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Uh David, today is a very special day because it's Tuesday.

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And every Tuesday, what happens?

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Well, uh the latest episode of Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast comes out.

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And what is the tagline of the tagline is it's actual evolutionary psychology by

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Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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And you know, it's been uh really nice to hear from people saying that they're actual

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evolutionary psychologists and actually uh enjoying it, and they're confirming that it is

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kind of actually what we do.

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Yep.

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So here you go.

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Enjoy this next one.

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Happy Tuesday.

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David, I am always excited about our guests, but I'm especially excited about guests that

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uh we don't usually get to talk to in our day-to-day um sort of scientific um

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existence.

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And for me today, uh Ray Hames is one of those folks where um I had actually not really

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spent much time interacting with him previously, and um we got to talk to him about all

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kinds of stuff, including sort of early history of evolutionary behavioral sciences, and

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specifically working um in part with uh Nap Shagnon.

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That's right, with with the Yanomamo, which is a really fascinating group of people.

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He has some really uh uh incredible stories to tell about his experiences with the Yano

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Mamo.

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Uh this guy is a true veteran.

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Uh he was there right when the evolutionary behavioral sciences were becoming a thing.

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And uh this guy knows the development of this field.

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He has uh stories to tell and knowledge to share about how these fields developed and and

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you know whether they may have uh developed in the wrong way or the right way.

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Uh I think he has a few barbs about E.O.

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Wilson and about how maybe he oversimplified things.

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E.

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O.

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Wilson, for those of you who don't know, uh kicked off the evolutionary behavioral sciences

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with his book Sociobiology, uh, and that was later developed into evolutionary psychology

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by uh Leda Cosmodies and John Tubi.

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Uh but we get into all that history.

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Uh uh Ray was there from the very beginning, um, and uh he's just a a really um uh

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wonderful guy, brilliant mind, and uh we we learned so much from this conversation.

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Yeah, and we also had in the spirit of sort of the evolutionary social sciences as a

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community, we actually had a guest, uh um co-host, which who was uh Zach Garfield.

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So it's actually gonna be Ray and Zach and David and myself.

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So we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna I think start doing that um sometimes, especially

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having a returning guest kind of come on and and be with us um to talk to somebody new and

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you know, just different sort of different format.

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And it was wonderful to have Zach on because he had also unique uh experiences with Ray

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that we couldn't, David and I, um, sort of convey to folks.

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So I I really enjoyed that.

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Um one other note is that we did have some technical difficulty with um with Wi-Fi

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um uh in this episode.

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And so you might detect some some editing in the earlier uh stages um that you know so just

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just be aware of that.

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So thanks for bearing with that.

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Yes.

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All right.

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Without further ado, enjoy Ray Haynes.

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All right, so we are recording, and today we have uh a very special and unique uh set of

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guests.

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So by my math, we have one more person than we usually do.

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We usually have, well, actually, we usually have two or three people, but today we have

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four people.

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So we have uh returning guest, uh Zach Garfield, who is I would say our first guest

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co-host of the podcast.

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Um, but really why we're here is to talk to uh Ray Haymes.

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Um and Ray Hames, um, in addition to uh receiving the uh the HBES uh

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Lifetime Career Award has a number of um accolades and um awards and things, but I think

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we're gonna let Zach um sort of introduce who Ray is.

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Sure.

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Um thank you Dave and David for the chance to be a part of this conversation with Ray.

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Um so Ray Haymes uh is a professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska

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Lincoln um on his retirement uh tour now I suppose we could say And um

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I yeah, I first met Ray as I was an undergraduate at UNL.

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And I worked with Ray.

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He was my first introduction to anthropology and the evolutionary social sciences.

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Um, Ray's done pioneering work, uh, really sort of the first wave of human behavioral

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ecology and when evolutionary theory started to be sort of co-opted by cultural

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anthropologists, testing ideas uh that had come from math models and from biology among

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human populations.

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and he's done a lot of work on cooperation, food sharing, uh, the division of labor,

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decision making in households.

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Uh, also a wide sort of has his hands in a lot of other pots too, related to

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sexuality and marriage systems.

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And so he's he's kind of been around for the the emergence of our field.

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Um, he's invested a lot in methods too.

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So he's a methodological expert, especially regarding time allocation data collection

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and all the sort of tools that human behavioral ecologists were using, taking these models

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from biology and ethology and trying to apply them in rural subsistence-based communities.

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His accolades are extensive.

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He's trained many students.

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I'm one of them.

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Um he's recently uh member of the National Academy of Sciences as well.

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I think only the second uh faculty from UNL to join that's um that group.

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So um, you know, it was really an honor getting to work with Ray as an undergraduate, and

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he's continued to shepherd me along through my my training um and infected me with all many

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of his biases um along the way, which has been uh very useful.

