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I'm David Pinsov.

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Who are you?

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I am David.

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Oh, Dave Petrozki.

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And this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast which features actual

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evolutionary psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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Keep on I was gonna say and also listened to by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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Yeah, we we listen to it as well.

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Well I've I've I've gotten a lot of feedback from actual evolutionary psychologists saying

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that this is actual evolutionary psychology and so the actual

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extends to a third place where people who are listening, not everyone.

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Yeah.

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yeah, for actual evolutionary psychologists.

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And you know what?

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You could be an actual evolutionary psychologist even if that's not your day job.

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So so there may be like three or four places.

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We're not going to change the tagline 'cause we have enough trouble with the two elements

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of Yeah, we're barely holding it together on this one.

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Easily uh not holding it together at all.

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So without further ado, let's move on to the next portion of the thing you're about to

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listen to.

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Uh we'll see in a second.

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David, um, that some people describe themselves as old souls, um and

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some people uh so like they're sort of in a young body, but they feel old.

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And then some people who uh um feel young but are but are wait, did I get

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that wrong?

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We wanna have to be a little bit more than that.

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Yeah, they feel young were but they actually are old in an old body.

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Of those two, which are you?

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Oh, I'm definitely the latter.

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I feel like a child in an adult man's body.

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All right.

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Well, we're to we're um bringing this up because today we're gonna talk to Mike Gervin.

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And Mike Irvin, uh, what he studies, and he is an anthropologist at UC Santa Barbara, um,

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is the lifespan and life stages, um, and really sort of if there's evolved

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design for the different life stages, which I think is a really interesting and sort of

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profound and weird question to ask because we often just sort of think about, you know,

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growth and then development and then wearing out as sort of this ballistic process and not

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necessarily as like the reflection of evolved design for different life stages.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And Mike Irvin is a pioneer in this space studying uh human development, human life

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history, uh, what old people are for and why we evolved to live to old age.

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We also get into a a bunch of other interesting topics uh in this episode.

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We talk about um uh heart disease and uh ill health in modern societies and why uh

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small scale societies might not be susceptible to those health problems.

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We get into personality variation, we get into uh the demographic transition,

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why we're not having as many kids, whether we should have paid parental leave.

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Uh it was a it was a really fun, uh wide-ranging conversation.

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Yeah, and uh in Mike's book um is gonna be out um in

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September, on September 16th.

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So if you're listening on September 16th, please go run out and buy his book.

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It's called Seven Decades.

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Yep.

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Seven decades.

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Check it out and uh enjoy the episode.

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Here we go.

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Okay, we're recording.

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Today we are I'm super excited to have uh Professor Mike Gervin, who is in the anthropology

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department at UC Santa Barbara.

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Uh anthropology at UCSB is now integrated anthropological science.

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Mike, is that right?

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Uh yes and no.

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Uh Anthropology, you know, as you know, has gone through many

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different transformations over the years and different institutions.

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And so there's always been the multiple wings, you know, archaeology, cultural

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anthropology, and then the other, which is hilariously named biological

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anthropology, evolutionary anthropology.

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We were biosocial anthropology for a long time.

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And then at some point, like around 2008, we we said, all right, we're just gonna be

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integrative anthro sciences.

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So that it's it draws an umbrella kind of cross cutting

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subdisciplines, right?

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So cultural anthropology can be scientific too.

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So it doesn't necessarily always have to be evolutionary.

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And so yeah, that was the sort of logic, integrative anthrosciences.

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And so it's called a unit, but the university still doesn't quite

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understand what units are.

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And so there's been a push to maybe get rid of the units and just be all one big happy

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anthropological family again.

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Right.

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So yeah, it's like it's a particle, it's a wave, it's both.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I mean, I think we have this issue in psych a little bit.

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Oh, sorry, David.

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Just like even where, like, you know, you might be asking social questions, but using

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neuroscientific methods.

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And so I have colleagues who do that in the neuroarea.

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I have colleagues who do that in the social area.

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It's like these bureaucratic distinctions that sort of fall apart scientifically.

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Well, I thought it was hilarious.

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I I once had a lab, wet lab in the neuroscience building.

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And I remember at one meeting, I was like, I'm a little uncomfortable.

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I'm like the only non-neuroscience person here.

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And someone asked me, Do you study behavior?

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I'm like, Well, yeah, of course.

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Oh, then you're a social neuroscientist.

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All right.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But we will get into the fact that an anthropologist, and of course, there are many

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anthropologists at UCSB who have wet labs.

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So we'll get into that.

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But David, you were going to say something.

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Oh, I was just going to do a uh an awkward segue into your uh research

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on your upcoming book.

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So you mentioned that uh the anthropology unit is one big happy family.

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Um, you do research on families and on uh how families interact with

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one another across generations and horizontally within a generation.

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Uh and you have a book about that called uh Seven Decades.

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Um so if you could elaborate, what what are those seven decades?

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What which decades are you referring to?

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Uh and why are they important?

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Why should we care about them?

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Yeah.

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Um, well thank you.

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So it it here it is.

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They are beautiful.

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Ooh, who took who took that photograph?

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Uh I have no idea.

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It it's people assume it's someone it's a photo I took or it's me like in five years.

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But um no, it's a stock photo.

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Okay.

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Photo of a guy it's unclear whether he's like smiling or grimacing in pain or there's so

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it's ambiguous what his emotional like the eyes test, I think.

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So you're supposed to happy the person is smiling.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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But some people who tell me, Why do you have such an angry person on the cover?

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I'm like, okay.

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I'm getting a bit of angry.

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But this book just recently came out, is that right?

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Yeah, well, technically what's it, the ninth?

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Uh in one week from today, it's it's available.

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Oh great.

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We we can publish this.

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We can just release this.

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So probably by the time people are hearing this, it will be but so when it what date is it

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free?

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Yeah, so uh it's the pre-order people that um I guess are starting to get it right

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about now.

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They're starting to see but sorry you said September, mid-September is September 16th.

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So one week today uh coming out.

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It should be I I guess it'll be available at the bookstore.

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Uh maybe i if I get my act together with editing, maybe I can quick edit this and we'll

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just but put put you up and um cut cut in line a little bit and post this next week.

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So we'll we'll try to do that.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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Oh, so sorry, David.

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You sorry.

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Yeah, we're you uh so what what are what are these seven decades that you that you've

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written an entire book about?

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yeah so uh it's funny you say that I mean a good I guess a good title right should be uh

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kind of you may have a sense of what I want to say but not exactly.

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Uh and depending who you are I've had people write me already and be like are you saying I

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I shouldn't exist because I'm eighty three years old and beyond seven decades and uh and uh

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my old one of my old advisors is you know in his early seventies now and so you know he

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he read this uh like nervously like what do you say?

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So, yeah, part of the idea about seven decades is essentially an argument that

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you know our species typical kind of body is kind of built to last

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about seven decades.

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And so over our long evolutionary history, we would have had that potential to reach

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seven decades.

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Now, notice potential being very different than like an average life lifespan that you

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would expect to see just because of the way averages are computed.

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If you have lots of mortality early in life, that kind of crunches down the average to

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smaller numbers.

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And because we're not really good at thinking about averages and what they really mean, you

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know, even some scholars, not just the public, you know, tend to think that over our long

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evolutionary history, you know, we lived to about 30, 35, and then that's it.

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Um, and so yeah, that that's kind of where the seven decades is coming from.

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So where yeah, I I do see this this misconception.

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I just see this misconception a lot in like bad pop evolutionary psychology that our

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ancestors, you know, didn't live beyond thirty-five or or whatever.

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We had these extremely short lifespans, uh, and that explains all sorts of modern woes.

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So I'm curious uh how you would um put this bad idea to rest and and where you think this

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bad idea came from.

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yeah.

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Um I would like to think that hopefully

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this book will maybe make a little bit of a dent uh

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against that idea.

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Um but the thing is the idea itself though, is it's it's understandable maybe where it

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comes from, right?

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That uh because it's not just the fact that uh it's not just thinking about human survival,

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but it is also thinking about fertility, right?

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So if you've got lots of babies, then all else equal your population pyramid probably gonna

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look something very triangular.

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And so the overall percentage of older adults living in the population is gonna be much

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smaller than even if survival is relatively the same as say it is now, you know,

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you're still going to have a pyramid like this.

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And so it gives that idea that there's just not that very many old people around at any

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given point.

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And of course, once you just reduce fertility, the pyramid starts to look more and more

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rectangular.

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So it's easier to see a lot more older people.

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So I think you know, that's kind of contributes to this idea that that it's sort of

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new because we are living longer, but we're also our fertility has reduced quite

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substantially uh all over the world.

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And so we're definitely noticing that there's more and more people, you know, over the age

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of 65 in our in our society.

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And so we tend to think, you know, that things are always different now than they than they

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used to be.

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And so we kind of forget that, yes, even though survival has been improving, uh,

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it's not the case that just those folks didn't really ever exist.

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You know, and I think there's other arguments, I think, why this perpetuates.

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Um oftentimes when you see the life expectancy was like 25 or 30, that's all you

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hear about.

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You don't really see any more data or hear any more information.

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And certainly the skeletal record's pretty spotty, and so it's hard to even age skeletons

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that might be much older.

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Um everyone loves to quote Hobbes, right?

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That life was nasty, brutish and short.

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So again, all these kinds of ideas sort of perpetuate this this idea that this we

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really didn't have old age and that and pro and particularly the problems of old

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age that we now see in the news every other day.

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You know, are so how are we going to pay for Social Security?

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Where are all the caregivers going to come from?

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Alzheimer's is going to skyrocket.

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You know, and again, these are all sort of portrayed as new ideas and new

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problems.

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And so part of the push that I'm trying to make with this book is that it's a quantitative

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difference.

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It's not a qualitative difference.

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That we've always had old people with us.

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True, survival has improved.

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And so we are living longer now than we've ever lived, you know, before in the history of

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our species.

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And there are more older people around than has ever been before.

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But it's a more than as opposed to there wasn't and now there

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is.

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And I do think that difference matters because this is where the anthropology and the

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evolutionary part comes in.

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Is that you know, I believe that part of the reason for our species success is

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having middle-age and older age life stages as part of our species typical

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design.

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And so I want I'm trying to harness some of those arguments for, you know, we did it once

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throughout our evolutionary history.

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And so let's try to take uh what we you know, those

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adaptive benefits of being alive at middle and later ages.

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And let's kind of transform the way we think of the older adults as a burden and

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think of that as untapped potential, untapped opportunity.

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So that's sort of the the push that the the book makes to kind of bring

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home the contemporary message.

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Yeah.

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I think it's the the idea.

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I mean, we've talked in this podcast so far about design-mindedness and thinking about

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evolution producing design.

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A lot of the design we've talked about has been psychological, sort of real, real-time

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contingent design, or even, you know, something like how does a plant grow?

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Or, you know, how does the the mind respond to a certain situation or motivate certain

251
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behavior?

252
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What you're talking about is something I think we've alluded to, but maybe not explicitly.

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And I think it's a subtle and profound point, which is the idea that the stages of life,

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just in the same way that, like a butterfly, uh, you know, is a is a life stage compared to

255
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a chrysalis compared to a caterpillar, in the same way, there can be design for

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stages of the life.

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And it's not that anyone's stage is sort of just a um a

258
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purgatory, but it is its own, it's its own point, right?

259
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And it has certain design features.

260
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Um, so in the same way we can think about the contingent design of software, we can think

261
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about the contingent design features of lifespan stages.

262
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Is that sort of what you're talking about?

263
00:15:21,850 --> 00:15:23,610
Yeah, that's that's exactly there.

264
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Uh and especially because I do th I'm glad you say life stage, because you know,

265
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some skeptics have said, well, like a little pushback.

266
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Everyone's talking about you know menopause, postmenopausal lifespan as like somewhat

267
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human uniqueness.

268
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Uh but we know that there's postmenopausal kind of survival in other

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species.

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Um, but postmenopausal survival is not the same thing as thinking about an actual like life

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stage.

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So given that you survive to adulthood, you know, the chance, even in a hunt-and-gathering

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lifestyle that you make it to menopause is way higher than in any of these species

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that you typically see some postmenopausal um survival.

275
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So I definitely do think that you know there's a clear life stage there.

276
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And it's exactly right.

277
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Part of what I'm trying to argue is well a lot of it does focus on some of the the physical

278
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and physiological, uh but the idea is that with the design of about seven decades, that

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should impact everything.

280
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Not just you know immune function, but the mind as well and how we think.

281
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So I actually do uh you know Dave, I've dabbled in psychology here and there.

282
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And so I had fun kind of tapping back into thinking about uh some

283
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of those kinds of um aspects of the mind and behavior in those different life stages.

284
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Yeah.

285
00:16:49,510 --> 00:16:53,670
And even, I mean, the physical stuff, I hope we get to because I think there's just so much

286
00:16:53,670 --> 00:16:55,510
here that I think is so different.

287
00:16:55,670 --> 00:17:00,390
And I assume this is part of why you wrote the book, is because there's just so so little

288
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knowledge, you know, beyond this sort of like eat raw meat and run barefoot and you're

289
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gonna die when you're 30.

290
00:17:06,390 --> 00:17:10,870
So that's sort of you know what an evolutionary approach says about physiology, right?

291
00:17:10,950 --> 00:17:11,110
Yeah.

292
00:17:11,430 --> 00:17:15,030
Well, this is where I kind of thought that I did have something to say.

293
00:17:15,190 --> 00:17:21,120
I mean, I think like like you, uh my discipline doesn't necessarily reward

294
00:17:21,120 --> 00:17:23,200
us for write we I don't need to write a book, right?

295
00:17:23,280 --> 00:17:26,480
I don't need the book for tenure, I don't need the book for promotion.

296
00:17:26,720 --> 00:17:32,720
Um but at the same time, you know, I've written enough papers that wonderful, a lot of

297
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people incredible the number of papers.

298
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Like they're very prolific.

299
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Well you and eight other people maybe have read them, right?

300
00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:43,040
But like you know, you're you're getting a limited audience with any paper, n even if it's

301
00:17:43,040 --> 00:17:44,400
in the top journal.

302
00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:50,330
Um let alone just the the little you know, increasingly reduced word

303
00:17:50,330 --> 00:17:51,130
counts.

304
00:17:51,530 --> 00:17:54,010
It's hard to tell a comprehensive story.

305
00:17:54,170 --> 00:17:58,730
So it's true that there's elements in the book that are like peppered throughout some of my

306
00:17:58,730 --> 00:18:04,650
papers, but I think I wanted to do something that isn't in any of the papers and

307
00:18:05,370 --> 00:18:11,290
really build out this kind of argument and then do apply it to our situation

308
00:18:11,610 --> 00:18:12,250
today.

309
00:18:12,970 --> 00:18:18,780
And it was a little scary because entering the aging longevity health market, you know,

310
00:18:18,860 --> 00:18:21,020
it's a glutted market for sure.

311
00:18:21,340 --> 00:18:27,260
Uh but I think or hope that it's doing something a little bit different that these other

312
00:18:27,260 --> 00:18:28,380
books haven't done, right?

313
00:18:28,540 --> 00:18:34,380
So I'm not really telling you 10 ways, you know, to extend your life,

314
00:18:34,570 --> 00:18:34,890
right?

315
00:18:35,130 --> 00:18:39,450
Um, I'm not telling you what you should and shouldn't eat and all that.

316
00:18:39,610 --> 00:18:44,410
Uh although I do have a little list towards the end where I I cave a little bit, but at

317
00:18:44,410 --> 00:18:48,730
least the list sort of makes sense in light of everything else I've talked about.

318
00:18:48,970 --> 00:18:54,730
And you know, and it isn't, you know, I'm not a molecular biologist, so I'm

319
00:18:54,730 --> 00:19:00,660
not focused, you know, on you know, mTOR and Metformin, and

320
00:19:00,660 --> 00:19:05,380
that, you know, we're on the precipice of living, you know, a thousand years.

321
00:19:05,860 --> 00:19:08,260
So it's not that kind of argument either.

322
00:19:08,420 --> 00:19:13,780
You know, and I do think, you know, I don't want to put these other approaches, books down.

323
00:19:13,860 --> 00:19:15,620
I think the world is a big place.

324
00:19:15,780 --> 00:19:19,220
We need all of these kinds of books, and we we need the visionaries.

325
00:19:20,020 --> 00:19:23,300
But I also think we need to kind of look back at where we've come from.

326
00:19:23,540 --> 00:19:29,350
And you know, part of the traditional medical establishment is is basically, as you all

327
00:19:29,350 --> 00:19:34,150
all both know, is to ignore ev our evolutionary past, our evolutionary history.

328
00:19:34,310 --> 00:19:39,030
And some people have actually gone and said explicitly that if we want to study aging and

329
00:19:39,030 --> 00:19:43,830
lifespan, we need to look at the lowest mortality populations because those are the ones

330
00:19:43,830 --> 00:19:49,350
that have eliminated all the sort of extraneous causes of death, and it's all

331
00:19:49,350 --> 00:19:49,990
aging.

332
00:19:50,150 --> 00:19:53,590
And so that's where you have to look and focus.

333
00:19:54,230 --> 00:20:00,100
You know, and maybe for this audience, that seems, you know, how could you just ignore our

334
00:20:00,100 --> 00:20:00,740
natural history?

335
00:20:00,900 --> 00:20:06,820
How could you ignore, you know, everything that w are that about our lives and

336
00:20:06,820 --> 00:20:08,020
how we've lived?

337
00:20:08,580 --> 00:20:14,260
And so that's again part of the push here is to kind of shine light on there.

338
00:20:14,340 --> 00:20:17,690
And I do think, you know, I I probably wouldn't have been able to write this book, you

339
00:20:17,690 --> 00:20:21,930
know, ten, fifteen years ago, because now that you know there there are clear lessons of

340
00:20:21,930 --> 00:20:26,330
things we have learned that we would never have found if we didn't kind of shine the

341
00:20:26,330 --> 00:20:31,450
flashlight uh outside the context of you know low

342
00:20:31,450 --> 00:20:34,570
mortality industrialized West.

343
00:20:34,970 --> 00:20:35,290
Yeah.

344
00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:37,120
Uh an example.

345
00:20:37,200 --> 00:20:41,200
Could you give an example maybe of like what's a good because I mean, you know, people I

346
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:46,240
think are their interest has peaked in their sort of thinking, okay, so what what what have

347
00:20:46,240 --> 00:20:46,800
we learned?

348
00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:51,280
Uh and maybe then we can get into like how you've how you know the backstory of where you

349
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:55,600
got the data, but like, is there an example of sort of what we've learned that we wouldn't

350
00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:59,440
have known 10 or 15 years ago or definitely wouldn't have gotten if we didn't take uh an

351
00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:04,970
evolutionary um natural fertility, for example, or you know, hunter forager, hunter

352
00:21:05,130 --> 00:21:06,810
horticultural population.

353
00:21:07,850 --> 00:21:08,250
Sure.

354
00:21:09,130 --> 00:21:12,570
Well an easy one, I guess, because I don't want to give away all the reveals.

355
00:21:12,890 --> 00:21:13,690
Oh yeah, no, for sure.

