all of her work. 01:16:29.710 --> 01:16:35.630 Um it it like we the question was largely ignored about how this would be 01:16:35.630 --> 01:16:39.630 beneficial to women, um, or that it was just assumed that it wouldn't be. 01:16:39.790 --> 01:16:45.160 Um, and so it was, you know, for a long time just kind of passed over that that women 01:16:45.480 --> 01:16:49.560 may actually benefit from having multiple partners at the same time. 01:16:50.120 --> 01:16:56.120 And so yeah, I think, I think we, that's an important thing for people to keep in mind when 01:16:56.120 --> 01:17:00.360 they're talking about evolutionary things in kind of broad terms and how things are 01:17:00.360 --> 01:17:01.960 beneficial and things like that. 01:17:02.200 --> 01:17:07.230 I think we always have to follow up by saying beneficial to whom or to what group. 01:17:08.110 --> 01:17:12.510 Because that really does change the calculus of the argument and of the cost-benefit 01:17:12.510 --> 01:17:15.470 analysis quite a lot, frankly. 01:17:16.430 --> 01:17:17.070 Yeah. 01:17:19.070 --> 01:17:19.710 All right. 01:17:21.150 --> 01:17:23.230 On that note, yeah, that's a good way to wrap it up. 01:17:23.870 --> 01:17:28.990 Starting where we started, David's summary of this is all roughly this beautiful, 01:17:29.310 --> 01:17:35.180 difficult, um, and it sounds like often very wet um um foray into 01:17:35.420 --> 01:17:40.380 like looking at a uh different slice compared to what the three of or the two of us are 01:17:40.380 --> 01:17:45.420 used to anyway, um, of humanity, but looking at from this cost-benefit lens. 01:17:45.580 --> 01:17:51.500 Um, but as you say, Katie, um just really, you know, we we always, whenever we have an 01:17:51.500 --> 01:17:55.980 anthropologist on, you know, the running joke is the thank you for your service, but it is 01:17:56.060 --> 01:18:02.010 it's it's just it's really cool um because we do get to see ourselves and what 01:18:02.330 --> 01:18:03.930 human beings are like. 01:18:04.090 --> 01:18:09.930 It's just a it's a fun, um um evocative um and very interesting um 01:18:10.250 --> 01:18:10.570 place. 01:18:10.730 --> 01:18:16.730 Um and uh it sounds like um it just sounds like a really interesting um way 01:18:16.730 --> 01:18:17.690 to have a career. 01:18:17.770 --> 01:18:19.290 And so thanks for sharing it with us. 01:18:19.530 --> 01:18:22.170 It's really fun and it is very sweaty. 01:18:22.330 --> 01:18:24.720 It's not always wet, always very sweaty. 01:18:24.960 --> 01:18:25.520 Oh my goodness. 01:18:25.680 --> 01:18:27.440 Well, Santa Barbara is very low humidity. 01:18:27.520 --> 01:18:31.840 So maybe that's your karma is you get to go to a low humidity place. 01:18:32.320 --> 01:18:33.600 Yeah, I'll accept that. 01:18:33.840 --> 01:18:37.280 Except maybe not this year because of El Nino, but still I'm sure it's nothing compared to 01:18:37.760 --> 01:18:38.800 It's pretty humid today. 01:18:39.200 --> 01:18:42.000 No, no, no, nothing compared to Banglarash. 01:18:42.320 --> 01:18:45.520 No, people get very concerned about the amount of sweat that I 01:18:48.480 --> 01:18:49.920 think that's always fun and embarrassing. 01:18:50.080 --> 01:18:50.240 Yeah. 01:18:50.480 --> 01:18:52.710 Um thank you guys. 01:18:52.950 --> 01:18:53.750 Yeah, thank you so much. 01:18:53.830 --> 01:18:55.030 This was wonderful. 01:18:55.350 --> 01:18:56.390 It was super fun. 01:18:56.550 --> 01:19:00.790 I really enjoyed talking to you guys and nerding out about evolutionary theory. 01:19:00.950 --> 01:19:01.910 It's always great. 01:19:02.150 --> 01:19:03.110 Why we're here. 01:19:03.350 --> 01:19:04.230 Always a blast. 01:19:10.310 --> 01:19:13.350 David, that was that was lovely. 01:19:13.590 --> 01:19:15.030 Yeah, that was a fun conversation. 