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And it's yeah, it's an honor to have you here and to chat with you um on this podcast, Ray.

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Well, thank you for the nice uh introduction and I'm very happy to uh to to join uh

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Dave and David uh in this uh podcast.

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Uh I c listened to a few, one I think recently with uh with Ed Hagan.

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So here I am.

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Uh happy to be here.

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Uh I mean one one question to start and and uh Zach also uh feel free to jump in but but

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Ray one question is sort of um you know, as Zach mentioned, the you are sort of

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involved in sort of the first wave of applying these uh mathematical models from

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evolutionary biology at a time when doing so was just sort of unheard of or controversial.

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Um and I'm just sort of curious, sort of, what your experience was in

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sort of finding yourself in that situation.

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Uh yeah, I was among the first wave.

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Uh I I think uh, you know, um the shagdown was the you know true uh first wave

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along with don simons uh and people like david bus and then a little bit

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later uh tube and cosmeties uh you know came online i remember when

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i uh published a a paper on garden labor exchange um i got

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a a reviewer who said you know you've got to read who in the heck are these people uh but i

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looked up their work and found it to be uh very, very interesting, a bit rough, uh, because

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uh we were branded as um uh uh racist uh and um

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kind of spensarian uh conservatives.

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Uh and a lot of the problem stemmed from um, I think, if I may, uh

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Ed Wilson's work uh in terms of he said some really silly things, uh I should

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say inaccurate things.

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Uh what are some of those uh silly things?

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Or what are some examples of those silly things that he said?

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He said that you know all hunter gatherers were territorial.

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When in fact territoriality is a contingent response and resource density is high

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and predictability is high, then you would predict based on economic models,

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largely Jerem Brown's models of bird territoriality.

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And so you have a kind of range from home range systems to territorial systems.

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And so he was kind of like I would call him uh an old school

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ethologist who kind of approached human behavior from a very simple-minded

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sort of uh genetic determinism.

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Uh but still he's he's really important in in in our

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field.

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He just kind of like that got the stuff on hunter gatherers uh really, really wrong.

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Sort of like bringing in so the the ethology is this you know famous school of evolutionary

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biology that studied fixed action patterns or sort of innate reflexive behaviors like uh

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the probably the most commonly known one is imprinting.

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So a duckling will imprint on the the first thing it sees and sort of treat

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that thing as its parent.

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And so there are these famous photos of Conrad Lorenz with like a trail of ducklings

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following him along.

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And so you and what you seem to be saying is that he took this way of thinking, which may

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have worked out reasonably well in the case of ducklings, and applied it to humans, which

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led to some oversimplifications.

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Is that basically what you're saying?

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Yeah, uh indeed.

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And uh essentially he seemed to not be aware of the developments in behavioral ecology,

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in particular, of things like uh simple things like optimal foraging theory that

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demonstrated the contingency of uh of game selection, uh diet breath

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models, uh search patterns, etc., etc.

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Uh, which you know uh makes perfect sense uh because if we were stuck with fixed action

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patterns, we would be poorly adapted to to to the world.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Do you so how much of the the animosity do you think arose from Eo Wilson bungling

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things and oversimplifying things versus the mere fact of applying an evolutionary

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lens to human behavior?

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I think both are really critical.

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In fact, you know, when Evolution of Human Behavior had a previous name,

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and that was ethology and sociobiology.

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And I forget the date, but I think it was about 1980, early 80s,

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we had a meeting, I think it was at Michigan maybe, where uh Ed was a president,

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and we voted to change the name to Evolution and Human Behavior because

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there was this immediate association with the journal the term sociobiology, which was Ed's

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term, which meant that if you use that term to characterize yourself, you kind of were in

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his um mode of thinking.

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And so uh that was you know a kind of really important break that uh that

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that did occur.

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However, you know, uh still some of my old friends like Sarah Hurdy still use the term

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sociobiology to characterize uh herself, uh, but it's kind of a historical uh

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legacy.

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So there were uh I'm I'm trying to recall what the question was, you had a two part

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yeah it was just about whether um the uh applying evolution in general to have to

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do with the other

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What does evolution have to do with it?

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We're freed from that kind of constraint.

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And so that that mindset um was worked against us.

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One of the cartoonish like sort of narratives that at least I still hold a little bit is

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that um you know behavioral ecology was sort of not psychological enough, and that's

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why evolutionary psychology was necessary to really uh flesh out the

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evolved psychology and and actually talk about like what's the approximate system

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doing.

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But, you know, as I read a lot of the history of even ethology, but also human behavioral

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ecology, there's actually quite a bit of complex psychology in it.

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And so do you think it's sort of an inaccurate thing to say that human behavioral

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ecology wasn't psychological?

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Is that sort of an oversimplification?