356
00:21:13,770 --> 00:21:14,010
Yeah, yeah.

357
00:21:14,250 --> 00:21:14,810
Spoiler alert.

358
00:21:15,050 --> 00:21:15,130
Yeah.

359
00:21:16,250 --> 00:21:22,250
But the, I mean the easiest one is just the the very fact that, you know, hunter-gatherers

360
00:21:22,250 --> 00:21:24,410
don't get heart disease, right?

361
00:21:24,650 --> 00:21:29,700
And don't seem to have Alzheimer's dementia either.

362
00:21:30,020 --> 00:21:35,940
And there's been suspicions of this before, but I think part of

363
00:21:35,940 --> 00:21:38,980
the argument was always that, well, people didn't live long enough to get them.

364
00:21:39,140 --> 00:21:42,420
And that if they only lived longer, then they would get them.

365
00:21:42,980 --> 00:21:47,700
And in fact, you know, some of the really exciting work, uh

366
00:21:48,180 --> 00:21:53,050
cardiologists and radiologists who who, you know, anything they can get their hands on,

367
00:21:53,130 --> 00:21:58,330
they throw on under a CT scanner and mummies in particular.

368
00:21:58,490 --> 00:22:03,210
And by looking at mummies in different parts of the world, you know, they found evidence of

369
00:22:03,210 --> 00:22:06,490
calcification in in different arterial beds.

370
00:22:06,890 --> 00:22:12,810
And it wasn't just like the the rich fat cats, you know, the Egyptian mummies, but

371
00:22:12,810 --> 00:22:18,660
even like in the Aleutian Islands, a few cases, and uh in Peru, Incan mummies, and

372
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so which would have been more kind of everyday people.

373
00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:25,460
Uh and so that was pretty interesting and revealing.

374
00:22:25,620 --> 00:22:29,620
Um of course we don't know what they died of, but we know that there might have been some

375
00:22:29,620 --> 00:22:31,780
calcification in their arteries.

376
00:22:32,020 --> 00:22:37,620
Uh and so that that sort of led to this idea that well heart

377
00:22:37,620 --> 00:22:43,300
disease and particular its most pernicious form, atherosclerosis, uh

378
00:22:43,460 --> 00:22:48,210
that we tend to see, um, that that's been with us forever.

379
00:22:48,530 --> 00:22:54,290
Um, and which is kind of grim, but it also it it gives a certain view of what

380
00:22:54,290 --> 00:22:55,250
aging is, too.

381
00:22:55,490 --> 00:23:01,250
You know, there's aging, biological aging, there's diseases of aging, you know, there's

382
00:23:01,250 --> 00:23:02,610
lots of arguments back and forth.

383
00:23:02,770 --> 00:23:04,130
Are those one and the same?

384
00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:09,740
But if you think heart disease and atherosclerosis is kind of one and the same with

385
00:23:09,740 --> 00:23:15,260
aging as a universal, then first of all, it's what we have to look forward to,

386
00:23:15,500 --> 00:23:15,820
right?

387
00:23:16,220 --> 00:23:19,500
Um, and it also makes it a little bit unavoidable.

388
00:23:19,900 --> 00:23:25,260
And so, and certainly we know that Dave, you're a healthy guy.

389
00:23:25,420 --> 00:23:29,710
Uh, you probably eat well and you're move your body uh quite a bit.

390
00:23:33,950 --> 00:23:34,190
Yeah.

391
00:23:34,510 --> 00:23:40,030
I'm on an upswing, but boy, I've yeah, I've been the most inactive I've ever been since

392
00:23:40,030 --> 00:23:40,990
since having a child.

393
00:23:41,150 --> 00:23:42,670
It's wonderful, but yeah.

394
00:23:43,390 --> 00:23:48,190
Well sitting here, see this is why I was standing on the balance board here during this

395
00:23:48,190 --> 00:23:48,750
podcast.

396
00:23:48,830 --> 00:23:48,990
Yeah.

397
00:23:49,220 --> 00:23:50,340
Then my head was cut off.

398
00:23:50,420 --> 00:23:52,020
So I I'm off the balance board.

399
00:23:52,260 --> 00:23:52,500
Okay.

400
00:23:52,660 --> 00:23:52,980
Sorry.

401
00:23:53,060 --> 00:23:54,980
We're we're we're reducing your lifespan.

402
00:23:55,140 --> 00:23:55,620
Sorry.

403
00:23:55,940 --> 00:23:57,060
Thank you for the sacrifice.

404
00:23:57,140 --> 00:23:57,300
Yeah.

405
00:23:57,540 --> 00:24:01,940
Well it's just that we we we know that, you know, being acting healthier will make you

406
00:24:01,940 --> 00:24:05,780
healthier, but still it's like potential lightning.

407
00:24:05,860 --> 00:24:11,730
It it it can strike us, uh and and then we're we're doomed to to suffer

408
00:24:11,730 --> 00:24:12,130
from it.

409
00:24:12,210 --> 00:24:17,650
And so what we found, uh, you know, we started like lots of other people had with just

410
00:24:17,650 --> 00:24:22,690
basic risk factors, you know, looking at blood pressure, cholesterol in the blood, you

411
00:24:22,690 --> 00:24:25,170
know, the easy things basically.

412
00:24:25,490 --> 00:24:28,210
And you know, those are pretty revealing.

413
00:24:28,290 --> 00:24:33,170
You know, blood pressure was kind of low, didn't seem to increase with age, cholesterol was

414
00:24:33,170 --> 00:24:33,570
low.

415
00:24:33,730 --> 00:24:37,250
Uh so all that would suggest that maybe there's not a whole lot of heart disease.

416
00:24:37,410 --> 00:24:43,080
But again, if you don't always know if like predicts like, you know, in

417
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:45,080
different types of environments.

418
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:51,240
And so what you know, making it kind of next level, um, we actually

419
00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:57,240
did uh what's called a ankle brachial index, which is to basically look at the

420
00:24:57,240 --> 00:24:59,560
blood pressure in your arms and your ankles.

421
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:03,960
You know, and if all is good, blood should be flowing nicely all around your body.

422
00:25:04,120 --> 00:25:09,870
If it's sort of getting slowing down, obstructions, it might differ between your arms and

423
00:25:09,870 --> 00:25:10,590
your legs.

424
00:25:10,830 --> 00:25:16,350
And so, you know, looking at the blood pressure throughout the body, uh,

425
00:25:16,990 --> 00:25:22,030
you can basically assess if you've got peripheral arterial disease in your arms, you know,

426
00:25:22,110 --> 00:25:26,670
blockages in your arms, your legs, and that's kind of like subclinical

427
00:25:26,670 --> 00:25:28,190
atherosclerosis.

428
00:25:28,270 --> 00:25:33,790
So it could be like you know, a decade out before you might hit see it hit the coronaries.

429
00:25:33,950 --> 00:25:39,780
And we found not a single person had you know below the cutoff level on that measure.

430
00:25:40,020 --> 00:25:42,020
Okay, also pretty instructive.

431
00:25:42,260 --> 00:25:47,780
And then going the the next route, the next level, uh to really be sure,

432
00:25:48,020 --> 00:25:52,580
because again, from some of this work, we were starting to get a little bit of the

433
00:25:52,580 --> 00:25:58,530
attention of like the cardiology world and such, but not really, because you have to kind

434
00:25:58,530 --> 00:26:02,530
of use their methods and their uh technology.

435
00:26:02,690 --> 00:26:07,570
Uh and so this is where we actually teamed up with some of those very same radiologists and

436
00:26:07,570 --> 00:26:13,250
cardiologists I mentioned that use CT scanners to to look at calcification in

437
00:26:13,250 --> 00:26:14,050
mummies.

438
00:26:14,210 --> 00:26:16,610
And and we did this in Bolivia.

439
00:26:16,930 --> 00:26:22,480
So, you know, I could pour all your listeners and all the different ways it

440
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:28,480
takes to get people from remote Amazonian villages, you know, to a place,

441
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:33,680
you know, it's not even the town closest to these villages, but a somewhat distant town

442
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:39,040
where uh the French government had donated a CT scanner some years ago.

443
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:44,560
And so collaborating with the hospital and social workers there, uh, we're able to use that

444
00:26:44,650 --> 00:26:50,570
CT scanner and through uh imaging of people, we

445
00:26:50,570 --> 00:26:53,610
could actually look directly at their coronary arteries.

446
00:26:53,850 --> 00:26:59,770
And and the amazing thing was that basically we focused mostly like people 45 years of age

447
00:26:59,770 --> 00:27:00,410
and up.

448
00:27:00,730 --> 00:27:05,130
So it wasn't the case that, well, there are no people again who are old.

449
00:27:05,290 --> 00:27:11,290
Yeah, and it was a decent sample, close to a thousand people uh over the age of 45, which

450
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,720
by small scale society standards, that's really big.

451
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:15,280
Yeah.

452
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:21,360
Um, and 85% of people had absolutely no calcification in their

453
00:27:21,360 --> 00:27:22,880
coronary arteries.

454
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:27,680
And at first, you know, I was like, okay, this just reifies what we saw before, but I

455
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,600
didn't quite realize the import of that because you know, comparing it to every other

456
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:37,570
population level you know data that existed, uh Way

457
00:27:37,570 --> 00:27:42,610
more people in way more places, including healthy places like you know, Japan with much

458
00:27:42,610 --> 00:27:47,970
higher life expectancy than we do, uh, there's more calcification in the coronary arteries.

459
00:27:48,130 --> 00:27:54,050
And the reason why calcification is such an important measure, because certainly in normal

460
00:27:54,130 --> 00:27:59,780
healthy people, it's like the best predictor that you will have heart disease and that

461
00:27:59,780 --> 00:28:04,180
there will be you know the the heart events uh down the line.

462
00:28:04,740 --> 00:28:09,620
And so yeah, that was sort of an indication, wow, it's not just like one or two healthy

463
00:28:09,620 --> 00:28:11,780
people that are eating right and physically active.

464
00:28:11,940 --> 00:28:17,620
This is like at a whole population level, this whole population has basically avoided

465
00:28:17,620 --> 00:28:18,980
atherosclerosis.

466
00:28:19,060 --> 00:28:24,690
And even of the people who had it, they were over 80 years of age and very

467
00:28:24,850 --> 00:28:30,770
likely are going to die of something not at all related to atherosclerosis.

468
00:28:30,850 --> 00:28:35,570
So kind of like the mummies that may have had some calcification probably died from

469
00:28:35,570 --> 00:28:36,210
something else.

470
00:28:36,290 --> 00:28:42,050
You know, Otsy, the the Iceman, and the Tyrolean Iceman, uh had

471
00:28:42,050 --> 00:28:47,650
some calcification in his arteries, but you know, had also had an arrow kind of shot in his

472
00:28:47,650 --> 00:28:47,970
back.

473
00:28:48,130 --> 00:28:51,560
So, you know, probably that might be tomato tomato.

474
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:53,320
Yeah, exactly.

475
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:53,640
Yeah.

476
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:58,760
So I think that's kind of a s you know, a an interesting, kind of surprising thing that

477
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,560
then it it uh it begged all those questions.

478
00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:07,240
You know, well, what is it about a hunter gatherer lifestyle that can lead to a a life

479
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:11,240
without heart disease, you know, even well into your seventies and eighties.

480
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:17,560
Um, and and then it does bring up some of the all the some of the fads, of course, but it

481
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:21,830
really, you know, uh uh forces us to really just kind of, all right, can we actually answer

482
00:29:21,830 --> 00:29:27,750
this question scientifically rather than you know whatever hobby horse that you

483
00:29:27,750 --> 00:29:33,350
happen to focus on, um, you know, that that must be the magic bullet.

484
00:29:33,670 --> 00:29:38,310
And so and so that uh you know opened up a whole kind of new wave of of work too, to you

485
00:29:38,310 --> 00:29:43,900
know, to try to piece apart can we actually look at all these different pieces that we

486
00:29:43,900 --> 00:29:49,660
think might matter, like what you eat, how you move your body, uh other infectious

487
00:29:49,820 --> 00:29:55,420
critters that are invading our body, our social lives and the level of stress that we have,

488
00:29:55,580 --> 00:30:00,060
you know, are we living alone or are we living in, you know, tight communities?

489
00:30:00,220 --> 00:30:05,180
You know, all those elements we basically just have been trying to build out over the last

490
00:30:05,180 --> 00:30:10,850
decade to try to see ultimately what what kind of matters and what

491
00:30:10,850 --> 00:30:11,250
doesn't.

492
00:30:11,730 --> 00:30:17,410
Well I I would imagine that uh many of our listeners are uh very curious about the question

493
00:30:17,570 --> 00:30:20,690
uh how can I not get heart disease?

494
00:30:20,930 --> 00:30:26,690
I'm certainly curious about that question myself as an ape who would very much uh like to

495
00:30:26,690 --> 00:30:28,940
not die uh prematurely.

496
00:30:29,180 --> 00:30:33,500
I'd like to, you know, at at minimum live seven decades, hopefully more.

497
00:30:33,740 --> 00:30:38,300
Uh but, you know, heart disease is probably uh one of the things that might prevent that

498
00:30:38,300 --> 00:30:39,100
from happening.

499
00:30:39,340 --> 00:30:44,060
So uh based on all this research, I mean, first of all, it's it's a it's a a fascinating

500
00:30:44,060 --> 00:30:48,700
finding that we don't see the same prevalence of heart disease uh in these populations that

501
00:30:48,700 --> 00:30:49,420
you study.

502
00:30:49,580 --> 00:30:54,770
Um but I you know I gotta know what what are they doing right that I'm not doing or that

503
00:30:54,770 --> 00:30:55,330
we're not doing?

504
00:30:55,410 --> 00:30:57,490
What how can we uh be like them?

505
00:30:57,730 --> 00:30:59,810
What do you think is is the answer there?

506
00:31:00,610 --> 00:31:01,170
Yeah.

507
00:31:01,410 --> 00:31:07,330
Uh well certainly, you know, you could just walk into traffic and get hit by a bus and

508
00:31:07,330 --> 00:31:08,290
you won't die.

509
00:31:09,090 --> 00:31:11,090
That's one one way answer.

510
00:31:11,490 --> 00:31:14,210
But uh that won't get you to seven decades though.

511
00:31:14,610 --> 00:31:14,850
No.

512
00:31:15,250 --> 00:31:16,610
Uh yeah.

513
00:31:16,930 --> 00:31:19,060
So I mean, good question.

514
00:31:19,220 --> 00:31:24,420
You know, the short, quick answer is I don't have a hundred percent answer.

515
00:31:24,820 --> 00:31:27,780
And and part of that is because it is complicated.

516
00:31:28,100 --> 00:31:34,020
Things don't change one at a time in in the way we would ideally want to do as

517
00:31:34,100 --> 00:31:35,860
you know an experimentalist.

518
00:31:36,260 --> 00:31:42,260
And and so on one level, even if you measure almost everything, uh

519
00:31:42,420 --> 00:31:46,180
we're gonna be limited by what we can say from one population.

520
00:31:46,550 --> 00:31:51,750
And so that's why actually we've been working with another population, the Mosaten,

521
00:31:52,470 --> 00:31:58,470
who culturally, ethnically, linguistically similar to the Chimane, but given where they

522
00:31:58,470 --> 00:32:04,310
live, uh they've just been exposed to missionaries and uh

523
00:32:05,030 --> 00:32:08,070
somewhat a little bit more period type of lifestyle.

524
00:32:08,150 --> 00:32:10,230
Everyone speaks Spanish, there's stores.

525
00:32:10,630 --> 00:32:15,910
Uh and so they kind of represent a little bit what the future of Chimane could look like

526
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:22,120
with increasing modernization, uh, which is sort of like a nice, dare I say, you

527
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:27,720
know, quasi-experimental, you know, what would happen if different aspects of lifespan were

528
00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:28,360
changing.

529
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:34,040
And what is interesting is that the most attention also have very little heart disease, um,

530
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:38,920
even though they're drinking a lot more soda, but they're still pretty pretty darn

531
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,120
physically active.

532
00:32:40,290 --> 00:32:44,770
Uh, because even though they're making money, they're all they're also they're not making

533
00:32:44,770 --> 00:32:46,770
money from podcasts, right?

534
00:32:46,850 --> 00:32:49,010
They're making money from not yet.

535
00:32:49,330 --> 00:32:50,610
We're we're in that club too.

536
00:32:50,690 --> 00:32:52,930
So that's right.

537
00:32:53,010 --> 00:32:54,530
We gotta get some more books on that shelf.

538
00:32:54,850 --> 00:32:55,570
Yes, exactly.

539
00:32:56,050 --> 00:33:00,850
Um they're making money from selling crops from their fields.

540
00:33:01,060 --> 00:33:03,860
So which is still involving physical labor.

541
00:33:04,020 --> 00:33:09,540
Now it's interesting, the last five years I've seen an uptick uh I was just in Bolivia a

542
00:33:09,540 --> 00:33:10,820
few weeks ago.

543
00:33:11,220 --> 00:33:17,140
And, you know, now a lot more people have, you know, weed whackers and, you know,

544
00:33:17,380 --> 00:33:22,260
other, you know, new forms of technology that is going to cut down some of those labor

545
00:33:22,260 --> 00:33:26,980
costs so they can increase their producti their agricultural productivity, but using their

546
00:33:26,980 --> 00:33:28,190
body less.

547
00:33:28,750 --> 00:33:33,470
Um, so it'll be interesting to see if the physical activity might start to shift.

548
00:33:33,710 --> 00:33:39,550
But what I would say, you know, the the one thing that cross-cuts, maybe this

549
00:33:39,550 --> 00:33:44,430
isn't too much of a of a reveal, but there there's nothing super special about the Chimane

550
00:33:44,670 --> 00:33:47,150
per se as far as small-scale societies go.

551
00:33:47,470 --> 00:33:52,280
The only thing is that they just happen to be the only one that went under a CT scanner.

552
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:58,120
You know, if we if we did the same to the Hadza, the Ace, but the Hadza maybe be 88%

553
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:02,520
for all we know without without coronary calcification.

554
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:08,360
And even though technically, you know, the chimane, as you know, having animal and plant

555
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:12,790
domestication are mismatched from a hunting and gathering lifestyle.

556
00:34:13,030 --> 00:34:16,150
Herders, you know, are a little bit mismatched.

557
00:34:16,390 --> 00:34:21,430
But across all these different small-scale subsistence societies, which very likely don't

558
00:34:21,430 --> 00:34:26,790
have much heart disease, or if they do at much lower rates than we do,

559
00:34:27,030 --> 00:34:32,660
physical activity definitely seems to be kind of central to all

560
00:34:32,660 --> 00:34:34,660
aspects of their lifestyle.

561
00:34:34,980 --> 00:34:39,060
And not and there's a good and bad to that.

562
00:34:40,020 --> 00:34:43,220
You know, the the good is like, whoa, physical activity.

563
00:34:43,380 --> 00:34:45,540
That that's not expensive, right?

564
00:34:47,060 --> 00:34:52,500
But the bad might be, well, you know, didn't we, you know, we evolved to sort of be

565
00:34:52,500 --> 00:34:54,020
efficient foragers, right?