01:19:15.270 --> 01:19:15.750 Yeah. 01:19:16.070 --> 01:19:17.830 Uh let's do it again. 01:19:18.070 --> 01:19:18.940 Yeah, let's do it again. 01:19:19.260 --> 01:19:20.700 I mean, not the same conversation. 01:19:20.860 --> 01:19:21.260 You understand. 01:19:21.580 --> 01:19:25.260 We should just do it do the exact same one, try to look at the transcript and memorize it 01:19:25.340 --> 01:19:26.620 and just have a an exact replica. 01:19:27.020 --> 01:19:27.900 That sounds super fun, yeah. 01:19:28.140 --> 01:19:30.300 I think that would be a you know a really cool thing to do. 01:19:30.940 --> 01:19:35.260 Uh I just saw um I don't know if this is the time to bring it up, I just saw Dan Conroy 01:19:35.260 --> 01:19:41.170 beam in his office and there was a picture of a um a bighorn sheep um in his 01:19:41.250 --> 01:19:47.250 uh um uh on his computer and I said is that in turkey and he looked at me like I 01:19:47.250 --> 01:19:53.090 was crazy because he thought I asked him is that a turkey and 01:19:53.090 --> 01:19:59.090 I thought I thought he had a much too high opinion of my knowledge 01:19:59.100 --> 01:20:04.620 of megafauna's geographic range, such that it would be crazy to think that a bighorn sheep 01:20:04.620 --> 01:20:05.740 would be in Turkey. 01:20:05.900 --> 01:20:10.140 And then we laughed, and I thought this is a perfect example of David Pinsoff's mix up 01:20:10.140 --> 01:20:15.260 theory of humor because he thought I needed my eyes examined, and I thought Dan had much 01:20:15.260 --> 01:20:18.220 too high of an opinion of my of the distribution of megafauna. 01:20:18.300 --> 01:20:19.740 But anyway, it was a funny anecdote. 01:20:19.820 --> 01:20:21.100 I thought I would share it with you, David. 01:20:21.420 --> 01:20:22.140 That's a great yeah. 01:20:22.220 --> 01:20:25.420 No, that's a beautiful piece of evidence that is consistent with the theory. 01:20:25.500 --> 01:20:25.900 I love it. 01:20:26.060 --> 01:20:26.300 Yeah. 01:20:26.540 --> 01:20:32.390 So, um anyway, the um the I I really like this 01:20:32.470 --> 01:20:38.150 this episode reminded me of several of the anthropology episodes 01:20:38.390 --> 01:20:43.750 where I feel like I will always retain one of the things I learned from this is that 01:20:44.070 --> 01:20:49.030 looking at the way people make a living in a different way sheds light on human nature. 01:20:49.110 --> 01:20:51.030 Um and I thought that was really cool. 01:20:51.350 --> 01:20:52.470 Yeah, for sure. 01:20:52.790 --> 01:20:58.540 So if you want that kind of thing to keep happening, listener, Uh you can leave us a 01:20:58.540 --> 01:20:59.500 kind review. 01:20:59.740 --> 01:21:03.180 Check us out on Patreon, social media stuff. 01:21:03.340 --> 01:21:04.460 Uh anything else, Dave? 01:21:04.540 --> 01:21:06.540 Get it get us uh get get our gear. 01:21:06.700 --> 01:21:07.820 Do we have gear? 01:21:08.380 --> 01:21:09.420 No, we don't. 01:21:09.580 --> 01:21:12.300 I mean, I'm starting to teach a class this quarter. 01:21:12.460 --> 01:21:14.860 Um, if you want to look into gear, let me know. 01:21:15.180 --> 01:21:17.900 Or if or if you listener, if listener, yeah, yeah. 01:21:18.300 --> 01:21:23.110 Well, I think we gotta, I mean, maybe if our Patreon money gets gets pretty high, we'll 01:21:23.190 --> 01:21:24.150 we'll get some cool gear. 01:21:24.470 --> 01:21:30.230 But th you can do um no inventory gear you can have a no inventory gear store 01:21:30.310 --> 01:21:35.750 such that there are I've looked this up because of other podcasts that are similarly small 01:21:35.750 --> 01:21:37.030 scale that I enjoy. 01:21:37.750 --> 01:21:43.460 And what you can do is you can just have a store that no you you've never made the t shirt. 