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And was human behavioral ecology already doing evolutionary psychology, sort of?

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Um well it it it uh is an oversimplification, but it's actually pretty accurate.

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And uh, you know, what we do is essentially what Graven calls the the phenotypic gambit.

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Right.

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And we'll leave the neuromechanisms to you guys because you're really good at that.

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But our focus is on behavior.

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And behavior does have consequences, and there's got to be a payoff for particular kinds of

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behavior.

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And so this is something that um Don Simons uh brought in.

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Uh I think sometimes rather stridily, uh, but you know, of him.

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Uh and then of course John Alita you know brought that to the uh to the end that we're

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interested in looking at the uh real life consequences of behavior, because if

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a behavior is adaptive, we've got to show the payoff.

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Uh and it's clear that the psychological mechanisms are really important.

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And again, I would would view it as a division of labor.

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Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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How it felt like at that moment in time.

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I think like all of us would kind of agree that the evolutionary social sciences is this

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sort of know, paradigm shift.

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And at least that's our hope.

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And maybe the the future of fruits are still yet to be born, but we think that it's like a

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really big deal.

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I think most of the people in this field are quite passionate about it.

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They see it as like quite a big departure from, let's say, previous less or

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non-evolutionary models.

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But at that time, when this was first getting going, did it feel like it had the chance to

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be maybe what it would be perceived to be by like the the 90s and let's say now or was it

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just like I don't know let's try this new thing or did does that is my question clear did

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it did it seem like there was a a big sea change ahead or was it just like uh I don't know

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trying something weird and out of the box at the time?

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Well I think I can only speak for myself but uh if if m my idea was that

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if evolution is accurate, it ought to apply to us.

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And so the question becomes: how does it apply to us?

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And that was the thing that kind of drove me because we could

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look at all the sorts of physiological, morphological changes that

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occurred in the process of hominid evolution, clearly guided by

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evolution.

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But then when it came to the brain, somehow, you know, evolution didn't penetrate

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there.

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Somehow we became cultured and were like free of the bounds of

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evolutionary forces.

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And so I rejected, and I think a lot of us rejected that sort of uh

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process.

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The other thing that really was important is that we finally had a good

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hypothetical to deductive method to test our ideas.

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The only field at that time that really had that approach was economics.

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And were they, you know, rational choice, sort of, and so we have they had a real theory,

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although they there's some problems with that theory.

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And so a lot of us, you know, we're just like, wow, we've got this method where we

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can actually develop hypotheses and test them.

233
00:16:27,310 --> 00:16:32,750
And they may be wrong, but at least you you have that kind of security that as

234
00:16:32,750 --> 00:16:38,750
opposed to uh maybe I overgeneralize these ad hoc make sense to

235
00:16:38,750 --> 00:16:44,750
me stuff in psychology and sociology kind of models, we're getting us

236
00:16:44,750 --> 00:16:45,470
nowhere.

237
00:16:45,710 --> 00:16:46,350
Yeah.

238
00:16:46,940 --> 00:16:47,820
It's the same thing.

239
00:16:47,900 --> 00:16:50,060
It is an overgeneralization, but it's also accurate.

240
00:16:50,140 --> 00:16:52,060
It's the same answer you gave me a few minutes ago.

241
00:16:52,140 --> 00:16:53,020
Yes, exactly.

242
00:16:53,180 --> 00:16:59,100
And just for people listening, you know, those hypo hypothetic or deductive theories

243
00:16:59,100 --> 00:17:01,980
are essentially, you know, selection pressure dynamic models, right?

244
00:17:02,060 --> 00:17:07,740
So like things like optimal foraging or you know, ideal free distribution, or um

245
00:17:07,740 --> 00:17:13,100
things where you're sort of creating a model of saying, look, if there was a phenotypic

246
00:17:13,100 --> 00:17:18,370
design for dealing with a certain problem, what are the costs and benefits that that design

247
00:17:18,370 --> 00:17:21,570
would have to deal with and how would it respond or optimize those?

248
00:17:21,730 --> 00:17:25,970
And you can look at that for dealing with collecting food for conflict things like the

249
00:17:25,970 --> 00:17:27,730
asymmetric war of attrition.

250
00:17:27,890 --> 00:17:32,690
Um, you know, are those the kinds of models that you're talking about, these sort of um

251
00:17:32,930 --> 00:17:35,010
evolutionary game theory models?

252
00:17:35,410 --> 00:17:40,610
Yeah, I I think, you know, a a lot of us and and and I'll include uh my my

253
00:17:40,610 --> 00:17:46,120
compatriots at the time, uh Kim Hill, Bruce Winterholder, Eric Smith, Kristen

254
00:17:46,360 --> 00:17:47,080
Hawkes.

255
00:17:47,320 --> 00:17:51,880
Uh, we were, you know, uh essentially economic anthropologists.