566
00:34:54,100 --> 00:34:57,860
So why should I have to move my body unless I absolutely have to?

567
00:34:58,250 --> 00:34:59,690
doesn't that make much more sense?

568
00:34:59,770 --> 00:35:01,610
And and of course, yes, it does.

569
00:35:01,850 --> 00:35:07,290
Uh but the good news there is it's not like you have to run a marathon every couple days,

570
00:35:07,530 --> 00:35:07,770
right?

571
00:35:07,930 --> 00:35:13,450
That that a lot of the physical activity when you actually put accelerometers on hunter

572
00:35:13,530 --> 00:35:19,370
gatherers uh and farmers, uh it's yeah, there is more vigorous activity than

573
00:35:19,370 --> 00:35:22,970
probably you or me, but not a huge amount more.

574
00:35:23,210 --> 00:35:27,660
The real big difference is just there's a lot of moderate light activity.

575
00:35:27,980 --> 00:35:33,900
So it's just it's literally the not being sedentary, but but you know, light activity,

576
00:35:34,060 --> 00:35:37,340
which means even you know, you could do a walking podcast, right?

577
00:35:37,420 --> 00:35:42,700
And and then just by walking, uh you're getting you know much more activity.

578
00:35:43,180 --> 00:35:46,060
It is true, people ask, is there a magic number?

579
00:35:46,670 --> 00:35:52,270
Your listeners probably maybe know that the 10,000 for 10,000 steps was sort of made up

580
00:35:53,230 --> 00:35:56,990
at the time for marketing reasons.

581
00:35:57,150 --> 00:36:01,950
But uh the Chamana tend to get about 17,000 steps a day.

582
00:36:02,350 --> 00:36:07,470
And you know, that's that is a bit tough to get with our everyday kind of

583
00:36:07,470 --> 00:36:08,430
lifestyle.

584
00:36:08,590 --> 00:36:11,070
Uh you have to work at it a little bit.

585
00:36:11,470 --> 00:36:15,420
But you know, at least some of the empirical studies seem to show there are kind of

586
00:36:15,420 --> 00:36:19,980
saturated benefits, you know, beyond 10,000 steps anyway.

587
00:36:20,140 --> 00:36:24,060
And so it's not like you have to get 17,000 steps.

588
00:36:24,220 --> 00:36:29,980
Uh, but I do think increasing our physical activity, uh, and not just in the

589
00:36:30,300 --> 00:36:36,110
you know, at the end of the weekend I go on, I go to the gym, but just

590
00:36:36,110 --> 00:36:41,150
incorporating it into everyday activities, walks around the block, um

591
00:36:43,390 --> 00:36:49,390
parking when you have to drive, you know, park in Isle of Vista, Dave, and then you have to

592
00:36:49,390 --> 00:36:52,510
walk all the way over, you know, to to campus.

593
00:36:53,070 --> 00:36:58,190
Although I always see you walking back and forth to to IV for for lunch like three or four

594
00:36:58,190 --> 00:36:58,910
times a day.

595
00:36:59,150 --> 00:37:02,270
So I think you're getting probably a decent number of stats.

596
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:07,880
Actually, it's interesting because I used to drive my son to preschool and now he's going

597
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:08,600
to elementary school.

598
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:13,640
And where I'm biking everywhere, I don't drive anymore to a first approximation, except for

599
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:14,280
grocery shopping.

600
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:16,120
And that's the way it used to be in Germany.

601
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:21,800
And I can say just sitting in the car for about a half hour to 40 minutes a day versus just

602
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:27,400
being on a bike, at least now that I'm, you know, in my mid forties, uh, it's a

603
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:28,600
enormous difference.

604
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:30,650
And that's not a marathon.

605
00:37:30,730 --> 00:37:36,410
That's not even, you know, it's um, you know, my my pulse is elevated, but um, but no,

606
00:37:36,570 --> 00:37:39,210
anecdotally, like just getting some activity.

607
00:37:39,370 --> 00:37:40,730
But it's also an example.

608
00:37:40,890 --> 00:37:43,130
I have a watch that tracks steps.

609
00:37:43,450 --> 00:37:47,850
And when I went back to Berlin, uh, where there's public transportation.

610
00:37:47,930 --> 00:37:50,970
So, you know, it's a 10-minute walk to the public transportation.

611
00:37:51,130 --> 00:37:53,290
Then you're on public transportation, but you're moving around.

612
00:37:53,370 --> 00:37:58,800
And then, you know, I was getting like easily 15,000, 17,000 steps here in Santa Barbara,

613
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:00,800
which is beautiful year-round weather.

614
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,440
Uh, you know, there's not a lot of places to walk to.

615
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:04,480
It's car culture.

616
00:38:04,560 --> 00:38:09,120
It's like institutionally, you know, it's like unpleasant to be a pedestrian in most places

617
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:14,480
in the US, unless you live in New York like David did, or in a city, um, you know, or if

618
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,160
you're like living in Europe or somewhere.

619
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:22,050
And so this also sounds like um uh institutional design of the

620
00:38:22,050 --> 00:38:27,570
environment situation where you have to make the environment walkable or pedestrian

621
00:38:27,650 --> 00:38:28,370
friendly.

622
00:38:28,530 --> 00:38:30,850
Um I think that's exactly right.

623
00:38:31,010 --> 00:38:36,930
And I think, you know, and even going b again, going back to our you know, putting

624
00:38:36,930 --> 00:38:40,840
all the blame on us, you know, that we lack willpower.

625
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:45,080
You know, why can't you just fit in a little bit more extra activity?

626
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:49,960
You know, where it seems to be going against all of our kind of impulses.

627
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:53,000
Uh that's really hard.

628
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:56,440
You know, there's gonna be some select few who are gonna be able to do it.

629
00:38:56,600 --> 00:39:00,760
But I do think, and and this is kind of the approach I have with with the book, is you

630
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:06,440
know, thinking about the the the the majority of folks that you know either don't have

631
00:39:06,610 --> 00:39:12,610
elite memberships to gyms or don't necessarily have a drive to want to

632
00:39:12,610 --> 00:39:18,450
be physically active all the time and and I mean pay so much

633
00:39:18,450 --> 00:39:23,010
attention to nutrition that you know you're obsessed with what you put in your body and all

634
00:39:23,010 --> 00:39:23,650
that stuff.

635
00:39:23,890 --> 00:39:28,850
And so this is where I really, yeah, strongly agree that we have to

636
00:39:29,170 --> 00:39:34,780
structure our communities in ways that the easier

637
00:39:34,780 --> 00:39:36,860
option is the healthier option.

638
00:39:37,580 --> 00:39:43,260
From the simplest things as like, you know, what's at eye level, you know, at the grocery

639
00:39:43,260 --> 00:39:49,100
store, to yeah, side put in a few sidewalks and bike lanes, and

640
00:39:49,260 --> 00:39:54,860
you can really instantly transform at a population level,

641
00:39:55,020 --> 00:39:57,260
community level, people's people's health.

642
00:39:57,420 --> 00:39:59,900
And there are initiatives to do this.

643
00:40:00,540 --> 00:40:02,540
Probably all heard about the blue zones.

644
00:40:02,690 --> 00:40:06,610
you know, there's like these blue zone communities where communities buy in.

645
00:40:06,690 --> 00:40:11,730
But as you can imagine, it's it's not it's not just local governments, it's it's local

646
00:40:11,730 --> 00:40:17,730
businesses, you know, you know, schools, uh across the board, you

647
00:40:17,730 --> 00:40:23,090
know, with transportation, everything to basically create a structured

648
00:40:23,090 --> 00:40:29,060
environment where the healthier alternatives, you know, particularly in in terms of diet,

649
00:40:29,380 --> 00:40:34,420
food, you know, and then of course you want to be able to walk outside and not inhale lots

650
00:40:34,420 --> 00:40:36,500
of pollution as well.

651
00:40:37,060 --> 00:40:39,940
And so that's again also pretty critical.

652
00:40:40,100 --> 00:40:45,620
But you know, some of the initial experiments with doing that, like in Minnesota, uh there

653
00:40:45,650 --> 00:40:51,490
was like a noticeable shift in people's BMI and people's cholesterol and

654
00:40:51,490 --> 00:40:52,690
blood pressure.

655
00:40:52,930 --> 00:40:58,370
And even if you were just thinking, you know, from the economic cost perspective, that

656
00:40:58,370 --> 00:41:03,250
level of prevention, you know, has huge cost savings writ large through the public health

657
00:41:03,250 --> 00:41:03,570
system.

658
00:41:03,890 --> 00:41:09,730
So I actually think that's it's it's the smart way to go thinking about the future, uh,

659
00:41:09,890 --> 00:41:15,250
as opposed to just thinking only about our health, but then this with this idea that, yeah,

660
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:18,480
but it's gonna be so expensive and there's all these trade-offs.

661
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:23,360
It's like, yeah, it is gonna be expensive, but it'll actually start paying for itself uh

662
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:25,680
through a lot of health cost savings.

663
00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:27,760
Right, yeah, pennywise and pound foolish.

664
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:32,080
And that's a really interesting, I mean, this is also where taking a scientific approach to

665
00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:33,760
humans is really interesting.

666
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:39,590
Cause what you're essentially saying, I think, is that it's almost an urban planning issue

667
00:41:40,230 --> 00:41:42,550
for uh our health, right?

668
00:41:42,710 --> 00:41:45,190
And that we're sort of not designing our environments.

669
00:41:45,350 --> 00:41:50,310
I mean, these environments were not designed at all for for thinking about sort of well,

670
00:41:50,390 --> 00:41:54,630
what is the person's experience or what's the like effect on their body was for for other

671
00:41:54,630 --> 00:41:54,950
issues.

672
00:41:55,030 --> 00:41:59,430
And of course those other issues matter, but like we can integrate those other concerns

673
00:41:59,590 --> 00:41:59,910
too.

674
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:00,880
Exactly.

675
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,920
And and and and certainly well beyond heart disease, right?

676
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:09,600
I mean, just think about you know any city that has green space for the and ones you know

677
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:10,960
that don't have any green space.

678
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:13,120
I mean it makes a a huge difference.

679
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:19,200
Uh you know being in parks and having that ability to just kind of unwind a little bit from

680
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:20,400
from the grind.

681
00:42:20,720 --> 00:42:21,520
Uh yeah.

682
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:27,390
So I think across the board for just living well, uh having

683
00:42:27,390 --> 00:42:32,750
walkable, livable communities that, yeah, are designed more for people, a little bit less

684
00:42:32,750 --> 00:42:35,630
for cars, uh, would be yeah.

685
00:42:36,350 --> 00:42:38,670
Yeah, and and there's a good example of taking an evolutionary approach.

686
00:42:38,750 --> 00:42:41,870
We talked about this earlier in the podcast, but we kind of got away from it.

687
00:42:41,950 --> 00:42:46,670
But it's sort of one of the themes has been uh if you understand human the design of the

688
00:42:46,670 --> 00:42:52,540
human phenotype, it it allows you to create a more humane uh context for people to

689
00:42:52,540 --> 00:42:54,540
be in, and this is a good example of that.

690
00:42:54,620 --> 00:42:59,020
It and not just health, but also just like well-being and feeling like, oh yeah, I feel

691
00:42:59,020 --> 00:43:02,220
comfortable and safe, and I'm not a grumpy asshole.

692
00:43:02,300 --> 00:43:03,660
Um, you know, yeah.

693
00:43:04,300 --> 00:43:04,620
Yeah.

694
00:43:04,860 --> 00:43:10,780
Well, and that's yeah, so a whole other kind of big chunk of the book is is

695
00:43:10,780 --> 00:43:14,300
about the quality of life and not just the quantity of life.

696
00:43:14,620 --> 00:43:20,350
Uh, and so and that's where you know the the the thing I mentioned about sort of a

697
00:43:20,350 --> 00:43:26,030
rethink about you know what are the roles of older adults and and and again

698
00:43:26,190 --> 00:43:31,950
thinking about hunter-gatherers, you know, there's no such thing as retirement, right?

699
00:43:32,190 --> 00:43:37,550
That's something that was like literally, you know, invented, a formal retirement.

700
00:43:37,870 --> 00:43:43,360
Uh and not to say that people's activities don't shift over the life course.

701
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:44,880
I mean, of course they do.

702
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,720
Uh and it's true that even some people will no longer hunt, for example.

703
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:54,480
I know plenty of older men that no longer hunt, uh, but they still might do some farming.

704
00:43:54,800 --> 00:43:59,840
Um, and even the ones that don't do the more difficult aspects of farming, like chopping

705
00:43:59,840 --> 00:44:04,450
down big trees, they still go out there with a little machete and clear some of the

706
00:44:04,450 --> 00:44:05,170
underbrush.

707
00:44:05,330 --> 00:44:09,170
And even the ones who don't do that will at least help with the harvest or help with the

708
00:44:09,170 --> 00:44:09,650
burning.

709
00:44:09,810 --> 00:44:12,370
So there's still economic contributions.

710
00:44:12,850 --> 00:44:18,130
And then, of course, there's contributions across so many different other domains of family

711
00:44:18,130 --> 00:44:19,490
and community life.

712
00:44:19,730 --> 00:44:24,850
You know, from your advisors, your leaders, your shamans, uh

713
00:44:25,620 --> 00:44:29,060
conflict mediators, your lawyers essentially.

714
00:44:29,780 --> 00:44:35,780
There's so many different ways that uh you know we humans with our

715
00:44:35,780 --> 00:44:41,300
big brains, you know, make themselves useful uh in later ages.

716
00:44:41,540 --> 00:44:46,580
Um and so that kind of reshift uh happens,

717
00:44:47,330 --> 00:44:51,970
but it's it's not a quick just flipping off the switch, you know, and and if we're so

718
00:44:51,970 --> 00:44:55,810
career oriented and then all of a sudden you just flip off the switch from your career,

719
00:44:55,970 --> 00:44:57,250
it's like what's left?

720
00:44:57,410 --> 00:45:01,250
You know, you invested so much in your career that you didn't have a chance to invest in

721
00:45:01,250 --> 00:45:02,050
your community.

722
00:45:02,290 --> 00:45:05,090
You had kids, but your kids are grown and left.

723
00:45:05,250 --> 00:45:09,170
Uh so you're not inter you know dispersed with that community anymore.

724
00:45:09,330 --> 00:45:14,400
And so then it's like this big gulf, you know, and many, many more of us now, especially

725
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,360
we're having fewer kids, we live alone.

726
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:23,440
So now we're seeing, you know, uh just a a a big shift in

727
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:29,360
the social structure and just the approach that people are thinking about and you know what

728
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,360
do they want out of those later years.

729
00:45:31,520 --> 00:45:37,440
And so this is where I do think, you know, actually some of these ideas, um, you

730
00:45:37,470 --> 00:45:43,070
know, with like so many things, you know, come back to uh tube and

731
00:45:43,150 --> 00:45:48,590
cosmides, um that one paper of theirs on the banker's paradox,

732
00:45:49,070 --> 00:45:54,590
uh, you know, in some ways it inspired a paper I wrote 20 years ago uh

733
00:45:54,910 --> 00:46:00,910
about hunter-gatherers and food sharing and how you know making it so that others will care

734
00:46:00,910 --> 00:46:05,870
for you when you're sick or injured, not just out of the generosity of their heart, but

735
00:46:05,870 --> 00:46:10,920
because if you're not there to be kind of productive and useful, then they themselves will

736
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:11,560
actually suffer.

737
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:13,560
So it's in their interest to help you.

738
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:19,000
So and it's a similar kind of a logic, I think, with at late ages.

739
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:23,080
If you're if you're shifting and you're retiring, and all of a sudden you're, you know,

740
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:27,720
you're part of these embedded, you know, communities where you're doing a lot and

741
00:46:27,720 --> 00:46:28,760
contributing.

742
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:34,590
And if you all of a sudden you're not contributing, Okay, people might love you and have

743
00:46:34,590 --> 00:46:39,950
compassion for you and might help you a little bit, but up to what point?

744
00:46:40,110 --> 00:46:45,950
You know, up to what level of need are people going to still um watch

745
00:46:45,950 --> 00:46:46,430
over you?

746
00:46:46,590 --> 00:46:50,910
And especially when they have they themselves might have seven kids.

747
00:46:51,150 --> 00:46:56,350
Uh, and so there's a lot of competing demand on people's time and resources.

748
00:46:57,360 --> 00:47:03,280
So I do think even in you know hunter-gatherer societies, there is this sort of impetus to

749
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:08,800
you know think about what you should be doing with your life and how you should you be

750
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:13,520
using your time in ways that others see as value added.

751
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:18,890
And what's amazing is that the same ideas apply in our society, right?

752
00:47:19,050 --> 00:47:21,290
No one wants to feel like they're a burden, right?

753
00:47:21,370 --> 00:47:25,130
It's like the number one thing older people say to their kid, I don't want to be a burden.

754
00:47:25,370 --> 00:47:31,210
Um, and and so even though, like, all else equal, if you're

755
00:47:31,210 --> 00:47:34,250
receiving and not giving, whoa, isn't that great?

756
00:47:34,570 --> 00:47:38,890
It's like, no, you're you're in a position where in fact we even found this.

757
00:47:39,050 --> 00:47:43,690
If you're in a position where you're kind of a net giver, net your your net transfers to

758
00:47:43,690 --> 00:47:49,340
people is positive, you're way happier with your life than if you're in the position where

759
00:47:49,340 --> 00:47:52,300
you're receiving more than you're giving out.

760
00:47:52,780 --> 00:47:58,460
Um and so I do think even in the case where you know we we don't

761
00:47:58,460 --> 00:48:04,300
necessarily need a community to survive, our minds are still shaped in a way that

762
00:48:04,300 --> 00:48:08,940
we even though I have all my economic needs met, I still feel like I need a community.

763
00:48:09,100 --> 00:48:14,770
I still feel like I need others to need me and to belong

764
00:48:14,930 --> 00:48:20,690
to someone, uh to others in a in a substantial way.

765
00:48:20,850 --> 00:48:26,610
And so I think taking all those ideas to heart really

766
00:48:26,850 --> 00:48:31,090
forces a kind of a rethink of what should retirement look like?

767
00:48:31,330 --> 00:48:32,530
Should there be retirement?

768
00:48:32,690 --> 00:48:36,210
Should there be partial retirement, phased-out retirements?

769
00:48:36,450 --> 00:48:40,880
You know, there's already conversations like this all over the place uh, and you know,

770
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:45,760
fierce pushbacks like in France, you know, just changing it by a couple years and massive

771
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:46,640
protests.

772
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:52,320
Uh, you know, and and some of that is even just based on the fact that, well, maybe a

773
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:58,080
65-year-old today is sort of as healthy as you know an

774
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:00,800
83-year-old, you know, back in the past.

775
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:06,890
And so once you're 65, maybe you could continue working until you're 68

776
00:49:07,770 --> 00:49:09,130
and then retire.

777
00:49:09,290 --> 00:49:11,530
So there's that whole element of the conversation.

778
00:49:11,690 --> 00:49:17,450
But there's also just you know, there's now, you know, these sort of subcultures

779
00:49:17,450 --> 00:49:23,130
of thinking about you know your these encore years and shifting from your first career to

780
00:49:23,130 --> 00:49:25,370
your second career, your third career.