01:21:43.780 --> 01:21:48.580 But if somebody wants the t shirt, they order it and then it's so s trivial to print the 01:21:48.580 --> 01:21:51.220 shirt that they just wait till somebody orders it. 01:21:51.380 --> 01:21:55.860 So we could have all kinds of things that um I mean I don't know about all kinds of things, 01:21:55.940 --> 01:21:56.980 but um wow. 01:21:57.060 --> 01:22:01.460 That's a beautiful example of the reduction of transaction costs exactly discussed in the 01:22:01.460 --> 01:22:01.540 show. 01:22:01.700 --> 01:22:01.860 Okay. 01:22:01.940 --> 01:22:02.020 Yeah. 01:22:02.500 --> 01:22:03.300 Yeah maybe we should do that. 01:22:03.380 --> 01:22:06.010 Well if you have ideas for gear, um, let us know. 01:22:06.090 --> 01:22:10.410 If you have any other ideas about guests or feedback, let us know. 01:22:10.730 --> 01:22:13.450 Evolutionary psychology, the podcast car. 01:22:14.490 --> 01:22:17.610 Like you can have that car, like a like a race car, like a NASCAR. 01:22:19.930 --> 01:22:20.250 Exactly. 01:22:20.330 --> 01:22:23.050 You could just print that on the car and buy the car. 01:22:23.210 --> 01:22:24.250 Yes, exactly. 01:22:24.570 --> 01:22:25.210 That'd be pretty good. 01:22:25.370 --> 01:22:29.130 Oh god, that's gonna happen with corporation logos at some point, isn't it? 01:22:29.380 --> 01:22:31.220 It kinda already is is with the car company. 01:22:31.620 --> 01:22:34.660 It already has but I mean I think the logos are all over the nest with a lot of s 01:22:34.740 --> 01:22:36.420 advertising space on cars. 01:22:36.900 --> 01:22:39.140 Anyway, don't do that. 01:22:39.300 --> 01:22:40.340 Nobody listen. 01:22:40.660 --> 01:22:41.940 We could bumper stickers. 01:22:42.020 --> 01:22:43.860 I think I just reinvented bumper stickers. 01:22:44.020 --> 01:22:46.260 We could just get in the podcast bumper stickers. 01:22:46.500 --> 01:22:46.660 Yeah. 01:22:46.980 --> 01:22:47.940 Pretty easy. 01:22:48.260 --> 01:22:48.580 Yeah. 01:22:48.660 --> 01:22:50.260 Although we wouldn't want to cause any accidents. 01:22:50.340 --> 01:22:56.260 You know, someone might you know try to ram some oh the evolutionary psychology fan. 01:22:56.340 --> 01:22:59.610 I'm gonna or they might they might try to ask them a question. 01:22:59.690 --> 01:23:00.730 They're like, I have a question. 01:23:01.130 --> 01:23:03.930 They roll down their window at the design of the human mind. 01:23:04.890 --> 01:23:09.450 Yeah, I'm curious where what do you think is the evolutionary function of nostalgia? 01:23:09.610 --> 01:23:10.490 Oh, it's green light. 01:23:10.570 --> 01:23:10.730 All right. 01:23:10.810 --> 01:23:11.290 See you later. 01:23:11.690 --> 01:23:11.850 Yeah. 01:23:11.930 --> 01:23:15.770 Which model do you think will better explain like the fate of humanity with AI? 01:23:15.850 --> 01:23:18.970 Is it Rogers Paradox or ideal free distribution? 01:23:19.050 --> 01:23:21.530 Like which good good traffic light conversation. 01:23:21.770 --> 01:23:22.090 Exactly. 01:23:22.250 --> 01:23:26.880 We should have an AI episode on if for no other reason then it's the flavor of the week. 01:23:27.120 --> 01:23:29.280 And also before the AI kills us all. 01:23:29.600 --> 01:23:30.160 Just to trigger. 01:23:30.800 --> 01:23:31.120 Just to trigger. 01:23:36.240 --> 01:23:36.800 All right. 01:23:36.960 --> 01:23:41.760 Um, well, if the over AI overlords haven't gotten to you yet, enjoy your week. 01:23:41.840 --> 01:23:44.880 And uh yeah, David, we should have a an AI episode too. 01:23:45.120 --> 01:23:45.840 Yeah, that would be fun. 01:23:46.000 --> 01:23:46.160 Okay. 01:23:46.470 --> 01:23:47.270 Episode for sure. 01:23:47.670 --> 01:23:48.070 Cool. 01:23:48.390 --> 01:23:48.870 All right. 01:23:49.110 --> 01:23:50.710 See everybody next week. 01:23:51.030 --> 01:23:52.390 Take it easy.