256
00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:55,800
And so we knew about you know rational choice theory.

257
00:17:55,880 --> 00:18:01,800
Um, and then we read the literature on optimal foraging theory, uh, and

258
00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:06,360
we could see the mesh between the two, and we could see the direct application in terms of

259
00:18:06,360 --> 00:18:10,440
food getting activities for the kinds of research we did.

260
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And a lot of us worked in South America among you know barely acculturated uh

261
00:18:16,010 --> 00:18:21,930
groups and uh on hunter-gatherers and uh so that was something that you

262
00:18:21,930 --> 00:18:23,930
know immediately pulled us in.

263
00:18:24,090 --> 00:18:29,610
But and also we were um another kind of dimension that united us all we were we were

264
00:18:29,610 --> 00:18:31,370
quantitative in our approach.

265
00:18:31,770 --> 00:18:37,040
We want to know about return to effort uh and how that affected uh uh

266
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choices in terms of what people uh pursued.

267
00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:45,440
And so uh when we started uh reading um uh uh

268
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:51,200
behavioral ecology it was a wonderful kind of uh uh guide for us.

269
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:57,690
So if I'm hearing this right, it was sort of you were inspired by economics thinking

270
00:18:57,690 --> 00:19:02,810
about humans from this economic perspective, and then came across behavioral ecology as

271
00:19:02,810 --> 00:19:05,050
well and sort of integrated the two.

272
00:19:05,930 --> 00:19:10,650
But anyway, another element was kind of really interesting, group selection approach, which

273
00:19:10,650 --> 00:19:13,690
was very comforting to a lot of uh anthropologists.

274
00:19:13,930 --> 00:19:19,760
Uh and uh so uh that was uh and the whole

275
00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:25,680
issue of Wynn Edwards and population regulation and people

276
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:30,240
doing things uh for the good of their group and ridiculous arguments.

277
00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:36,160
Uh please kill your kids because we don't want uh our population to overshoot the

278
00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:38,080
um uh resources.

279
00:19:39,840 --> 00:19:45,710
Uh uh in a population of, you know, 50 people in a village,

280
00:19:45,950 --> 00:19:50,750
okay, you gotta start killing your kids because we're worried about long-term uh ecological

281
00:19:50,750 --> 00:19:52,750
damage because we gotta maintain a stead.

282
00:19:52,990 --> 00:19:57,390
You know, it was like laughable on the face of it when you're really I shouldn't be so

283
00:19:57,390 --> 00:19:58,990
sarcastic, I suppose.

284
00:19:59,070 --> 00:20:03,950
Uh but at the same time, it it it just was like bewildering.

285
00:20:04,110 --> 00:20:06,910
What parent would ever behave in that way?

286
00:20:07,150 --> 00:20:13,000
In fact, the argument would be uh uh you kill your kids and

287
00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:14,280
leave mine alone.

288
00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:16,280
Right, right.

289
00:20:16,920 --> 00:20:17,560
Yeah.

290
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:23,960
Um Ray, you mentioned, you know, that you guys, you and your compatriots brought this

291
00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:25,880
quantitative approach in anthropology.

292
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:30,280
But many of you were trained as like cultural anthropologists, maybe in your undergrad or

293
00:20:30,280 --> 00:20:31,640
earlier in your graduate training.

294
00:20:31,800 --> 00:20:35,370
So I kind of wonder like how it went in the field for you at that time, Because

295
00:20:35,530 --> 00:20:39,930
quantitative anthropologists always face this trade-off because we we need that qualitative

296
00:20:40,010 --> 00:20:44,570
ethnographic insight to know what questions to ask, know how to interpret our results.

297
00:20:44,890 --> 00:20:48,090
But at the same time, you know, collecting time allocation data is super intensive.

298
00:20:48,170 --> 00:20:52,490
So you kind of can't do both, but at the same time, you kind of have to do both.

299
00:20:52,650 --> 00:20:57,220
So I wonder how that went for you, like adopting a quantitative approach, but also trying

300
00:20:57,220 --> 00:20:59,620
to get this deep ethnographic insights.

301
00:20:59,780 --> 00:21:02,900
Um, you know, I I know you consider yourself an ethnographer as well.

302
00:21:02,980 --> 00:21:05,300
And then also, you know, which communities were you mostly working with?

303
00:21:05,380 --> 00:21:08,820
I didn't mention that in your in your introduction, but how did you balance that?

304
00:21:08,980 --> 00:21:12,500
Getting the ethnographic qualitative perspective while also collecting this rich

305
00:21:12,580 --> 00:21:14,020
quantitative data?

306
00:21:14,740 --> 00:21:20,340
Well, uh to do both because you know, we had uh a legacy of, you know, I'm

307
00:21:20,740 --> 00:21:23,630
uh Shagna was one of my mentors.