781
00:49:25,610 --> 00:49:31,400
Uh, and that, and because we are living long enough, you know, it's not like your life

782
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:31,880
is over.

783
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:34,040
You can and those are like reboots.

784
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:39,880
Like I've always wanted to write poetry, but I, you know, I had to pay for,

785
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:43,640
you know, the bills and and support my family growing up.

786
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,360
And so, you know, I was just doing business.

787
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:47,960
And now I can do poetry.

788
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,120
Now I can do community theater.

789
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,080
Uh and so there's all those possibilities as well.

790
00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:58,350
But you know, I think one kind of core element to all of that seems to be the social

791
00:49:58,590 --> 00:49:59,630
relevance, right?

792
00:49:59,790 --> 00:50:04,190
It's usually not like now I can finally make tons of money, you know, with crypto coin.

793
00:50:04,350 --> 00:50:04,590
No.

794
00:50:04,670 --> 00:50:09,310
It's like it usually involves some aspect of of contributing.

795
00:50:09,630 --> 00:50:15,310
You know, the what is it you psychologists call uh generativity?

796
00:50:15,550 --> 00:50:17,230
The you know the Ericsson.

797
00:50:17,710 --> 00:50:18,270
Yeah, I don't know.

798
00:50:18,350 --> 00:50:21,150
We wouldn't we're Dave and I are like the last people who invent that.

799
00:50:21,230 --> 00:50:21,390
Yeah.

800
00:50:21,470 --> 00:50:21,550
Yeah.

801
00:50:21,870 --> 00:50:24,830
Yeah, that's the last that's not the psychic kind of psychology word to it.

802
00:50:25,310 --> 00:50:27,760
We don't talk about that kind of psychology on the podcast.

803
00:50:34,240 --> 00:50:36,160
Oh, that's I think that's the Maslow stuff.

804
00:50:36,240 --> 00:50:36,320
Yeah.

805
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:41,200
It has an interesting history in Southern California hippie movements, but anyway, yeah,

806
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:41,600
Erlin.

807
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:43,200
Yeah.

808
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:48,960
Well, anyway, that that was I guess going back to that original question about lessons and

809
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:54,570
and rethinking and sort of harnessing what we know and have learned

810
00:50:54,890 --> 00:51:00,890
about how we've lived over most of revolutionary history can be insightful when we think

811
00:51:00,890 --> 00:51:06,650
about whether it's something like a heart disease, like heart disease, versus even

812
00:51:06,730 --> 00:51:12,410
just our our general well-being and thinking about how to spend our later years.

813
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:13,560
Yeah.

814
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:18,920
I think that's a really important and and beautiful insight that we evolved to not want to

815
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:24,920
be a burden on others, that we that we really uh fear and loathe uh a situation

816
00:51:24,920 --> 00:51:28,840
where we are taking in uh more than we are giving out.

817
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:34,840
Um and we really uh value and appreciate situations where we are giving out more than we're

818
00:51:34,870 --> 00:51:35,750
taking in.

819
00:51:35,830 --> 00:51:41,110
Uh and it makes you know uh very clear uh evolutionary logic that if you're in a place

820
00:51:41,110 --> 00:51:45,190
where you're receiving more than you're giving, well that's that's a really bad place to be

821
00:51:45,190 --> 00:51:47,430
in uh from an evolutionary perspective.

822
00:51:47,590 --> 00:51:52,790
Uh that means that you you are you know if there's a famine or or or a flood or or or or a

823
00:51:52,790 --> 00:51:55,510
drought or whatever, uh you're gonna be the first to go.

824
00:51:55,660 --> 00:51:59,500
Uh, and that's not where you want to be uh uh from a Darwinian perspective.

825
00:51:59,580 --> 00:52:03,340
Uh for the and for the same reason, the opposite end of the continuum, where you are a a

826
00:52:03,340 --> 00:52:07,580
vital resource to the community, where you're really valuable in providing crucial uh

827
00:52:07,580 --> 00:52:11,500
knowledge and services, that's a really good place to be uh from an evolutionary

828
00:52:11,500 --> 00:52:11,740
perspective.

829
00:52:11,900 --> 00:52:17,500
So it makes uh really uh a beautiful sense that we would have this kind of psychology.

830
00:52:17,660 --> 00:52:21,530
Um, And I think it's an important point for people studying the psychology of well-being

831
00:52:21,530 --> 00:52:25,850
and what we ought to expect to be correlated with psychological well-being.

832
00:52:27,050 --> 00:52:32,810
That said, I think I might have a bit more of a pessimistic take on the ability

833
00:52:32,810 --> 00:52:38,570
of us to continue to be valuable contributors into old

834
00:52:38,570 --> 00:52:38,970
age.

835
00:52:39,210 --> 00:52:43,930
I think there is something about the structure of our society that is preventing that from

836
00:52:43,930 --> 00:52:44,650
happening.

837
00:52:45,130 --> 00:52:50,920
I think our culture is changing way more rapidly than it has changed in ancestral

838
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:51,480
environments.

839
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:56,920
And I think the type of the types of knowledge that are valuable to others have become way

840
00:52:56,920 --> 00:53:01,480
more specialized and niche fied uh than than they would have been in ancestral

841
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:02,200
environments.

842
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:08,120
So if I'm getting to old age now, uh the lessons and insights that I acquired during my

843
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:12,630
youth are in all likelihood not going to be relevant to my children and grandchildren.

844
00:53:12,710 --> 00:53:14,070
They're going to be out of date.

845
00:53:14,310 --> 00:53:18,950
The software I learned when I was a young person is probably going to be updated.

846
00:53:19,030 --> 00:53:20,950
And there are different kinds of software now.

847
00:53:21,030 --> 00:53:23,190
They're going to be di society will be different.

848
00:53:23,510 --> 00:53:26,870
Even the career I'm in, you know, my my dad's a lawyer.

849
00:53:28,710 --> 00:53:33,990
His advice for how to be a good lawyer might not translate into being a good evolutionary

850
00:53:33,990 --> 00:53:34,630
psychologist.

851
00:53:34,790 --> 00:53:40,390
There are just non transferable knowledge between different domains of specialization.

852
00:53:40,550 --> 00:53:45,980
And uh even within his own uh realm of being a lawyer, I'm sure a lot of his knowledge and

853
00:53:45,980 --> 00:53:51,260
insight uh that was valuable when he was a young man, uh, is probably not as applicable to

854
00:53:51,260 --> 00:53:55,100
uh young lawyers entering the profession today because we live in a very different legal

855
00:53:55,100 --> 00:53:56,940
environment, a very different cultural environment.

856
00:53:57,100 --> 00:54:01,260
We have the internet and social media, which has changed our society in innumerable ways.

857
00:54:01,420 --> 00:54:04,060
We have AIs that can write uh legal briefings now.

858
00:54:04,220 --> 00:54:06,910
So it's a completely different environment.

859
00:54:07,390 --> 00:54:13,150
And so I think we're living in an age where uh our elders have never been uh

860
00:54:13,470 --> 00:54:14,830
so worthless.

861
00:54:15,070 --> 00:54:20,350
Um I think we're at we're at peak uh

862
00:54:20,510 --> 00:54:21,950
elders being useless.

863
00:54:22,110 --> 00:54:26,830
Oh okay, boomer, that mentality uh uh really makes sense in terms of if you think about the

864
00:54:26,830 --> 00:54:28,270
economic structure of our society.

865
00:54:28,350 --> 00:54:33,620
And it's really unprecedented because uh as far as I'm aware, in most small-scale hunter,

866
00:54:33,700 --> 00:54:39,620
forager, horticultural societies, elders tend to receive a lot of respect and reverence and

867
00:54:39,620 --> 00:54:42,420
they're looked to for wisdom and knowledge.

868
00:54:42,580 --> 00:54:44,500
In our society, it's quite the opposite.

869
00:54:44,580 --> 00:54:47,460
Uh uh old people are often ignored, dismissed.

870
00:54:47,540 --> 00:54:49,300
There's the okay boomer mentality.

871
00:54:49,380 --> 00:54:53,940
We're much more obsessed and excited by youth and what the young people are doing, and

872
00:54:53,940 --> 00:54:56,610
young young people are cool, and old people are not.

873
00:54:56,690 --> 00:55:00,290
Um it's a very different, unprecedented environment that we're living in.

874
00:55:00,370 --> 00:55:05,810
And I don't see a lot of ways to to really change that without completely overhauling our

875
00:55:05,810 --> 00:55:06,530
economic system.

876
00:55:06,770 --> 00:55:08,930
So what do you think about that pessimistic take?

877
00:55:10,130 --> 00:55:12,130
Um well thanks for that question.

878
00:55:12,210 --> 00:55:18,130
I actually think that's uh a a a perfect representation I think what I think a lot

879
00:55:18,130 --> 00:55:20,130
of people might might think.

880
00:55:20,530 --> 00:55:25,220
Um and I have yeah, a number of responses.

881
00:55:25,460 --> 00:55:30,660
F first of all, even in hunter-gatherers society and from the ethnographic literature, in

882
00:55:30,660 --> 00:55:36,660
almost every society, you see some elements of yeah, respect and honor for the elderly, at

883
00:55:36,660 --> 00:55:39,460
the same time that you see sometimes poor treatment of the elderly.

884
00:55:39,540 --> 00:55:45,140
Just like in our society, we kind of think about old age as prestige and

885
00:55:45,460 --> 00:55:51,050
honor, but then youth-oriented, you know, how do people actually get treated?

886
00:55:51,210 --> 00:55:55,530
So I think that sort of dichotomy has always sort of existed.

887
00:55:55,770 --> 00:56:00,090
And that age itself doesn't necessarily get you anything.

888
00:56:00,810 --> 00:56:05,850
Going back to this idea about being useful, you know, it's easy to focus on, you know, the

889
00:56:05,850 --> 00:56:10,940
world leaders who are all, you know, the average age of a world president, you know,

890
00:56:11,100 --> 00:56:14,140
country president is like 62 right now.

891
00:56:14,300 --> 00:56:16,140
So, and and that's an average.

892
00:56:16,220 --> 00:56:21,020
So there's you know, some that are you know much older than that, but that they might not

893
00:56:21,020 --> 00:56:23,420
represent everyone in their age class, right?

894
00:56:23,980 --> 00:56:29,740
And so I do think going back to this idea about okay, how

895
00:56:29,740 --> 00:56:32,220
can one be valuable and useful?

896
00:56:32,460 --> 00:56:36,780
Uh, and so even in hunter-gather societies, there is a point.

897
00:56:37,100 --> 00:56:40,870
You know, in fact, maybe in the evolutionary world, because we're used to thinking about

898
00:56:40,870 --> 00:56:45,510
the grandmother hypothesis and these other ways that we can be adaptively, you know,

899
00:56:45,670 --> 00:56:51,590
indirectly reproducing through through care and other forms of of trans resource transfers

900
00:56:51,590 --> 00:56:52,150
and such.

901
00:56:52,310 --> 00:56:57,350
Uh, but even with those arguments, remember there there's got to be a point at which your

902
00:56:57,350 --> 00:57:00,070
net transfers are zero, right?

903
00:57:00,310 --> 00:57:06,220
And that's when if you're still alive, you're probably not going to be alive for very much

904
00:57:06,220 --> 00:57:06,620
longer.

905
00:57:06,780 --> 00:57:12,140
And there's various ways that people go from being alive to not being alive.

906
00:57:12,300 --> 00:57:16,620
Uh, and some of it includes actually direct geronticide.

907
00:57:16,780 --> 00:57:17,100
Right?

908
00:57:17,260 --> 00:57:22,940
So, in a from our cultural context, you know, murdering old people doesn't seem

909
00:57:22,940 --> 00:57:27,420
compatible with respect and honor uh of the elderly.

910
00:57:27,580 --> 00:57:32,380
But in the actual context in which it occurs, it's actually, you know, a deeply personal

911
00:57:33,010 --> 00:57:33,810
experience.

912
00:57:34,370 --> 00:57:38,850
It's basically some of the same issues that we're dealing with now with euthanasia, and at

913
00:57:38,850 --> 00:57:41,170
what point is enough enough.

914
00:57:41,890 --> 00:57:44,210
And not just with terminal illness, right?

915
00:57:44,370 --> 00:57:48,770
But thinking about, you know, okay, I'm done.

916
00:57:50,290 --> 00:57:56,050
So I think there is that element that has existed even in hunter and gathering contexts.

917
00:57:56,370 --> 00:58:01,650
And then the next step of what I would say is there is a difference between

918
00:58:02,580 --> 00:58:07,460
Thinking about people in their 90s and thinking about people even in their 60s.

919
00:58:07,700 --> 00:58:11,300
Because from what you're saying, my kids already think I'm old.

920
00:58:11,780 --> 00:58:16,820
Uh what is my my son was trying to trick me into doing a six-seven thing.

921
00:58:17,140 --> 00:58:18,020
Uh right.

922
00:58:18,260 --> 00:58:20,100
See, Dave doesn't even know it yet.

923
00:58:20,340 --> 00:58:23,620
Your kid, if your kid was a little bit older, you would know that, right?

924
00:58:23,700 --> 00:58:26,420
And so you're already obsolete in your 40s.

925
00:58:26,500 --> 00:58:32,490
And which is true, taking it to the extreme, it's not just the elderly who are o

926
00:58:32,490 --> 00:58:35,370
obsolete, but you know, we're obsolete by age 30, you know.

927
00:58:35,530 --> 00:58:40,650
And but I I I think um Right.

928
00:58:40,730 --> 00:58:45,770
And so it's true that the the rate of population growth is highest at some of those latest

929
00:58:45,770 --> 00:58:51,210
ages, but uh just in terms of sheer numbers, the biggest chunk of like

930
00:58:51,500 --> 00:58:55,820
elder population is going to be in that young old category.

931
00:58:55,980 --> 00:58:56,300
Right.

932
00:58:56,380 --> 00:58:58,620
So like like 50, 75.

933
00:58:59,180 --> 00:59:04,540
And that's the that's still the age range that even in hunter-gatherers, people are

934
00:59:04,540 --> 00:59:08,380
contributing uh in valuable ways, right?

935
00:59:08,460 --> 00:59:13,820
And so so I'm not really talking about you know the people who are 95 need to kind of get

936
00:59:13,820 --> 00:59:19,450
out there and and make a difference, you know, and it's true that that that aspect

937
00:59:19,450 --> 00:59:24,650
still might carry more burden than benefit, you know, that of course will depend on a whole

938
00:59:24,650 --> 00:59:25,530
bunch of factors.

939
00:59:25,690 --> 00:59:29,610
But it's not like everyone 60 and up is going to be all burdened.

940
00:59:29,770 --> 00:59:32,810
So there's that element too, that I do think the ages matter.

941
00:59:32,890 --> 00:59:36,330
And so the kinds of things a sixty year old can do might be very different than what a

942
00:59:36,330 --> 00:59:39,610
ninety year old can do, given how we live today.

943
00:59:40,170 --> 00:59:46,160
And then the final point about all of that, yes, society is changing super rapidly, and

944
00:59:46,400 --> 00:59:49,200
you know, knowledge becomes obsolete very rapidly.

945
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:55,200
But I think there's certain skills that even in the with ChatGPT

946
00:59:55,200 --> 01:00:00,880
and Wikipedia and you know rapidly changing norms and fads, that

947
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:05,120
a little bit of wisdom and experience are just very valuable.

948
01:00:05,570 --> 01:00:11,090
Um and you know, from just simple advice, you know, to say your

949
01:00:11,090 --> 01:00:15,570
grandchildren, uh, to even, you know, there's been sort of a, I don't know if we call it a

950
01:00:15,570 --> 01:00:20,770
movement, but you know, Chip Connolly and others sort of harness this idea that, yeah,

951
01:00:21,010 --> 01:00:24,530
older people have a lot to contribute, but they can't do it by themselves.

952
01:00:24,770 --> 01:00:30,690
So bring them in as partners, working with some of the young folks who have

953
01:00:30,850 --> 01:00:36,780
you know much more recent knowledge about say technology and the way things are working

954
01:00:36,780 --> 01:00:42,700
today, combined with some of the wisdom and experience of older folks, and then all of

955
01:00:42,700 --> 01:00:45,260
a sudden, you know, it can make a huge difference.

956
01:00:45,420 --> 01:00:48,780
I mean, just even think about you know some of your academic advisors.

957
01:00:49,020 --> 01:00:54,540
The academic climate today is a lot more competitive than when our advisors, you know, just

958
01:00:54,700 --> 01:01:00,270
whenever they thought they would just like go onto the market and get a job and and but

959
01:01:00,590 --> 01:01:04,510
you wouldn't probably say that your advisors still have nothing to contribute given that

960
01:01:04,510 --> 01:01:06,190
the academic market has shifted.

961
01:01:06,350 --> 01:01:11,550
There's still a lot of wisdom and experience when it comes to the day-to-day type things.

962
01:01:11,790 --> 01:01:17,550
So I think we just need to be kind of creative and and create those niches where there

963
01:01:17,550 --> 01:01:23,360
are still some contributions, but we can't necessarily expect the same exact

964
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:29,360
contributions that we would expect probably from people in their 20s and 30s as we might

965
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:31,920
expect for people in their 70s.

966
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:34,320
Does that does that make sense?

967
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:40,000
So you know, I I still think at the end of the day, and there's been a lot of

968
01:01:40,640 --> 01:01:46,480
increasing activity towards even just like mentorship programs and and things that,

969
01:01:46,870 --> 01:01:49,030
you know, trying to kill two birds, one stone.

970
01:01:49,190 --> 01:01:54,950
There's still plenty of literacy and you know, wayward youth that that you know will get

971
01:01:54,950 --> 01:01:56,070
themselves into trouble.

972
01:01:56,150 --> 01:02:01,510
And then they're partnered with older adults, kind of mentorship programs, uh, kind of like

973
01:02:01,510 --> 01:02:06,870
big brother, big sister, but with older adults that you know not only reduces loneliness in

974
01:02:06,870 --> 01:02:10,630
older adults and gives them a sense of meaning and purpose by contributing to their

975
01:02:10,630 --> 01:02:16,600
community, but you're also you know, preventing future crime, you're improving literacy,

976
01:02:16,840 --> 01:02:19,240
improving their job prospects down the road.

977
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:22,120
And those those types of arrangements are win-win.

978
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:28,440
And but the better thing, even better, would be like, well, is that only a volunteer thing?

979
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:33,240
Like, I still need to eat, you know, and I can't rely on my social security and I don't

980
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:33,880
have savings.

981
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:39,960
And so, right, can we create a system where there it's not necessarily for

982
01:02:39,960 --> 01:02:45,570
free, uh, but that these things are monetized, there's you know exchange economy.

983
01:02:45,890 --> 01:02:51,810
Uh I I just think we haven't really been thinking about those things as

984
01:02:51,810 --> 01:02:57,170
much, nearly as much, as what's the numerical breakthrough that's going to extend my life

985
01:02:57,170 --> 01:02:59,570
to 150 years of age.