308
00:21:23,870 --> 00:21:26,510
Elma Service was another one of my my mentors.

309
00:21:26,750 --> 00:21:30,270
And both all of those people had done kind of good qualitative research.

310
00:21:30,350 --> 00:21:34,750
So it was kind of an expectation that we would balance the two.

311
00:21:35,150 --> 00:21:40,350
And you know, for example, if you look at, you know, speaking of Shagnan, um uh he was

312
00:21:40,350 --> 00:21:46,030
working with James Neal, and he really got into extensive

313
00:21:46,030 --> 00:21:51,900
demographic uh research, but added kinship to that

314
00:21:51,900 --> 00:21:56,540
dimension that I think um Neil wasn't too interested in.

315
00:21:56,700 --> 00:22:02,620
And then he was trained as to some extent as a you know a Michigan cultural

316
00:22:02,620 --> 00:22:08,060
evolutionist uh who believed in uh looking at the um uh

317
00:22:08,300 --> 00:22:12,460
humanistic and qualitative dimensions of of human behavior

318
00:22:14,670 --> 00:22:18,510
Have I answered your question?

319
00:22:19,230 --> 00:22:20,750
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

320
00:22:20,910 --> 00:22:22,750
So, what were the communities that you worked with?

321
00:22:22,830 --> 00:22:27,390
And did you, you know, did you work with translators in the field or did you develop

322
00:22:27,390 --> 00:22:30,270
language proficiency at the outsets?

323
00:22:31,230 --> 00:22:33,230
Well, uh a good question.

324
00:22:33,310 --> 00:22:38,820
Um, you're really full language capabilities, uh, because you you know you're in a village

325
00:22:38,900 --> 00:22:41,940
and you can't talk, don't know your language, and you don't know their language.

326
00:22:42,180 --> 00:22:48,100
And so the motivation is really powerful just to have some like normal human intercourse

327
00:22:48,100 --> 00:22:53,300
on a daily basis, whether it's hi, how you doing, you know, good morning, sort of stuff

328
00:22:53,300 --> 00:22:53,700
like that.

329
00:22:53,780 --> 00:22:59,780
And so uh you really are uh highly motivated uh to learn

330
00:22:59,780 --> 00:23:00,580
the language.

331
00:23:00,820 --> 00:23:06,650
And fortunately, Yanamamo was, I would say, uh it won't sound arrogant,

332
00:23:06,730 --> 00:23:08,970
but it was a pretty easy language to learn.

333
00:23:09,450 --> 00:23:14,650
Yaquana, another group I worked with, was really tough because the

334
00:23:14,970 --> 00:23:19,370
phonemic system, you know, for example, all the valves could be glottalized.

335
00:23:19,450 --> 00:23:24,490
And that takes a lot of practice to get your chops down speaking that way.

336
00:23:24,650 --> 00:23:30,010
And so actually, uh, when I did uh my research on the Yanamamo, I uh I used Gianamamo.

337
00:23:30,330 --> 00:23:35,740
And when I did my research on the Yaquana, I used Yanomamo because the Yaquana could

338
00:23:35,740 --> 00:23:41,660
understand um Yanomamo because of the trading relationships and intermarriages

339
00:23:41,820 --> 00:23:44,460
and some kind of village coalescences.

340
00:23:44,860 --> 00:23:49,900
And then also, you know, through a little Spanish for some of the yaquana who uh could uh

341
00:23:50,060 --> 00:23:53,100
mainly the men who could understand uh Spanish.

342
00:23:53,420 --> 00:23:59,420
And so um yeah learning the language is is uh is really critical.

343
00:24:00,610 --> 00:24:00,850
Yeah.

344
00:24:01,010 --> 00:24:04,850
And what what was that uh working with in the Yanamamo?

345
00:24:05,170 --> 00:24:11,090
I mean, you know, that was a very kind of famous and slightly infamous field site, um,

346
00:24:11,330 --> 00:24:16,690
especially with sort of the um the darkness in El Dorado controversy, which you know, you

347
00:24:16,690 --> 00:24:21,490
and Tubi and other people, you know, really vindicated and you know, showed that there was

348
00:24:21,490 --> 00:24:24,930
really nothing to that, or to the extent there was something to it on the on the other

349
00:24:24,930 --> 00:24:25,810
folks' end.

350
00:24:26,100 --> 00:24:29,700
But um like what was it like going to Yanamamo land?

351
00:24:30,020 --> 00:24:34,420
Uh and you know with with or without Nap Shagnan on what was that like?

352
00:24:34,900 --> 00:24:36,020
Oh what can I say?

353
00:24:36,180 --> 00:24:41,860
It was scary, not because of the Yanamamo per se, but I remember

354
00:24:42,020 --> 00:24:47,780
um I was with the team, uh we were all in a set of

355
00:24:47,780 --> 00:24:48,900
big canoes.

356
00:24:49,060 --> 00:24:52,420
I was the first one dropped off at the end of the Orinoco.

357
00:24:52,580 --> 00:24:58,510
We're easy um uh uh travel is is possible from

358
00:24:58,510 --> 00:24:59,390
that point forward.

359
00:24:59,470 --> 00:25:05,470
I'm we're talking about maybe oh uh 50 miles from the headwaters

360
00:25:05,710 --> 00:25:07,070
where I was dropped off.

361
00:25:07,310 --> 00:25:13,310
And I remember walking up the slope after I unpacked all my stuff and looking at

362
00:25:13,310 --> 00:25:19,020
Knapp and uh Bob Carnero and and a couple other people um uh

363
00:25:19,340 --> 00:25:25,260
leaving me and I thought as I walked up that slope, you know, okay, here it begins.

364
00:25:25,420 --> 00:25:30,940
Uh I had no canoe to uh get back to the to the

365
00:25:30,940 --> 00:25:31,580
missions.

366
00:25:31,820 --> 00:25:37,180
Uh I had no uh communication system uh in that uh

367
00:25:37,740 --> 00:25:43,190
uh uh what do you call that uh kind of communication uh

368
00:25:43,430 --> 00:25:49,430
well i i had no radio essentially to to call if i needed help and but you know

369
00:25:49,510 --> 00:25:55,350
i was young male uh and ready for for adventure and probably

370
00:25:55,430 --> 00:26:01,430
uh clearly overestimated uh my ability to to handle problems uh i

371
00:26:01,430 --> 00:26:07,030
did have a medical kit uh but i figured you know if i broke a leg i would be in

372
00:26:07,030 --> 00:26:12,820
bad shape uh and uh you know i in in kind of

373
00:26:12,820 --> 00:26:18,660
modern fieldwork, uh, you have good radio communication and you know where you

374
00:26:18,660 --> 00:26:19,700
can get help.

375
00:26:19,860 --> 00:26:23,540
And you've already pre-planned, you know, if something should go wrong.

376
00:26:23,700 --> 00:26:29,300
Uh, and then at the ultimate, you know, you can get extraction uh insurance,

377
00:26:29,460 --> 00:26:35,300
such that if you're in a really difficult to get to, uh, you know, uh, but you know, so

378
00:26:35,300 --> 00:26:37,620
back then, no satellite communications.

379
00:26:38,410 --> 00:26:42,730
And everything was, you know, by foot or by by river.

380
00:26:43,290 --> 00:26:46,890
But you know, after a while, you know, you're there for purpose.

381
00:26:47,450 --> 00:26:50,170
The Anomamo treated me really, really well.

382
00:26:50,810 --> 00:26:52,250
They're very kind to me.

383
00:26:52,570 --> 00:26:57,690
They could get real demanding, but then, you know, you could get, you know, right back in

384
00:26:57,690 --> 00:26:58,330
their face.

385
00:26:59,290 --> 00:27:03,370
But so I was really fortunate that

386
00:27:05,620 --> 00:27:09,380
they they treated me, you know, quite well.

387
00:27:09,620 --> 00:27:15,060
They the only thing that really bothered me later in the field was when it's not uncommon

388
00:27:15,060 --> 00:27:20,420
for the Anamamo to threaten you with mortal harm if you didn't give them something.

389
00:27:20,660 --> 00:27:26,020
Uh, and then you know, so there's this old guy, you know, he's kind of threatening you, and

390
00:27:26,020 --> 00:27:31,410
you know he've k he's killed six people, So he's perfectly capable of

391
00:27:31,410 --> 00:27:32,690
dispatching you.

392
00:27:33,010 --> 00:27:38,210
But you know, that would be the wrong thing to do because I was the source of axes and

393
00:27:38,210 --> 00:27:41,330
machetes and fish hooks and fish line, et cetera, et cetera.

394
00:27:41,490 --> 00:27:46,290
And they didn't want to kill the, you know, or he didn't want to response for killing the

395
00:27:46,450 --> 00:27:47,330
golden goose.

396
00:27:47,410 --> 00:27:51,330
But you know, people can get really mad and not think things through.

397
00:27:51,490 --> 00:27:56,770
Uh, and so uh, but anyway, uh the anima were very nice to me.

398
00:27:57,560 --> 00:27:59,080
Aside from the death threats.

399
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,880
Yeah, but see that's just kind of like uh banter.

400
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:07,720
Teasing.

401
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,080
Is it kind of like was it is quasi-humorous?

402
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:15,160
Well it was to push you to see how you would respond.

403
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:16,440
It was testing it.

404
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:18,280
So it's a kind of a game.