986
01:02:59,810 --> 01:03:05,620
And so, yeah, I guess I would say part of the shift of this book by looking back, it's

987
01:03:05,700 --> 01:03:09,620
it's it's a way of looking forward, but but focusing on different things.

988
01:03:09,860 --> 01:03:15,860
Maybe we're gonna live to 150 um through you know other folks doing their

989
01:03:15,860 --> 01:03:18,580
work, but that's not happening anytime soon.

990
01:03:18,900 --> 01:03:24,660
And given the world we do live in, how can we kind of maximize not just quantity but the

991
01:03:24,660 --> 01:03:26,180
quality of life?

992
01:03:26,340 --> 01:03:31,650
And and part of the I think the important bit too is that no one's really just

993
01:03:31,650 --> 01:03:33,570
altruistic towards older people.

994
01:03:33,890 --> 01:03:34,130
Right.

995
01:03:34,290 --> 01:03:39,090
But but the idea is that by integrating older people, you're actually helping everybody of

996
01:03:39,090 --> 01:03:39,970
all ages.

997
01:03:40,290 --> 01:03:42,450
And and th that's the idea.

998
01:03:43,570 --> 01:03:44,370
Yeah, I like that.

999
01:03:44,450 --> 01:03:49,890
It's you're finding the value in people and respecting it them, and it's not a

1000
01:03:49,890 --> 01:03:54,520
handout in the same way you said, you know, people won't want to feel like they're actually

1001
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:54,920
contributing.

1002
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:55,960
I agree with David too.

1003
01:03:56,040 --> 01:04:00,760
I think that's really profound because there's a lot of sort of rhetoric about we have to

1004
01:04:00,760 --> 01:04:06,520
really be careful about the moral hazard of giving anything to anybody because left

1005
01:04:06,520 --> 01:04:10,120
unchecked, people will just want to be sponges.

1006
01:04:10,760 --> 01:04:15,080
Um and it sounds like what you're saying is that um that

1007
01:04:16,470 --> 01:04:21,830
and that that that that view is often framed as sort of like a uh a very steel,

1008
01:04:21,990 --> 01:04:27,110
open-eyed, sort of no no Pollyanna view of human nature, right?

1009
01:04:27,190 --> 01:04:32,230
Where like people will just free ride the hell out of things, and it's actually human

1010
01:04:32,230 --> 01:04:32,470
nature.

1011
01:04:32,630 --> 01:04:38,070
And and it sounds like what you're saying is um that's that is an oversimplification.

1012
01:04:38,150 --> 01:04:40,470
And in fact, people want to feel like they're contributing.

1013
01:04:40,870 --> 01:04:41,350
Exactly.

1014
01:04:41,510 --> 01:04:45,000
You know, and there's always gonna be some small percentage of that.

1015
01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:50,200
But but that's easy to contain when you have the vast majority, you know, paying their

1016
01:04:50,200 --> 01:04:54,280
taxes, basically, uh in in in a variety of different ways.

1017
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:58,520
And and from so much of what you know studies that have been done, we do know that people

1018
01:04:58,520 --> 01:05:01,320
want to do more, but there's always obstacles.

1019
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:05,160
Like I live, like I live in a place and I can't get to the elementary school.

1020
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:06,760
How am I gonna I can't drive anymore?

1021
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:08,280
How am I actually gonna get there?

1022
01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:13,710
And so again, this becomes goes back to the urban planning elements of you know you know

1023
01:05:13,710 --> 01:05:18,510
how many people that are with you know with with big house older people with big empty

1024
01:05:18,510 --> 01:05:22,190
houses and then you have all these like college students that can't find a place to live.

1025
01:05:22,430 --> 01:05:22,670
Exactly.

1026
01:05:22,990 --> 01:05:25,470
It's like you know put the peanut butter with the chocolate.

1027
01:05:25,710 --> 01:05:25,870
Yeah.

1028
01:05:25,950 --> 01:05:27,150
It's a coordination problem.

1029
01:05:27,230 --> 01:05:28,350
It's a coordination problem.

1030
01:05:28,430 --> 01:05:28,750
Yeah.

1031
01:05:29,070 --> 01:05:29,710
Yeah.

1032
01:05:30,660 --> 01:05:36,500
But I think just having those conversations and brainstorming those things and le is a

1033
01:05:36,500 --> 01:05:39,620
first step for really trying to help kind of implement that.

1034
01:05:39,780 --> 01:05:45,620
And that that's what I'm hoping uh happens with with

1035
01:05:45,860 --> 01:05:50,260
well, not just with the book, but you know, as we kind of move forward.

1036
01:05:50,580 --> 01:05:52,470
Um yeah.

1037
01:05:52,870 --> 01:05:57,190
Well, you at the beginning of the episode, you mentioned um a really interesting and

1038
01:05:57,190 --> 01:06:03,190
profound fact about the difference between modern uh civilization and and what we see in

1039
01:06:03,190 --> 01:06:08,630
small-scale hunter, forager, horticulturalist societies, which is that fertility has gone

1040
01:06:08,630 --> 01:06:11,030
down quite a bit uh in the modern world.

1041
01:06:11,190 --> 01:06:15,270
Um and you you talked about, you know, the the pyramidal structure of society where, you

1042
01:06:15,270 --> 01:06:18,790
know, it used to be that um there were relatively few old people and and lots of young

1043
01:06:18,790 --> 01:06:20,310
people because fertility was so high.

1044
01:06:20,540 --> 01:06:25,420
But now we have more of a cylindrical or tower-like structure where there's evenly

1045
01:06:25,420 --> 01:06:28,860
distributed numbers of old people and young people because we're just not having as many

1046
01:06:28,860 --> 01:06:29,340
kids.

1047
01:06:29,500 --> 01:06:35,260
And from a Darwinian perspective, this is a really huge and important puzzle because you

1048
01:06:35,260 --> 01:06:39,420
might expect the opposite from an evolutionary perspective, that in times of unprecedented

1049
01:06:39,420 --> 01:06:44,140
wealth and abundance, you would expect fertility to boom, that we would be having more

1050
01:06:44,140 --> 01:06:44,540
kids.

1051
01:06:44,700 --> 01:06:46,550
And yet the opposite has happened.

1052
01:06:46,630 --> 01:06:50,470
And you know, there's been tons of you know empirical and theoretical work on this.

1053
01:06:50,550 --> 01:06:53,910
It's known as the demographic transition, it's sometimes called a paradox.

1054
01:06:54,310 --> 01:07:00,230
Um, so I'm curious, uh, given your knowledge of human development,

1055
01:07:00,390 --> 01:07:05,910
human life history, human psychology, human health, uh, do you have a take on on this uh

1056
01:07:06,150 --> 01:07:09,270
profound change uh in human population structure?

1057
01:07:09,590 --> 01:07:12,150
Is there a particular theoretical approach that you favor?

1058
01:07:12,470 --> 01:07:15,990
Uh uh what is what is your take on this question?

1059
01:07:24,480 --> 01:07:30,320
I guess you know these days now you know

1060
01:07:30,400 --> 01:07:35,040
we've shifted from you know worries about the population bomb and the population boom and

1061
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:37,120
to you know population collapse, right?

1062
01:07:37,200 --> 01:07:42,730
And so we're starting to see uh you know, a lot of you know

1063
01:07:42,970 --> 01:07:48,730
op-eds you know about this kind of thing, and of course the Elon

1064
01:07:48,890 --> 01:07:51,210
Musk's trying to you know do their part.

1065
01:07:51,610 --> 01:07:57,530
Uh and you know, I think um

1066
01:07:58,970 --> 01:08:04,090
well, on one level, the the fact that you have a population pyramid like this, you know,

1067
01:08:04,250 --> 01:08:09,700
probably never before in history have we had this many generations sort of coexistent,

1068
01:08:09,940 --> 01:08:11,700
which which is kind of cool.

1069
01:08:11,940 --> 01:08:13,860
Like, wow, what are all the potential?

1070
01:08:13,940 --> 01:08:17,940
So it's not even just like grandparents with kids, it's like great grandparents, you know,

1071
01:08:18,260 --> 01:08:20,420
great great grandparents potentially.

1072
01:08:20,980 --> 01:08:25,220
So so that's kind of wild in terms of thinking about those possibilities.

1073
01:08:25,460 --> 01:08:30,010
Um, you know, there's economists and others who've kind of been working on, you know,

1074
01:08:30,170 --> 01:08:32,330
should we be as panicked as we are?

1075
01:08:32,570 --> 01:08:35,610
Uh are we just being selfish by not wanting kids?

1076
01:08:35,850 --> 01:08:39,370
You know, I have a I have a colleague who thinks we're selfish if we do want kids because

1077
01:08:39,370 --> 01:08:41,370
of you know r equals point five.

1078
01:08:41,530 --> 01:08:45,770
I was like, clearly that person's never had a kid because you know.

1079
01:08:45,930 --> 01:08:51,680
Um but you know, I I do think you know,

1080
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:56,800
it's an older idea within sort of the evolutionary perspectives on

1081
01:08:57,600 --> 01:08:59,520
the demographic transition, right?

1082
01:08:59,680 --> 01:09:05,360
That we're not just built to kind of maximize the total number of babies, right?

1083
01:09:05,520 --> 01:09:11,200
But but in terms of you know maximizing our sort of genetic income stream,

1084
01:09:11,520 --> 01:09:17,510
uh you know, it is the you know is it the case, or at least psychologically,

1085
01:09:17,830 --> 01:09:23,670
that we feel that we need to provide in a certain way uh for kids?

1086
01:09:24,230 --> 01:09:30,070
And so we're we don't seem to be hitting that diminishing returns on on the

1087
01:09:30,070 --> 01:09:31,830
few kids that we do have.

1088
01:09:32,150 --> 01:09:32,550
Right?

1089
01:09:32,710 --> 01:09:37,190
So if we were, then you'd hit diminishing returns and you'd have another child.

1090
01:09:37,350 --> 01:09:43,160
Uh but you know, coupled with the fact that it takes a whole bunch, you know, like alpha in

1091
01:09:43,160 --> 01:09:49,080
the evolutionary models, like the age of first pre first birth, uh, you know, that's

1092
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:52,440
sort of the shift from growth to reproduction, right?

1093
01:09:52,520 --> 01:09:58,200
But but for us now, I mean, if if that's happening at age 30, right, that's clearly beyond

1094
01:09:58,200 --> 01:09:59,480
just somatic growth.

1095
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:05,160
That's you know, all that human capital in our brain, you know, to the point where you are

1096
01:10:05,160 --> 01:10:10,920
sort of economically somewhat independent, uh, and then all of a sudden now you're

1097
01:10:11,310 --> 01:10:12,510
having children.

1098
01:10:12,670 --> 01:10:18,270
So you're you're ready like way too late in the in the or not too way too late, but later

1099
01:10:18,270 --> 01:10:19,310
in the game.

1100
01:10:20,350 --> 01:10:23,150
And then we don't seem to be having these diminishing returns.

1101
01:10:23,310 --> 01:10:29,310
You know, I do kind of think you know this whole idea it's not the right time, it's not

1102
01:10:29,310 --> 01:10:33,310
the right time, you know, my grandmother always used to say, you know, it was never the

1103
01:10:33,310 --> 01:10:33,710
right time.

1104
01:10:33,950 --> 01:10:35,310
We never we just had kids.

1105
01:10:35,390 --> 01:10:40,180
Like you know, that that was just the you know what what we did.

1106
01:10:40,500 --> 01:10:45,860
And so, you know, is it that you know we're all kind of stuck on this treadmill thinking

1107
01:10:45,860 --> 01:10:51,620
that we need more schooling and we need to hit a certain level of well-being, economic

1108
01:10:51,620 --> 01:10:57,460
well-being, before we feel comfortable introducing a child into the world?

1109
01:10:57,700 --> 01:11:02,100
And then what do we feel that child needs to have?

1110
01:11:02,500 --> 01:11:04,500
And how can I afford that?

1111
01:11:06,550 --> 01:11:10,710
And so, I mean, certainly what people seem to say, you know, when this was first happening

1112
01:11:10,790 --> 01:11:16,230
in like in Italy and places where, you know, growth rates were declining

1113
01:11:16,230 --> 01:11:21,350
rapidly, you know, and the total fertility rates were well below replacement, you know,

1114
01:11:21,510 --> 01:11:24,230
well before it was hitting other countries.

1115
01:11:24,550 --> 01:11:30,310
And it was this economic thing and the time thing just really, you know, come up

1116
01:11:30,310 --> 01:11:31,990
again and again and again.

1117
01:11:32,230 --> 01:11:37,120
Uh, you know some people were blaming well this is what happens with you know when you let

1118
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:42,000
women work and they were throwing this weird spin of like gender equality is leading to

1119
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:47,920
fertility decline and but but it sort of implies that well then left to your druthers

1120
01:11:48,240 --> 01:11:54,240
to pick the best choices in life that kids somehow become less and less a part

1121
01:11:54,240 --> 01:11:55,840
of that story.

1122
01:11:56,480 --> 01:12:02,230
Um you know, I also think I don't know about you, Dave, but

1123
01:12:02,310 --> 01:12:07,750
you know, I didn't have tons of experience with babies until I had my own.

1124
01:12:08,230 --> 01:12:09,030
David's a father too.

1125
01:12:09,110 --> 01:12:09,190
Yeah.

1126
01:12:09,430 --> 01:12:10,390
Oh, okay, David.

1127
01:12:10,550 --> 01:12:12,870
Uh David, how old how old?

1128
01:12:13,030 --> 01:12:13,990
Yeah, mine's five and a half.

1129
01:12:14,230 --> 01:12:15,110
She's uh three and a half.

1130
01:12:15,270 --> 01:12:15,670
Three and a half.

1131
01:12:15,910 --> 01:12:16,710
Oh, three and a half.

1132
01:12:16,870 --> 01:12:17,270
Yeah.

1133
01:12:17,510 --> 01:12:18,070
Yeah.

1134
01:12:18,390 --> 01:12:23,080
And and so, yeah, there's a lot of like, oh, I'm not ready for this.

1135
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:27,320
That there were certain elements that were easy or much easier than I thought they would

1136
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:27,560
be.

1137
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:30,600
Uh, and then of course, elements that were much harder.

1138
01:12:30,760 --> 01:12:36,680
And of course, because of the relatively you know, isolated

1139
01:12:36,680 --> 01:12:42,440
way we live, it it definitely adds to the the costs of raising children,

1140
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:48,210
you know, and we're much less free-range childhoods than we've ever been before,

1141
01:12:48,370 --> 01:12:51,490
even in our compared to like when I was a kid.

1142
01:12:51,650 --> 01:12:55,170
Uh and all that just seems to raise the costs more.

1143
01:12:55,410 --> 01:13:01,330
And so I do feel like there's these uh there it seems to be more psychological,

1144
01:13:01,410 --> 01:13:07,300
you know, explanations for why we're sort of tricked into uh

1145
01:13:08,260 --> 01:13:14,260
getting by with with fewer children, even though all the data would show you

1146
01:13:14,260 --> 01:13:17,380
could have more kids and they would still survive.

1147
01:13:18,340 --> 01:13:20,580
And but yeah, they might survive.

1148
01:13:20,660 --> 01:13:25,300
But then where you do see some of the trade-offs is definitely how many of them are going

1149
01:13:25,300 --> 01:13:29,300
to get college education, how many of them are gonna be making a decent salary, you know,

1150
01:13:29,380 --> 01:13:30,980
by the time that they're 30.

1151
01:13:31,220 --> 01:13:36,390
And there you do see the trade-offs that make you like great quantity quality kind of

1152
01:13:36,390 --> 01:13:39,670
arguments about fertility and investment.

1153
01:13:40,710 --> 01:13:46,150
So which is probably why there's you know a small sector of like super

1154
01:13:46,150 --> 01:13:51,750
wealthy who are increasing their fertility because they can farm out everything,

1155
01:13:51,990 --> 01:13:52,310
right?

1156
01:13:52,630 --> 01:13:58,550
From literally like your breasts, you know, having wet nurses to you know childcare

1157
01:13:58,710 --> 01:14:00,310
to everything.

1158
01:14:00,630 --> 01:14:06,360
Um yeah, so that that's I don't know my my quick you know, what

1159
01:14:06,520 --> 01:14:11,080
what is interesting is is you know from having

1160
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:18,680
worked you know with small scale societies for a while where fertility's been

1161
01:14:18,680 --> 01:14:19,720
always high.

1162
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:24,200
So with the Aceh, you know, they had about average seven births.

1163
01:14:24,430 --> 01:14:29,950
The Chumane had about eight births over or eight or nine births over their life course.

1164
01:14:30,190 --> 01:14:35,470
And it's true not all survive, but you know, a good number survive.

1165
01:14:35,870 --> 01:14:41,710
And surrounded by kids all the time, you know, you really get the sense that

1166
01:14:41,710 --> 01:14:47,680
someone who's worthwhile, competent, has status,

1167
01:14:48,000 --> 01:14:50,720
should have a family and have a big family.

1168
01:14:50,960 --> 01:14:56,640
And so, you know, me coming in with my college education and working towards my

1169
01:14:56,640 --> 01:15:01,600
PhD and beyond, you know, I was sort of seen as the poor person who doesn't really know how

1170
01:15:01,600 --> 01:15:02,560
to be an adult.

1171
01:15:02,800 --> 01:15:03,680
What are you looking for?

1172
01:15:03,840 --> 01:15:04,800
Why are you even here?

1173
01:15:06,640 --> 01:15:08,400
We're just living our lives.

1174
01:15:08,640 --> 01:15:13,250
Um, you know, and it's interesting because even you know some of the Bolivians I'm good

1175
01:15:13,250 --> 01:15:19,170
friends with who you know are from the cities still have some of that mentality too, that

1176
01:15:19,170 --> 01:15:20,770
family is is key.

1177
01:15:21,010 --> 01:15:24,690
You know, there's certain decisions they wouldn't make for you know they wouldn't move

1178
01:15:24,690 --> 01:15:30,610
across the country to another country for a job when there's all these

1179
01:15:30,610 --> 01:15:35,090
sort of ties that bind and keep you keep you keep you local.

1180
01:15:36,050 --> 01:15:40,940
So I don't know, I'm just veering off into la la land here.

1181
01:15:41,420 --> 01:15:44,780
Uh but I mean it's not it's not not la la land.

1182
01:15:45,020 --> 01:15:50,860
I mean, I think it it showcases um uh one area where I think uh it's crucial to

1183
01:15:50,860 --> 01:15:55,820
take uh an evolutionary psychological approach rather than, you know, say a behavioral

1184
01:15:55,900 --> 01:15:57,420
ecological approach.

1185
01:15:57,660 --> 01:16:02,220
Because here in this case we have a behavior that is clearly not maximi maximizing fitness.

1186
01:16:02,300 --> 01:16:06,550
Uh and the only way to really understand it is to is to think about what's actually going

1187
01:16:06,550 --> 01:16:08,070
in on inside people's heads.

1188
01:16:08,390 --> 01:16:12,470
You know, what are what are the emotions, what are the thought processes, what is leading

1189
01:16:12,470 --> 01:16:13,430
to this outcome.