405
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:18,600
Yeah.

406
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:24,970
Uh and um you would just respond either silently or

407
00:28:25,210 --> 00:28:26,570
I don't think so.

408
00:28:27,050 --> 00:28:31,290
Uh you're a little guy and I could take you out right now, barehanded.

409
00:28:31,370 --> 00:28:34,090
You know, you just kind of give it back to them.

410
00:28:34,170 --> 00:28:38,250
Uh, but in a kind of like not overextended way.

411
00:28:38,410 --> 00:28:44,170
Uh and you want to, you know, kind of like uh uh get out of that back and

412
00:28:44,170 --> 00:28:45,850
forth as quickly as possible.

413
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:53,360
Maybe could you tell us just like what a typical day looked like collecting data in a

414
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:55,280
Yanamoma village in this time?

415
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,680
And I mean I I imagine there's overlap with how what fieldwork is like today or in

416
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:02,960
different places, but maybe there's some I don't know unique components.

417
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,480
Like what was just like a typical, you know, you wake up in the morning until you go to bed

418
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:07,440
on average.

419
00:29:08,310 --> 00:29:11,030
Well, wake up in the morning, have some coffee.

420
00:29:11,750 --> 00:29:13,590
Day starts when the sun gets up.

421
00:29:13,750 --> 00:29:19,190
Everyone is is is is uh is up, and day ends when the sun pretty much goes down.

422
00:29:19,430 --> 00:29:25,030
Although people will you know chat around the fires, uh eat a little bit, uh shamans will

423
00:29:25,750 --> 00:29:28,150
chant, uh babies will cry.

424
00:29:28,310 --> 00:29:34,000
Uh but by about I would say nine o'clock, everyone is sawing

425
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,880
logs and comfortable in their in their hammocks.

426
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,840
But uh getting up in the morning, uh it depends.

427
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:45,120
You know, sometimes uh a real quick lunch because I have a hunting trip to go on with a

428
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:48,800
bunch of people I'm gonna track and collect data doing that.

429
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,800
And so might be gone for until until noon.

430
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,680
Uh or maybe there was a gathering trip.

431
00:29:55,760 --> 00:30:01,590
And so I go out with uh some women and a couple of men, And we would go to a

432
00:30:01,590 --> 00:30:07,350
spot and and I would record gathering food, food

433
00:30:07,350 --> 00:30:10,790
collection uh activities, foraging activities.

434
00:30:11,830 --> 00:30:17,830
And then, you know, when I first got there, uh early in the morning, you know,

435
00:30:18,150 --> 00:30:23,030
I would uh be talking with a couple of young guys I hired to learn the language, to

436
00:30:23,030 --> 00:30:28,840
practice the language, and to, you know, really, I can't stress how much, you know, the the

437
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:34,600
social isolation is is getting over that, getting through

438
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:40,440
that is uh just to make yourself feel part of a group uh is is

439
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:41,000
really important.

440
00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:42,040
So learning the language.

441
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:47,480
And in fact, the thing is what I found interesting when I would go to Caracas to get

442
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:53,240
resupplied, I felt really lonely because there was nobody there who gave a shit

443
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:53,880
about me.

444
00:30:54,090 --> 00:30:58,170
You know, uh, I was just some, you know, faceless name.

445
00:30:58,330 --> 00:31:03,770
I felt psychologically much more comfortable back in the village where I had

446
00:31:03,770 --> 00:31:08,010
friends who actually, some of them, you know, cared about me.

447
00:31:08,170 --> 00:31:12,410
Others wanted to keep me around for the resources that I had, etc., etc.

448
00:31:12,970 --> 00:31:18,860
Um so uh, you know, early on to answer your question, uh couple

449
00:31:19,020 --> 00:31:20,700
hours in the morning learning the language.

450
00:31:20,860 --> 00:31:26,140
And then the nice thing about behavior observations is that you can, you know, essentially

451
00:31:26,140 --> 00:31:29,580
do it with limited uh uh competence.

452
00:31:29,980 --> 00:31:34,860
Uh and you know if someone wasn't there, then I would ask, you know, where's so-and-so?

453
00:31:35,180 --> 00:31:36,460
I was able to ask that.

454
00:31:36,620 --> 00:31:37,500
What were they doing?

455
00:31:37,660 --> 00:31:39,420
Who were they with, et cetera, et cetera.

456
00:31:39,580 --> 00:31:44,460
So you have not direct observations, you have reports of what people were doing.

457
00:31:44,700 --> 00:31:49,910
And so um the first part of my research was

458
00:31:50,470 --> 00:31:56,310
learning the language and then making rounds throughout the

459
00:31:56,310 --> 00:31:59,910
day and then uh see what everyone was doing.