1190
01:16:13,590 --> 01:16:18,070
Because it's c it's clearly not uh maximizing fitness in a straightforward Darwinian sense.

1191
01:16:18,230 --> 01:16:22,870
There must be some kind of mismatch uh between say ancestral selection pressures and the

1192
01:16:22,870 --> 01:16:23,750
current environment.

1193
01:16:23,910 --> 01:16:28,940
There there must be something in in the head that is that is causing these types of

1194
01:16:28,940 --> 01:16:29,740
behaviors to emerge.

1195
01:16:29,820 --> 01:16:35,180
And for that, we need to delve into the psychology of social status, of uh of passing

1196
01:16:35,180 --> 01:16:39,180
social status on to our kids and making sure our kids are competitive in the social

1197
01:16:39,180 --> 01:16:43,340
environment, what the social environment is like, what kinds of cues the mind is receptive

1198
01:16:43,340 --> 01:16:48,780
to when it comes to planning out the life course and planning out uh their families.

1199
01:16:49,110 --> 01:16:54,950
Um, so it seems like what you're saying, uh, is that there's something about um

1200
01:16:55,190 --> 01:17:00,870
the way that social status and wealth is organized in modern societies that is

1201
01:17:00,870 --> 01:17:06,870
feeding into our evolved minds and giving us cues that we really need to invest a lot uh

1202
01:17:06,950 --> 01:17:11,200
in our kids in order for them to be competitive uh uh with with other kids in the

1203
01:17:11,200 --> 01:17:11,920
environment.

1204
01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:16,960
And uh we just don't have the resources to have a large number of offspring because we

1205
01:17:16,960 --> 01:17:21,360
can't make sure that each one of them is going to say, go to college, become successful and

1206
01:17:21,360 --> 01:17:22,320
and prestigious.

1207
01:17:22,480 --> 01:17:27,680
And the only way we can really have comp competitive children is if we invest tons of

1208
01:17:27,680 --> 01:17:29,360
resources in those children.

1209
01:17:29,520 --> 01:17:35,390
Is that basically the the the I think so well in our children and

1210
01:17:35,390 --> 01:17:36,670
potentially ourselves.

1211
01:17:36,910 --> 01:17:42,750
And so uh one kind of like unpub unpublished paper

1212
01:17:42,910 --> 01:17:48,910
number you know, twelve that you know just never made

1213
01:17:48,910 --> 01:17:53,630
it to light from years ago was was trying to get at this exact question.

1214
01:17:53,790 --> 01:17:57,390
And I was trying to and I was using like consumer data.

1215
01:17:57,630 --> 01:18:03,560
So it's like all right, if your income's increasing well what better way to kind of give us

1216
01:18:03,560 --> 01:18:05,000
some insight into the mind?

1217
01:18:05,560 --> 01:18:07,080
What are you spending your money on?

1218
01:18:07,320 --> 01:18:10,680
Like, you know, there's only so much food you can eat, right?

1219
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:14,680
And so are you maybe you're not spending more money on food, but you're spending it on

1220
01:18:14,680 --> 01:18:15,160
other things.

1221
01:18:15,400 --> 01:18:20,520
But you could maybe just spend it on food, but just much more expensive, high-quality food.

1222
01:18:20,760 --> 01:18:26,590
Um and what what I was suspecting and what ended up

1223
01:18:26,590 --> 01:18:31,070
finding, yeah, it wasn't, yeah, there's more on food because you are now, well, you see a

1224
01:18:31,070 --> 01:18:36,670
lot more meat come on, and then organic meat, and then, you know, uh

1225
01:18:37,630 --> 01:18:42,910
much the each adjective you add to your food, you know, adds a little bit more money that's

1226
01:18:43,070 --> 01:18:43,790
that's spent.

1227
01:18:43,950 --> 01:18:49,760
But it's it's more on sort of like luxury items and and luxury, you know, status

1228
01:18:49,840 --> 01:18:54,880
oriented kinds of expenditures, which then all of a sudden, you know, you see increasing

1229
01:18:54,880 --> 01:18:56,000
much more dramatically.

1230
01:18:56,160 --> 01:19:02,000
So yeah, it really is seemed to be the case that like you could

1231
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:06,960
get by without having the all of those things and just, you know, spend, save that money

1232
01:19:07,040 --> 01:19:08,800
and put that towards another child.

1233
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:14,870
But it's this idea that, you know, s since status is such a positional good, right,

1234
01:19:15,110 --> 01:19:16,870
it's always changing.

1235
01:19:17,110 --> 01:19:22,150
You know, and it could be very well that, you know, given that we're social creatures and

1236
01:19:22,150 --> 01:19:27,510
comparative creatures, you know, the fact that our social world through social media and

1237
01:19:27,510 --> 01:19:31,780
everything, we're we're level of comparisons are are insane.

1238
01:19:32,420 --> 01:19:35,620
And so we'll will we ever reach diminishing returns?

1239
01:19:35,700 --> 01:19:40,020
Because there's always going to be people out there that will have something that you don't

1240
01:19:40,020 --> 01:19:43,860
have, or uh at one level a little bit better.

1241
01:19:44,020 --> 01:19:48,020
And so I I it feels really hard to kind of get off that treadmill.

1242
01:19:48,180 --> 01:19:52,500
Uh and our expenditures seem to be going along with that.

1243
01:19:52,740 --> 01:19:57,460
Um our brains and our level of satisfaction seem to go along with that.

1244
01:19:58,190 --> 01:20:04,110
So yeah, I I do think it it definitely is kind of a uh a psychological kind

1245
01:20:04,110 --> 01:20:05,070
of argument.

1246
01:20:05,550 --> 01:20:10,830
But you know, I I I think it's a it's one of those perfect meshes of like behavioral

1247
01:20:10,830 --> 01:20:16,270
ecology and and evolutionary psychology, because the certainly under more

1248
01:20:16,270 --> 01:20:22,120
traditional natural fertility environments, maximizing status would have maximized

1249
01:20:22,120 --> 01:20:23,080
fertility.

1250
01:20:23,320 --> 01:20:23,640
Right.

1251
01:20:23,800 --> 01:20:28,760
In almost every traditional society, when you look at like how many cows or how much land,

1252
01:20:29,080 --> 01:20:35,000
uh, pretty much maps onto number of partners and number of children

1253
01:20:35,160 --> 01:20:36,600
uh almost everywhere.

1254
01:20:36,760 --> 01:20:42,040
And it really is in this sort of heavy competitive cap post

1255
01:20:42,120 --> 01:20:47,080
capitalist kind of market economy where you really see that kind of shift.

1256
01:20:47,750 --> 01:20:47,990
Yeah.

1257
01:20:48,470 --> 01:20:48,630
Yeah.

1258
01:20:48,710 --> 01:20:53,110
And even the decision, I mean we talked a lot about structural issues.

1259
01:20:53,350 --> 01:20:58,950
Um Germany was one of the places that had low fertility and so parental leave and

1260
01:20:58,950 --> 01:21:03,270
childcare was became free um completely.

1261
01:21:03,590 --> 01:21:08,630
And there was an enormous uptick um in in people having kids.

1262
01:21:09,430 --> 01:21:14,230
And the did the decision of sort of like well will I lose my job?

1263
01:21:14,480 --> 01:21:20,320
um, you know, do I have the resources while I am a young adult to to

1264
01:21:20,480 --> 01:21:22,000
uh to have kids?

1265
01:21:22,240 --> 01:21:27,280
That also feels like a very behavioral, ecological, but also evolutionary psychological

1266
01:21:27,280 --> 01:21:33,040
decision because it really maps onto sort of like, you know, what's the ballistic

1267
01:21:33,040 --> 01:21:38,570
trajectory of my ability to actually have a career or get the

1268
01:21:38,570 --> 01:21:42,010
returns on my, you know, intellectual investment.

1269
01:21:42,650 --> 01:21:46,650
Um, and then how much is having a child gonna eat into that?

1270
01:21:46,890 --> 01:21:52,010
And so I think this is another way where I think in a funny way, at least anecdotally to

1271
01:21:52,010 --> 01:21:56,250
me, many of the people who are opposed to things like paid parent, like extending parental

1272
01:21:56,250 --> 01:22:02,180
leave for like, you know, seven months or a year or 14 months, or like free childcare for

1273
01:22:02,180 --> 01:22:02,500
everybody.

1274
01:22:02,660 --> 01:22:06,340
Like many of the people who are against that are also the people who are super concerned

1275
01:22:06,340 --> 01:22:08,100
about like plummeting fertility rates.

1276
01:22:08,260 --> 01:22:08,500
I know.

1277
01:22:08,660 --> 01:22:13,540
And I think that's absolutely silly because uh, you know, those are actually some of the

1278
01:22:14,100 --> 01:22:16,180
one argument would be that's one of the reasons for that.

1279
01:22:16,500 --> 01:22:17,060
Um yeah.

1280
01:22:17,220 --> 01:22:22,660
And so I think uh to my mind, this is another example of um

1281
01:22:23,220 --> 01:22:29,110
very much an evolutionary psychological problem, but it's a but the solution

1282
01:22:29,110 --> 01:22:31,270
is a structural problem.

1283
01:22:31,430 --> 01:22:36,390
It's not wagging your finger at people and say, have babies, don't be an idiot.

1284
01:22:36,550 --> 01:22:42,070
Um, it's actually respecting the the intelligence of not wanting to have a baby in the

1285
01:22:42,070 --> 01:22:46,790
context of a concern about like, you know, am I gonna be okay in my job?

1286
01:22:46,950 --> 01:22:51,270
Like, do I have to leave, you know, three months or three weeks of parental?

1287
01:22:51,510 --> 01:22:52,790
I mean, it's like crazy, right?

1288
01:22:53,940 --> 01:22:54,500
Well, yeah.

1289
01:22:54,660 --> 01:22:58,900
Well, and so some of that pushback I've heard is from people who would have wanted that

1290
01:22:58,900 --> 01:23:01,380
when they were younger, but now they're older and they didn't have it.

1291
01:23:01,780 --> 01:23:03,220
Yeah, that's the best argument.

1292
01:23:03,380 --> 01:23:04,820
I didn't have it, so you can't either.

1293
01:23:04,900 --> 01:23:05,860
That's that's a great way to do that.

1294
01:23:06,100 --> 01:23:06,340
Well, right.

1295
01:23:06,420 --> 01:23:12,020
And so it's like why why should I have my taxes go to subsidize other people's kids and you

1296
01:23:12,020 --> 01:23:13,780
know the luxuries that I didn't have.

1297
01:23:21,450 --> 01:23:26,090
then you don't feel like you wanna actually contribute to those people that you're not

1298
01:23:26,090 --> 01:23:29,850
related to, but make for a better society, better economy, everything.

1299
01:23:30,090 --> 01:23:30,330
Yeah.

1300
01:23:30,490 --> 01:23:30,730
Yeah.

1301
01:23:30,890 --> 01:23:31,450
Exactly.

1302
01:23:31,530 --> 01:23:32,010
Yeah.

1303
01:23:33,850 --> 01:23:34,490
Yeah.

1304
01:23:37,130 --> 01:23:42,250
So uh approaching approaching the end of of the episode.

1305
01:23:42,600 --> 01:23:46,920
Um are there any topics that you're that you're dying to cover, Dave, or that we haven't

1306
01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:47,480
covered yet?

1307
01:23:47,880 --> 01:23:51,240
Uh I mean with Mike, so many that we're just gonna have to have Mike on again.

1308
01:23:51,320 --> 01:23:51,640
So yeah.

1309
01:23:51,960 --> 01:23:52,440
Yeah, probably.

1310
01:23:52,840 --> 01:23:53,640
Yeah, yeah.

1311
01:23:54,040 --> 01:23:55,240
Uh I'm kind of curious.

1312
01:23:55,400 --> 01:24:00,360
I mean, I remember I I was looking through your um publications and I saw something on um

1313
01:24:00,680 --> 01:24:05,160
personality, which is a really interesting topic in evolutionary psychology that we haven't

1314
01:24:05,160 --> 01:24:06,520
really talked a lot about.

1315
01:24:06,680 --> 01:24:09,670
I don't think we've talked really delved into this topic in any of our episodes.

1316
01:24:09,830 --> 01:24:11,590
Um, I know you have some thoughts on that.

1317
01:24:11,670 --> 01:24:16,470
You have some interesting data showing that um personality is very different uh in

1318
01:24:16,470 --> 01:24:18,550
small-scale forager societies.

1319
01:24:18,710 --> 01:24:24,390
Uh that we don't see the same kind of uh differentiation and and so-called big five factors

1320
01:24:24,470 --> 01:24:25,750
uh in personality.

1321
01:24:25,830 --> 01:24:31,510
Um so I'm curious uh what your take is on the evolution of personality, why we are so

1322
01:24:31,510 --> 01:24:37,190
different in these patterned ways, why modern environments are you showcase even larger

1323
01:24:37,300 --> 01:24:41,700
uh uh uh differences between people in terms of their personalities than you might see uh

1324
01:24:41,700 --> 01:24:44,980
in a small scale society and and what what might be going on there.

1325
01:24:45,780 --> 01:24:51,700
Yeah so if I can start from from the I've never actually I I think

1326
01:24:51,860 --> 01:24:57,770
told this story about how how I even got started um uh uh

1327
01:24:58,090 --> 01:25:02,730
thinking about personality because i it certainly didn't set out to be that guy like the

1328
01:25:02,730 --> 01:25:08,170
one just uh big five that's you know it doesn't exist here and so you know

1329
01:25:08,570 --> 01:25:14,490
it's it's um someone a colleague once made a joke about they

1330
01:25:14,490 --> 01:25:19,210
think I have like a a gr the same graph in every paper, you know, where there's some

1331
01:25:19,210 --> 01:25:24,020
y-axis, things that people in the West get, and then you know, as a function of age or

1332
01:25:24,020 --> 01:25:26,660
whatever, and then like it's always flat, like zero.

1333
01:25:27,300 --> 01:25:29,380
I just changed the y-axis label.

1334
01:25:29,620 --> 01:25:33,060
Uh and so it's like, uh, big five, look, that doesn't exist either.

1335
01:25:33,300 --> 01:25:35,300
Uh no, that was never actually the point.

1336
01:25:35,540 --> 01:25:40,020
You know, the point was just that actually, you know, I was running, you know, a big health

1337
01:25:40,020 --> 01:25:45,700
and aging project, and and you know, you get to know people uh in these communities.

1338
01:25:45,860 --> 01:25:51,810
So, you know, every data point is a person, and it just seems like, you know, we've

1339
01:25:51,810 --> 01:25:57,410
got their age and all these biomarkers and all these other characteristics, but doesn't

1340
01:25:57,410 --> 01:26:03,330
seem to be capturing some element of them as a person that I know impacts

1341
01:26:03,330 --> 01:26:08,130
whether they're even here showing up, whether they're gonna actually take the meds that you

1342
01:26:08,130 --> 01:26:14,050
know we may have prescribed, whether they're conscientious and you know, some

1343
01:26:14,050 --> 01:26:17,330
caution precautions that they might need to take or whatnot.

1344
01:26:17,650 --> 01:26:21,620
Uh and weren't measuring that at all.

1345
01:26:21,940 --> 01:26:27,940
And so this was really just me like, okay, let let me just find a personality instrument

1346
01:26:28,020 --> 01:26:33,140
and let's just kind of add it to our kind of circus of

1347
01:26:33,620 --> 01:26:36,500
things we're trying to get at the individual level.

1348
01:26:36,660 --> 01:26:42,660
Uh now, certainly I had some exposure to not so much I'm not a personality psychologist,

1349
01:26:42,740 --> 01:26:48,650
and I know the industry is quite large as I tried to, you know, pave

1350
01:26:48,650 --> 01:26:50,730
my way into it a little bit.

1351
01:26:53,210 --> 01:26:58,730
And so it was interesting to me

1352
01:26:59,610 --> 01:27:02,090
from the behavioral syndromes kind of literature, right?

1353
01:27:02,170 --> 01:27:07,370
That, oh wow, you know, from a behavioral ecologist perspective, if if things are adaptive,

1354
01:27:07,450 --> 01:27:11,980
you know, and conditions are different, you should shift Towards whatever that local

1355
01:27:11,980 --> 01:27:12,860
adaptive thing is.

1356
01:27:13,020 --> 01:27:14,860
And there could be obstacles.

1357
01:27:15,100 --> 01:27:20,620
But the idea that, you know, under variety of different conditions, you might act

1358
01:27:20,620 --> 01:27:24,700
consistently, you know, it's just kind of an intriguing kind of concept.

1359
01:27:24,940 --> 01:27:29,820
Uh and and so thinking about those repercussions and then what would that mean?

1360
01:27:29,980 --> 01:27:35,740
Uh and then yeah, are there elements of certain folks seem very wide open, speak

1361
01:27:35,740 --> 01:27:37,340
easily, they're extroverted?

1362
01:27:37,670 --> 01:27:42,790
Are those people faring better differently than the folks who are more quiet, you know,

1363
01:27:43,030 --> 01:27:47,350
internalizing things and um all that kind of stuff?

1364
01:27:47,430 --> 01:27:50,390
So I was like, all right, let me get a big five inventory.

1365
01:27:50,790 --> 01:27:54,630
Um I found one that was in Spanish and it wasn't too onerous.

1366
01:27:54,790 --> 01:27:59,350
I had like 40, 20, 40 items, I think.

1367
01:27:59,590 --> 01:28:05,110
Uh, and it was just fun actually working with Chumane back and forth and trying to

1368
01:28:05,430 --> 01:28:09,080
uh how do you translate this?

1369
01:28:09,400 --> 01:28:15,240
And and th this was like kind of an early preview of the fact that like there aren't words

1370
01:28:15,240 --> 01:28:18,440
to describe all these nuances in personality.

1371
01:28:18,600 --> 01:28:21,560
You can now it doesn't mean it doesn't exist as a concept.

1372
01:28:21,720 --> 01:28:26,120
You can describe it in a phrase or you know a sentence or two.

1373
01:28:26,360 --> 01:28:32,290
But there it wasn't like you know uh you know a single word kind of descriptor that would

1374
01:28:32,290 --> 01:28:37,730
adequately kind of capture you know s a lot of those uh a lot of those terms

1375
01:28:38,210 --> 01:28:42,690
and so we did kind of translate it all and

1376
01:28:44,530 --> 01:28:50,340
you know always wary you know It's kind of

1377
01:28:50,340 --> 01:28:51,860
new, it's strange, you know.

1378
01:28:52,020 --> 01:28:53,700
Can people you know respond well?

1379
01:28:53,860 --> 01:28:59,140
We back translated, people kind of understood what was going on, but we also just recorded

1380
01:28:59,460 --> 01:29:05,460
information about like the person who was doing the interview would record whether

1381
01:29:05,460 --> 01:29:10,340
the person would smile, were they you know open with their words, or did they seem really

1382
01:29:10,340 --> 01:29:13,860
quiet and reticent, uh, and all that kind of stuff.

1383
01:29:14,150 --> 01:29:18,550
And so not only did we find, you know, we were able to kind of collect those kinds of data,

1384
01:29:18,710 --> 01:29:20,790
it actually did map onto what people said.

1385
01:29:20,950 --> 01:29:26,390
So the extroverted people, you know, were rated as having been more talkative, more

1386
01:29:26,390 --> 01:29:30,630
open, uh, with their thoughts and talking about themselves and such.

1387
01:29:30,710 --> 01:29:35,350
Uh, and then the people on the, you know, emotional stability that were lower on that.

1388
01:29:35,590 --> 01:29:40,060
Um, the former N uh neuro neuroticism.

1389
01:29:40,620 --> 01:29:43,980
Uh you know, those were less a little bit less so.

1390
01:29:44,700 --> 01:29:49,580
Uh and so that showed that, you know, I think we're actually collecting, you know, real

1391
01:29:49,580 --> 01:29:50,220
data.

1392
01:29:50,460 --> 01:29:54,140
Because certainly the the personality psychologists, as soon as you find something that's

1393
01:29:54,140 --> 01:29:58,460
not big five, it's it's go straight for the methodological jugular, right?

1394
01:29:58,540 --> 01:30:00,780
It's like it's a translation issue.

1395
01:30:01,020 --> 01:30:04,070
It's you know, how do you know your instrument is measuring the exact same thing?

1396
01:30:04,150 --> 01:30:04,950
And blah, blah, blah.

1397
01:30:05,110 --> 01:30:08,550
And part of the argument was like, well, I don't think it's measuring the exact same thing,

1398
01:30:08,630 --> 01:30:11,590
but that's part of what we're actually, you know, actually finding.

1399
01:30:11,750 --> 01:30:17,030
So it was it was through the initial just designing that

1400
01:30:17,030 --> 01:30:22,710
instrument in local language and trying to capture some elements of

1401
01:30:22,710 --> 01:30:28,470
personality that might be relevant for thinking about health, economic activity,

1402
01:30:28,900 --> 01:30:31,780
fertility, marriage, all these things.

1403
01:30:32,020 --> 01:30:38,020
Um, but as the initial sort of exercise of like, let's just do the PCA and get the

1404
01:30:38,020 --> 01:30:43,700
big five, and I was like, oh, wait, that that's not really a big

1405
01:30:43,700 --> 01:30:45,940
five uh by any means.

1406
01:30:46,180 --> 01:30:50,100
And then it was like sort of going through all these different lengths.

1407
01:30:50,260 --> 01:30:55,060
Well, what if we just focused on the people who speak Spanish, maybe who are educated?

1408
01:30:55,300 --> 01:31:00,530
Maybe they would act differently, and you know, uh, what about instead of you know David,

1409
01:31:00,610 --> 01:31:03,330
you rating yourself, I have Dave rate you.

1410
01:31:03,890 --> 01:31:08,930
Okay, and see if that so we did all these different permutation, all these different ways,

1411
01:31:09,090 --> 01:31:12,050
you know, and and yeah, people are somewhat agreeable.

1412
01:31:12,290 --> 01:31:17,090
So you can ask the question in the negative, and we had agreeableness checks, did all that,

1413
01:31:17,170 --> 01:31:19,650
and basically we didn't really have a big five.

1414
01:31:19,890 --> 01:31:25,240
Uh what we called it loosely like a big two that seemed to be like there's such

1415
01:31:25,400 --> 01:31:30,600
industriousness and like pro-sociality seem to be kind of two dimensions.

1416
01:31:31,000 --> 01:31:36,680
And you know, some of the initial ideas were kind of laid out in that initial paper,

1417
01:31:36,840 --> 01:31:40,520
but that was probably one of the hardest papers to write because it was it was selling it

1418
01:31:40,520 --> 01:31:42,520
to what was it?

1419
01:31:42,680 --> 01:31:48,390
Not psych science, but uh JPSP, the Journal of Personality, Social Psychology.

1420
01:31:48,550 --> 01:31:54,390
So it was kind of like playing with the big boys of of psychology, personality, and

1421
01:31:54,470 --> 01:32:00,230
you know, trying to convince them that, hey, I think I have something to say, and having to

1422
01:32:00,230 --> 01:32:02,230
learn their tools and language.

1423
01:32:03,350 --> 01:32:08,390
But it was from that initial exercise that you know, I didn't really think it was well,

1424
01:32:08,630 --> 01:32:13,860
because I was I was a little nervous, like maybe it really is just a translation thing or

1425
01:32:13,860 --> 01:32:15,220
something I'm doing wrong.

1426
01:32:15,380 --> 01:32:21,060
Um and it wasn't that you can't get measures for the each of the big five right

1427
01:32:21,380 --> 01:32:26,980
it's just it's this weird thing about thinking about the the the personality structure

1428
01:32:26,980 --> 01:32:32,830
itself right that basically uh if they were

1429
01:32:32,830 --> 01:32:38,110
like five bands on a equalizer, they still have equalizers on radios.

1430
01:32:38,830 --> 01:32:40,670
Uh I mean they're virtual now, but yeah.

1431
01:32:40,990 --> 01:32:41,390
Yeah, okay.

1432
01:32:42,830 --> 01:32:47,310
Instead of each of those moving really independently, it's kind of like if you were to move

1433
01:32:47,310 --> 01:32:50,750
it, they would be stuck and a couple will be moving together.

1434
01:32:50,990 --> 01:32:56,740
Uh and so yeah, what it does mean is in terms of the combinatorics,

1435
01:32:56,900 --> 01:33:01,300
you'd have a fewer, you'd have a less diversity of personalities out there.

1436
01:33:02,020 --> 01:33:07,620
Whereas if you had more independent factors moving, more possibilities, you can get more

1437
01:33:07,620 --> 01:33:09,300
different ways of being.

1438
01:33:09,700 --> 01:33:14,980
And so you know certainly you know the initial ideas were just like well

1439
01:33:15,940 --> 01:33:20,570
it seems to be the case that in

1440
01:33:21,450 --> 01:33:27,450
Chimane life and probably a lot of other, you know, similar groups, um there's all

1441
01:33:27,450 --> 01:33:32,890
different types of personalities, but at the same time there's certain limits and

1442
01:33:32,890 --> 01:33:36,890
constraints over how you can act around other people.

1443
01:33:37,530 --> 01:33:41,200
Um like there's no computer programmers, right?

1444
01:33:41,440 --> 01:33:46,320
You can't just be like a genius that holds up and does your own thing if you're not

1445
01:33:46,320 --> 01:33:48,880
socially competent enough to interact with other people.

1446
01:33:49,440 --> 01:33:54,880
Uh and and so it just got me thinking about sort of

1447
01:33:55,040 --> 01:34:00,720
niche space of modern societies in contrasting with

1448
01:34:01,070 --> 01:34:03,150
small scale societies.

1449
01:34:03,950 --> 01:34:07,710
And the easiest thing to think about was just like jobs, right?

1450
01:34:07,870 --> 01:34:13,630
But certainly the idea, and why we, I think, called it socioecological

1451
01:34:13,630 --> 01:34:18,430
complexity or something, was to move beyond just thinking about jobs.

1452
01:34:18,670 --> 01:34:24,190
But jobs are an easy thing to kind of measure, or how many products you know, your society

1453
01:34:24,190 --> 01:34:25,070
is producing.

1454
01:34:25,710 --> 01:34:31,280
And so with the idea that if there's many more different ways to make a

1455
01:34:31,280 --> 01:34:37,280
living, then sort of like in the old ecological theory, you know,

1456
01:34:37,440 --> 01:34:42,320
individuals will sort of like fill up that niche space until there's sort of diminishing

1457
01:34:42,320 --> 01:34:46,960
returns and look elsewhere, you get what you know, the ideal free distribution.

1458
01:34:47,120 --> 01:34:50,640
Uh, and so all the niche space gets kind of spilled uh filled up.

1459
01:34:50,800 --> 01:34:54,960
And so what's sort of determined though is what does the niche space actually look like.

1460
01:34:55,360 --> 01:35:00,690
And so the initial approach we had was just using country

1461
01:35:00,850 --> 01:35:06,530
level data and taking personality data and just looking at the sort of correlation

1462
01:35:06,530 --> 01:35:12,210
structure across the different big five, with the idea that if it's a high

1463
01:35:12,210 --> 01:35:17,650
correlation, then even though again you get the big five measures, they're sort of hanging

1464
01:35:17,650 --> 01:35:18,530
together.

1465
01:35:19,170 --> 01:35:21,580
You know, in the simplest case, it's all one, right?

1466
01:35:21,660 --> 01:35:27,340
If correlation's one, uh, versus if it's zero, and they're completely uncorrelated.

1467
01:35:27,740 --> 01:35:33,740
And but the idea is like, what could you look at at the country level that would give

1468
01:35:33,740 --> 01:35:37,740
you some insight into like that sort of niche diversity?

1469
01:35:37,980 --> 01:35:43,100
And we looked at a variety of different things from sort of like GDP, like proxies like

1470
01:35:43,100 --> 01:35:48,380
GDP, gross domestic product, uh to like you know,

1471
01:35:48,830 --> 01:35:54,190
these like economic portfolio indices that like apply these entropy

1472
01:35:54,430 --> 01:35:59,470
terms for like how many different products does your country make and what's the relative

1473
01:35:59,470 --> 01:36:00,830
abundance of them.

1474
01:36:01,150 --> 01:36:01,550
Right.

1475
01:36:01,950 --> 01:36:07,630
Um with the idea that more products comes from more jobs and that

1476
01:36:07,630 --> 01:36:13,550
sort of uh hierarchical structure where you're going to require lots of

1477
01:36:13,550 --> 01:36:16,960
different types of jobs and different types of ways of being.

1478
01:36:17,120 --> 01:36:22,400
And so the idea was that with more jobs and more niche space, that that

1479
01:36:22,880 --> 01:36:28,240
your equalizer is like the preset that maybe like makes you a little bit better at one

1480
01:36:28,240 --> 01:36:30,160
thing than another.

1481
01:36:30,480 --> 01:36:33,120
And so the idea was kind of attractive.

1482
01:36:33,280 --> 01:36:39,040
We did some number of empirical analyses that actually all showed some nice correlations

1483
01:36:39,520 --> 01:36:45,450
that that uh That personality structure, even in

1484
01:36:45,450 --> 01:36:51,370
places where there's supposedly you know big five, that the overall correlation varies.

1485
01:36:51,610 --> 01:36:57,450
And it varies in a way in relation to the niche diversity, such that where

1486
01:36:57,450 --> 01:37:03,290
there's a more diverse set of niches, you see less correlation between those factors.

1487
01:37:03,450 --> 01:37:07,450
In other words, more ways of being, of personality.

1488
01:37:09,220 --> 01:37:13,540
so that was the initial kind of empirical set of observations.

1489
01:37:13,780 --> 01:37:17,300
And then of course, uh, you know, part of what I like to do is like, all right, there's

1490
01:37:17,300 --> 01:37:22,340
some results, and I'll let other people think about how that could actually come to be.

1491
01:37:22,580 --> 01:37:27,860
And but we actually did do some some modeling um with Paul Smaldino.

1492
01:37:28,260 --> 01:37:34,110
Uh you know, h could something like that actually come to exist uh in a sort

1493
01:37:34,110 --> 01:37:39,230
of processed way, you know, and we did find some some kind of consistent support for that.

1494
01:37:39,470 --> 01:37:41,870
Uh it's actually it was a fun exercise.

1495
01:37:42,030 --> 01:37:47,390
There were all these new directions that uh would be really interesting to kind of think

1496
01:37:47,390 --> 01:37:53,300
about that I just haven't kind of returned to, but I was sort of hoping, you know,

1497
01:37:53,380 --> 01:37:57,620
because part of it was also, again, that we we just don't know that much about personality

1498
01:37:57,620 --> 01:38:01,780
measured in small scale societies, so it was sort of all new.

1499
01:38:02,020 --> 01:38:07,140
You know, luckily uh there have been some more recent versions of things, and you know,

1500
01:38:07,220 --> 01:38:11,380
they might not be getting a big two, but they seem to be getting a similar kind of story

1501
01:38:11,700 --> 01:38:17,690
that you know there's not as many factors as you might think, and that maybe

1502
01:38:17,690 --> 01:38:19,450
it varies in relation to that.

1503
01:38:19,690 --> 01:38:23,290
But to me, yeah, the developmental story would be really amazing, right?

1504
01:38:23,370 --> 01:38:28,570
You can think of all these, you know, parents coming from you know, you know, small scale

1505
01:38:28,570 --> 01:38:31,290
society context and now moving to the big city.

1506
01:38:31,450 --> 01:38:33,530
But you know, how are children developing?

1507
01:38:33,770 --> 01:38:37,210
What are the inputs that sort of shape and bring things out?

1508
01:38:37,370 --> 01:38:41,770
Uh, because what does it even look like at the individual level as opposed to you know the

1509
01:38:41,770 --> 01:38:45,400
construct we were using with a population structure, right?

1510
01:38:45,480 --> 01:38:49,640
It's really the correlation structure of these personality dimensions.

1511
01:38:49,800 --> 01:38:55,000
I d you know, I still think there's elements of all those items that you see in people.

1512
01:38:55,400 --> 01:38:58,600
But again, it's really how they kind of covary in people.

1513
01:38:58,920 --> 01:39:03,640
And maybe when you kind of there are there's a niche diversity elements.

1514
01:39:03,880 --> 01:39:08,520
We didn't really kind of test so much this idea about constraints, right?

1515
01:39:08,920 --> 01:39:14,590
If you're s purely egalitarian in a way that everyone can be however they want to be, maybe

1516
01:39:14,590 --> 01:39:17,710
that releases the shackles a little bit as well.

1517
01:39:18,110 --> 01:39:23,630
Um anyway, it was a it was a fun kind of foray into personality

1518
01:39:23,630 --> 01:39:29,310
psychology that to me I was like trying to bring some evolutionary kind of perspective.

1519
01:39:29,710 --> 01:39:34,820
What blew me away, I just sort of assumed that you guys had all worked it all out, right?

1520
01:39:34,900 --> 01:39:39,780
That like and then the fact of the big five is just it's just this big inductive exercise,

1521
01:39:39,860 --> 01:39:40,100
right?

1522
01:39:40,180 --> 01:39:41,460
It's just a description.

1523
01:39:41,620 --> 01:39:41,860
Yeah.

1524
01:39:42,020 --> 01:39:47,060
Uh and it must be true because it exists everywhere, but there's no theory that actually

1525
01:39:47,060 --> 01:39:48,260
generates the big five.

1526
01:39:48,340 --> 01:39:53,540
It's like you just described all literally you'll read things of like this thing must be

1527
01:39:53,540 --> 01:39:56,550
true because there's so much data for it.

1528
01:39:56,710 --> 01:40:01,990
And that is this uh the cycle of just tautological

1529
01:40:02,390 --> 01:40:04,950
looking under the the lamp or yeah.

1530
01:40:05,430 --> 01:40:07,190
I mean it's not a bad part place to start.

1531
01:40:07,350 --> 01:40:08,950
You need data, you need results.

1532
01:40:09,350 --> 01:40:15,350
But but then there yeah, we just need more people, maybe not coming from the center

1533
01:40:15,350 --> 01:40:20,470
of the discipline or subdiscipline to you know shake things up a little bit.

1534
01:40:20,550 --> 01:40:25,840
And so yeah, I'm hoping that I haven't actually checked too recently to see if others have

1535
01:40:25,840 --> 01:40:28,640
kind of been building upon some of those ideas, but it would be fun.

1536
01:40:28,880 --> 01:40:29,040
Yeah.

1537
01:40:29,280 --> 01:40:32,880
And just to make that concrete, the idea of like a developmental thing would be, for

1538
01:40:32,880 --> 01:40:38,320
example, something of like if if there's a child coming from a more egalitarian

1539
01:40:38,320 --> 01:40:42,880
society, there's almost like software in the child to sort of be like, Do I have to be as

1540
01:40:42,880 --> 01:40:44,320
conscientious as my parents?

1541
01:40:44,480 --> 01:40:48,640
Like it's sort of looking out in the world and sort of being like, could I actually get by

1542
01:40:48,640 --> 01:40:52,970
with, and not maybe consciously, but somewhere in the software of sort of being maybe a

1543
01:40:52,970 --> 01:40:55,610
little more of an asshole or being a little less conscientious.

1544
01:40:55,690 --> 01:40:59,450
And I still see people who are more conscientious than my parents getting by.

1545
01:40:59,610 --> 01:41:04,250
And I see my parents sort of getting the sucker's payoff of being too conscientious in the

1546
01:41:04,250 --> 01:41:06,970
social or ecological niche now.

1547
01:41:07,210 --> 01:41:12,810
And so the idea would be there's like really software in the mind of every generation to

1548
01:41:12,810 --> 01:41:16,360
sort of be like, i is this a savvy way to make a living?

1549
01:41:16,520 --> 01:41:18,280
Like what's the way to be a person?

1550
01:41:18,440 --> 01:41:18,680
Right.

1551
01:41:18,920 --> 01:41:19,160
Right.

1552
01:41:19,400 --> 01:41:23,640
And of course it's relative to the particular social group that you happen to be a part of.

1553
01:41:23,720 --> 01:41:28,280
So what is the norm for conscientiousness or neuroticism within my particular peer group is

1554
01:41:28,280 --> 01:41:30,760
going to be different than what the norm is in a different peer group.

1555
01:41:30,840 --> 01:41:34,920
And as soon as you get more fractionation and more, you know, diversity of peer groups, you

1556
01:41:34,920 --> 01:41:40,770
get different local averages and local norms, and that allows this greater diversity of

1557
01:41:41,010 --> 01:41:41,810
social niches.

1558
01:41:41,890 --> 01:41:46,130
So what might be a profitable personality in one social group will be a different type of

1559
01:41:46,130 --> 01:41:48,610
uh profitable personality in a different social group.

1560
01:41:48,690 --> 01:41:52,610
And as long as you get more and more subcultures and more and more divisions of people

1561
01:41:52,610 --> 01:41:57,010
finding these niches, you get more diversity in the expression of personality.

1562
01:41:57,170 --> 01:41:58,770
It's sort of that's one analogy.

1563
01:41:59,250 --> 01:41:59,730
Exactly right.

1564
01:42:00,130 --> 01:42:04,800
And that's essentially when we say urbanization, it's sort of like this proxy for this like

1565
01:42:04,800 --> 01:42:10,080
flowering of all these like niches and sub niches that you know you just don't really see

1566
01:42:10,080 --> 01:42:11,920
that in very small-scale societies.

1567
01:42:12,000 --> 01:42:15,200
There's still there's it's a limited kind of niche set.

1568
01:42:15,760 --> 01:42:15,920
Yeah.

1569
01:42:16,080 --> 01:42:19,360
I mean uh an analogy that I have in my head, and you can tell me if this is a bad analogy,

1570
01:42:19,520 --> 01:42:24,400
is uh you know, maybe at the at the heyday, the dawn of of uh television, there weren't as

1571
01:42:24,400 --> 01:42:24,960
many genres.

1572
01:42:25,040 --> 01:42:27,280
Maybe it was just like comedy and drama, you know, that was it.

1573
01:42:27,440 --> 01:42:30,800
But now that we have all these streaming platforms and it's so easy we have this

1574
01:42:30,990 --> 01:42:35,550
proliferation and abundance of different uh platforms, you know, different ways of of

1575
01:42:35,550 --> 01:42:36,670
entertaining ourselves.

1576
01:42:36,830 --> 01:42:41,870
And it's so much easier for weird weirdos to like find their weird audience.

1577
01:42:42,110 --> 01:42:43,630
You know, we have so many more genres now.

1578
01:42:43,710 --> 01:42:46,190
It's not just comedy, it's like dark comedy and animated comedy.

1579
01:42:46,270 --> 01:42:51,630
We have sci-fi and fantasy and you know, all these different uh types of entertainment that

1580
01:42:51,630 --> 01:42:54,830
are enabled because of the economic structure of our society.

1581
01:42:54,990 --> 01:42:59,760
And you could make a similar argument that this that we get more genres of people when you

1582
01:42:59,760 --> 01:43:05,600
have a more variegated social environment, uh, where it's easier for people to find uh

1583
01:43:05,600 --> 01:43:10,560
like-minded people and gravitate toward you know subcultures that have you know more of

1584
01:43:10,560 --> 01:43:12,000
their type of personality in them.

1585
01:43:12,160 --> 01:43:16,480
Like I can hang out with a nerdy subculture, and that's kind of an unprecedented thing.

1586
01:43:16,640 --> 01:43:20,960
Like in an ancestral small-scale environment, I probably could maybe find, I don't know,

1587
01:43:21,040 --> 01:43:24,240
maybe one or two other, you know, nerdy people like me.

1588
01:43:24,480 --> 01:43:29,910
But in um in the modern world, I can, you know, basically enter a job that is specifically

1589
01:43:29,910 --> 01:43:34,630
selecting for nerdy people and surround myself with nerds in a way that's kind of

1590
01:43:34,630 --> 01:43:40,390
unprecedented and that will probably bring the nerdy aspects out of me uh much more than

1591
01:43:40,470 --> 01:43:44,310
you know that that would that would have brought out of me if I was in a different uh

1592
01:43:44,470 --> 01:43:45,350
social context.

1593
01:43:45,590 --> 01:43:47,430
So yeah, it's it's fascinating stuff.

1594
01:43:47,670 --> 01:43:53,280
Um you yourself, Michael Gervin, have carved out a wonderful niche for yourself in the uh

1595
01:43:53,280 --> 01:43:54,800
academic subculture.

1596
01:43:54,960 --> 01:44:00,480
Um uh it has now come to the time in the interview where we ask you if there's anything you

1597
01:44:00,480 --> 01:44:05,200
wish we had asked you oh um

1598
01:44:07,680 --> 01:44:13,510
I wish yes That we should have asked you, or that we neglected to

1599
01:44:13,510 --> 01:44:13,990
mention.

1600
01:44:14,470 --> 01:44:17,830
But then if I anything I mentioned, are you gonna turn around and ask me it?

1601
01:44:18,710 --> 01:44:19,590
Well, I think we put it.

1602
01:44:19,750 --> 01:44:20,470
Do you want us to?

1603
01:44:20,790 --> 01:44:21,270
Well, it depends.

1604
01:44:21,350 --> 01:44:24,230
If you No, you don't have to No, we actually we don't there's no rule.

1605
01:44:24,310 --> 01:44:27,590
So yeah, we could just say it and then just uh and then just draw.

1606
01:44:28,070 --> 01:44:33,990
Well no, I guess uh Or we could talk about what the the thing you

1607
01:44:33,990 --> 01:44:36,310
wanted us to ask you that we could talk about another time.

1608
01:44:36,390 --> 01:44:39,280
That's yeah that's that's that's one thing you can know.

1609
01:44:39,360 --> 01:44:39,840
Yeah.

1610
01:44:40,080 --> 01:44:45,360
Well uh uh I guess it it wasn't that I wanted you to ask, but I I guess I was wondering you

1611
01:44:45,360 --> 01:44:49,840
know, thinking whether you're gonna ask about, you know, the future of evolutionary social

1612
01:44:49,840 --> 01:44:55,600
science, those kinds of you know d you know uh those kinds of things

1613
01:44:55,760 --> 01:45:00,560
or or something about the future of small scale societies and what is working to look like

1614
01:45:00,560 --> 01:45:01,840
moving forward.

1615
01:45:02,160 --> 01:45:08,050
Um uh and is that gonna kind of largely still

1616
01:45:08,050 --> 01:45:13,250
be housed within like anthropology departments or is that diffusing across, you know,

1617
01:45:13,330 --> 01:45:14,290
different places?

1618
01:45:14,450 --> 01:45:19,650
And, you know, d as the divides between small scale and large scale, you know, are those

1619
01:45:19,650 --> 01:45:25,250
dissipating and since groups everywhere are are changing, and what does that mean?

1620
01:45:25,490 --> 01:45:31,400
You know uh what and what's the untapped opportunity, uh you know, I I definitely think

1621
01:45:31,400 --> 01:45:35,480
that you know there's there is definitely value for like relatively you know

1622
01:45:35,720 --> 01:45:39,800
unacculturated, remote uh human societies.

1623
01:45:39,960 --> 01:45:45,400
Uh but as groups are kind of going under various degrees of changes on all fronts, you

1624
01:45:45,400 --> 01:45:50,830
know, I feel like it's like a it's a laboratory for asking so many interesting questions in

1625
01:45:50,830 --> 01:45:55,470
all of our disciplines and everything about the mind and behavior, in fact, almost

1626
01:45:55,470 --> 01:45:58,430
everything that was mentioned today, you know, has implications.

1627
01:45:58,590 --> 01:46:02,270
And like David, you were asking about the decline in fertility.

1628
01:46:02,590 --> 01:46:05,630
Fertility is start people are starting to shift and think about fertility.

1629
01:46:05,710 --> 01:46:10,990
You know, a lot of Chimane girls have Depo Provera injected in their arms now, and they're

1630
01:46:10,990 --> 01:46:16,380
thinking about, you know, should their kids be going to school and and not just like fifth

1631
01:46:16,460 --> 01:46:21,900
grade education, but now the possibility for for high school education or even beyond.

1632
01:46:22,140 --> 01:46:28,060
So yeah, all these kinds of questions are fascinating to explore uh in

1633
01:46:28,060 --> 01:46:30,380
in these kinds of changing worlds.

1634
01:46:30,460 --> 01:46:36,220
Uh but focusing on the change rather than well sometimes I feel people

1635
01:46:36,220 --> 01:46:38,540
feel they need to hide the change, right?

1636
01:46:38,620 --> 01:46:43,420
Because they're trying to portray the sense that that groups have been sort of untouched.

1637
01:46:43,630 --> 01:46:49,310
Um, and 'cause that's what in the evolutionary world what they expect people to to want to

1638
01:46:49,310 --> 01:46:50,110
hear about.

1639
01:46:50,190 --> 01:46:54,110
You know, and and so I think that aspect kind of needs to shift a little bit.

1640
01:46:54,190 --> 01:47:00,030
And it'll be really fun to think about, well, what would that look like if we're what

1641
01:47:00,030 --> 01:47:02,270
kinds of questions could we ask and all that?

1642
01:47:02,990 --> 01:47:05,470
Anyway, yeah, that's what I thought you were gonna ask.

1643
01:47:05,620 --> 01:47:06,500
Uh that's okay.

1644
01:47:06,580 --> 01:47:07,060
You have it.

1645
01:47:07,140 --> 01:47:08,020
You don't have to ask a thing.

1646
01:47:08,340 --> 01:47:09,140
There's a there's a job.

1647
01:47:09,540 --> 01:47:11,060
That was a that was a great set of questions.

1648
01:47:11,140 --> 01:47:16,420
You did you if you want a job as a co-host, you've got where we're just like, you know,

1649
01:47:16,580 --> 01:47:20,980
talking about, you know, I don't know what uh nerds in Germany.

1650
01:47:21,140 --> 01:47:21,540
I don't know.

1651
01:47:21,620 --> 01:47:22,500
We're we're useless.

1652
01:47:22,580 --> 01:47:22,900
But yeah.

1653
01:47:23,060 --> 01:47:23,700
No, that's great.

1654
01:47:23,860 --> 01:47:28,180
And actually that sounds like we should have a uh we should like apply for funding for a

1655
01:47:28,180 --> 01:47:30,180
conference or something about that or workshop.

1656
01:47:30,260 --> 01:47:31,780
That sounds like a fun thing to do.

1657
01:47:32,330 --> 01:47:32,570
Yeah.

1658
01:47:32,650 --> 01:47:34,490
I mean, maybe maybe that's what we should do.

1659
01:47:34,570 --> 01:47:37,850
We should have a dedicated episode on the future of evolutionary social science.

1660
01:47:37,930 --> 01:47:41,370
I know a number of our guests uh expressed an interest in that topic.

1661
01:47:41,850 --> 01:47:46,890
We just had Brett Beheim on and we I think somebody alluded to him giving a talk about the

1662
01:47:46,890 --> 01:47:51,850
end of uh Hunter or Egalitarian or you know, Hunter.

1663
01:47:51,930 --> 01:47:55,290
Uh I don't want to put words in his mouth, but we didn't even get a chance to ask him

1664
01:47:55,290 --> 01:47:59,130
that 'cause we were like like again, like idiots were talking about his whiteboard, you

1665
01:47:59,130 --> 01:47:59,290
know.

1666
01:47:59,370 --> 01:48:01,480
So yeah, we're we're still working on this.

1667
01:48:01,560 --> 01:48:01,720
Yeah.

1668
01:48:02,040 --> 01:48:02,440
You're right.

1669
01:48:02,520 --> 01:48:02,920
You were right.

1670
01:48:03,000 --> 01:48:06,120
About two hours flying by, and I feel like we we barely got started.

1671
01:48:06,680 --> 01:48:06,920
Exactly.

1672
01:48:07,480 --> 01:48:07,960
Yeah, yeah.

1673
01:48:08,040 --> 01:48:11,320
Um but but Mike, thank you so much for coming on.

1674
01:48:11,560 --> 01:48:17,080
Uh really um, you know, personally, you were really important for me in grad school.

1675
01:48:17,160 --> 01:48:18,200
I took a class with you.

1676
01:48:18,280 --> 01:48:22,440
Um, I'm back now as professor, but like you really introduced me to like this, the

1677
01:48:22,440 --> 01:48:24,520
behavioral ecology, human behavioral ecology.

1678
01:48:24,680 --> 01:48:27,560
I still have the textbook, the Smith and Winterhall there ninety.

1679
01:48:29,330 --> 01:48:30,370
It's a great book.

1680
01:48:30,770 --> 01:48:31,010
Yeah.

1681
01:48:31,170 --> 01:48:35,410
That's a great book where you just sort of quantify things in a way that I never knew you

1682
01:48:35,410 --> 01:48:35,970
could do.

1683
01:48:36,050 --> 01:48:38,450
Um and it was just uh it was revealing.

1684
01:48:38,530 --> 01:48:43,250
And so for anybody who doesn't know about human human behavioral ecology or Mike's work,

1685
01:48:43,410 --> 01:48:44,610
please check it out.

1686
01:48:44,770 --> 01:48:47,650
Um it's just there's it's an incredible list.

1687
01:48:47,810 --> 01:48:52,120
Mike talked about like 12 papers that didn't see the light of day, and that sounds like a

1688
01:48:52,120 --> 01:48:55,160
lot, but it's because he's got so many that did see the light of day.

1689
01:48:55,240 --> 01:48:58,600
It's actually the percentage is probably the same as everyone else's, if not smaller.

1690
01:48:58,760 --> 01:49:04,280
So um and then Mike, the book comes out on September sixteenth.

1691
01:49:04,600 --> 01:49:05,240
Sixteenth.

1692
01:49:05,480 --> 01:49:05,720
Okay.

1693
01:49:05,880 --> 01:49:08,520
So we'll hopefully this episode will be coming out September sixteenth.

1694
01:49:08,680 --> 01:49:10,520
And then where can people get the book?

1695
01:49:11,000 --> 01:49:16,590
Um, well, I know it's available on Amazon and Target for some reason.

1696
01:49:16,750 --> 01:49:16,990
Okay.

1697
01:49:17,150 --> 01:49:21,550
Uh I'm hoping it'll be available, you know, your local bookstore, you know, maybe go

1698
01:49:21,550 --> 01:49:24,590
beforehand and ask them to make sure they have it in.

1699
01:49:24,750 --> 01:49:24,990
Yeah.

1700
01:49:25,150 --> 01:49:29,870
Uh it can be also ordered through the Princeton University Press website.

1701
01:49:30,030 --> 01:49:35,840
Uh and if you put P U P thirty uh as a little code, get thirty

1702
01:49:35,840 --> 01:49:36,400
percent off.

1703
01:49:36,640 --> 01:49:36,880
Whoa.

1704
01:49:37,120 --> 01:49:42,800
Although that's I don't know if that will disappear the 16th, but I know reordering that uh

1705
01:49:42,960 --> 01:49:44,560
you can get a thirty percent discount.

1706
01:49:44,800 --> 01:49:46,480
Wow, that's our first real ad.

1707
01:49:46,800 --> 01:49:47,440
That's good.

1708
01:49:48,160 --> 01:49:49,600
That's a very very good, very good.

1709
01:49:53,600 --> 01:49:54,400
No, this is great.

1710
01:49:54,560 --> 01:49:55,040
This is great.

1711
01:49:55,200 --> 01:49:59,280
But uh but no it's uh it's a really great and I am really glad that you're doing this kind

1712
01:49:59,280 --> 01:50:05,010
of thing because yeah I think there's so many snake oil salesmen who are trying to s sell

1713
01:50:05,170 --> 01:50:07,890
snake oil, which is why they're called snake oil salesman.

1714
01:50:08,050 --> 01:50:13,170
But anyway, you know, like and I'm glad that like actual uh scientists are are venturing

1715
01:50:13,170 --> 01:50:16,450
into these these formats of what is the lifespan like.

1716
01:50:17,010 --> 01:50:17,250
Great.

1717
01:50:17,490 --> 01:50:18,130
Well thank you.

1718
01:50:18,210 --> 01:50:21,010
I really enjoyed this and thanks for doing what you do.

1719
01:50:21,090 --> 01:50:26,770
I think this is a lot more productive way to get people excited about

1720
01:50:26,770 --> 01:50:30,130
ideas and uh it's great what you're doing.

1721
01:50:30,440 --> 01:50:30,760
Thanks.

1722
01:50:30,920 --> 01:50:31,400
Thanks, Mike.

1723
01:50:31,480 --> 01:50:33,000
Uh David, good to see you.

1724
01:50:33,080 --> 01:50:38,760
Uh yeah, and well David uh Mike, we'll have to have you on again to talk about all a whole

1725
01:50:38,760 --> 01:50:40,600
other set of things that you're you're doing.

1726
01:50:40,760 --> 01:50:42,040
So but this is wonderful.

1727
01:50:42,200 --> 01:50:42,760
Thank you so much.

1728
01:50:43,000 --> 01:50:43,320
Yep.

1729
01:50:43,480 --> 01:50:43,880
Thank you.

1730
01:50:43,960 --> 01:50:44,440
Take care.

1731
01:50:44,680 --> 01:50:45,240
You too.

1732
01:50:50,280 --> 01:50:55,810
Well, David, um I I start uh let's start over.

1733
01:50:55,970 --> 01:50:56,290
Okay.

1734
01:50:57,330 --> 01:50:58,690
You you you start.

1735
01:50:58,850 --> 01:50:59,970
I lost it.

1736
01:51:00,450 --> 01:51:01,170
Well, we did it.

1737
01:51:01,250 --> 01:51:02,450
We did another episode.

1738
01:51:02,530 --> 01:51:03,650
Uh it was fun.

1739
01:51:03,890 --> 01:51:06,210
Uh the guest had a good time, I'm assuming.

1740
01:51:06,290 --> 01:51:07,970
Uh you had a good time, I'm assuming.

1741
01:51:08,050 --> 01:51:10,050
And you, the listener, probably had a good time.

1742
01:51:10,130 --> 01:51:11,890
Well, you must have if you're still listening.

1743
01:51:12,130 --> 01:51:12,370
Yeah.

1744
01:51:12,450 --> 01:51:15,970
I mean, I I the gu the guests really make the episode.

1745
01:51:16,130 --> 01:51:19,810
I mean, I think we just sort of, you know, stumble around and get in their way

1746
01:51:19,810 --> 01:51:20,530
occasionally.

1747
01:51:20,690 --> 01:51:22,960
Um, but we provide the Zoom.

1748
01:51:23,040 --> 01:51:24,640
So, you know, that's but yeah.

1749
01:51:25,120 --> 01:51:27,600
Yeah, we we pick we we we we pick good guests.

1750
01:51:27,680 --> 01:51:28,400
I mean that's that's our role.

1751
01:51:28,880 --> 01:51:30,800
That's a more positive way to put it.

1752
01:51:30,880 --> 01:51:31,040
Yeah.

1753
01:51:31,280 --> 01:51:31,760
That's okay.

1754
01:51:31,920 --> 01:51:32,560
I'll I'll go with that.

1755
01:51:32,640 --> 01:51:33,840
Yes, we pick great guests.

1756
01:51:33,920 --> 01:51:35,040
Yes, our guests are wonderful.

1757
01:51:35,600 --> 01:51:35,840
Yes.

1758
01:51:36,000 --> 01:51:40,800
And if you're happy with our picks, um please say so on social media, leave us a kind

1759
01:51:40,800 --> 01:51:42,320
review, check out our Patreon page.

1760
01:51:42,480 --> 01:51:46,720
And if you have any ideas for other guests or other topics that we should cover or general

1761
01:51:46,720 --> 01:51:48,400
feedback, please let us know.

1762
01:51:48,720 --> 01:51:50,480
Or other formats, yeah.

1763
01:51:50,830 --> 01:51:56,830
yeah who knows maybe maybe we should uh interview uh a chair like a

1764
01:51:56,990 --> 01:52:01,150
like a a person who has the job of being a chair of a department or like actually interview

1765
01:52:01,150 --> 01:52:05,470
a chair like an like a physical like a physical chair we we just we interview the chair

1766
01:52:05,710 --> 01:52:11,710
like uh like sort of between two ferns sort of vibe yeah except kind of chair chair roast

1767
01:52:12,080 --> 01:52:14,880
Except the chair is between two people and yeah.

1768
01:52:15,200 --> 01:52:16,480
Oh, interesting.

1769
01:52:16,640 --> 01:52:16,960
All right.

1770
01:52:17,040 --> 01:52:18,720
Well, let's uh let's workshop this.

1771
01:52:18,800 --> 01:52:19,520
I like this idea.

1772
01:52:19,600 --> 01:52:23,840
Okay, uh, maybe next week we'll hear from a chair question mark.

1773
01:52:24,000 --> 01:52:25,280
Okay, interesting, David.

1774
01:52:25,360 --> 01:52:26,480
Okay, very interesting.

1775
01:52:26,560 --> 01:52:27,760
Okay, we'll see you next week.

1776
01:52:28,000 --> 01:52:28,960
All right, see ya.