460
00:32:00,070 --> 00:32:05,990
And then you know you have special topics, you know, uh who was married to whom, uh trying

461
00:32:05,990 --> 00:32:11,910
to get some good demographic kinship information uh and and things of that nature.

462
00:32:12,660 --> 00:32:12,820
Yeah.

463
00:32:12,980 --> 00:32:16,740
Some of your early work, or I mean, maybe not early, but just sort of you had things on

464
00:32:16,740 --> 00:32:17,860
like time allocation.

465
00:32:17,940 --> 00:32:22,100
And especially nowadays, it's so easy to just sort of push an electronic button.

466
00:32:22,340 --> 00:32:26,500
Um, you know, at that time, was it recording things on paper and pencil?

467
00:32:26,580 --> 00:32:29,700
Or you know, how are you recording time allocation things?

468
00:32:30,260 --> 00:32:32,500
You ever hear of a Fortran coding sheet?

469
00:32:32,740 --> 00:32:33,140
Mm-hmm.

470
00:32:34,100 --> 00:32:39,780
Yeah, that's what I I used, uh, you know, and uh

471
00:32:40,020 --> 00:32:44,210
so uh all that's you know, it's it's it's essentially a spreadsheet.

472
00:32:44,290 --> 00:32:47,730
Uh but but uh that was what I brought into the field.

473
00:32:47,890 --> 00:32:51,650
And then of course uh I had no computer at the time.

474
00:32:51,890 --> 00:32:56,930
Later on, we were some of the, I think maybe first anthropologists to use computers in

475
00:32:57,090 --> 00:32:58,130
remote areas.

476
00:32:58,370 --> 00:33:04,210
But yeah, everything was pencil and paper, pencil and paper, and then carbon paper because

477
00:33:04,290 --> 00:33:09,380
you know you want to have backups, uh, because you know, nothing could be more

478
00:33:09,380 --> 00:33:14,980
horrible than to uh be in the field for six months and lose your

479
00:33:14,980 --> 00:33:18,340
data or have the data somehow wrecked.

480
00:33:18,420 --> 00:33:23,460
And it means that's that's six months of your life, you know, just kind of like down the

481
00:33:23,460 --> 00:33:23,940
drain.

482
00:33:24,260 --> 00:33:30,230
And so you get really uh careful uh and always have this kind

483
00:33:30,230 --> 00:33:36,150
of shadow of paranoia uh you know what if what if you know something would uh would go on

484
00:33:36,470 --> 00:33:41,750
yeah and i don't think that uh area is particularly favorable to like pres preserving paper

485
00:33:41,910 --> 00:33:45,670
like i think people have talked about how their clothes rot you know like let alone paper

486
00:33:45,830 --> 00:33:51,670
nice sheets of paper uh that's not very friendly for paper you're right in fact uh

487
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:57,360
Shagnell wrote a book called Studying the Yamamo, where he made a bunch of recommendations

488
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:01,440
for people uh working in uh remote areas.

489
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:07,440
And he was criticized for saying things like, you know, don't use red uh red ink on your

490
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:07,680
pens.

491
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:11,840
Well, it's goddamn right because it smears, it runs.

492
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:17,810
And so he had a bunch of great tips for you know recording data,

493
00:34:17,970 --> 00:34:19,170
safeguarding data.

494
00:34:19,330 --> 00:34:24,130
He also had some really bad advice about what kind of shoes to uh to use.

495
00:34:24,370 --> 00:34:29,890
He he was in favor of Chuck Taylor of All-Stars, uh, which are terrible.

496
00:34:30,050 --> 00:34:35,730
Uh they had no heel cups, uh, they had no art supports, uh, you know,

497
00:34:35,890 --> 00:34:41,360
they the rocks will go right through you and there's not no waterproofing anywhere.

498
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:42,000
Yeah.

499
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:48,720
But but you know, he he uh and also that the thing is that uh uh you don't want a whole

500
00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:50,400
cotton uh anything.

501
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,280
You want a polyester cotton blend.

502
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:58,000
Uh but I've had ants, you know, eat through socks, wool socks for some reason.

503
00:34:58,080 --> 00:34:59,760
Some ants love wool socks.

504
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,320
Uh or or socks that have a mole.

505
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:08,390
So yeah, there there are lots of sort of practical things that uh uh are uh are

506
00:35:08,390 --> 00:35:09,030
really important.

507
00:35:09,590 --> 00:35:09,910
Yeah.

508
00:35:10,150 --> 00:35:15,910
What was um Napoleon Shagnon like uh as a sort of person in the

509
00:35:15,910 --> 00:35:18,070
field to be with and an advisor?

510
00:35:18,150 --> 00:35:19,430
Like what was that like?

511
00:35:20,550 --> 00:35:26,550
Uh well uh when I was first in the field, my

512
00:35:26,550 --> 00:35:32,550
first you know, probably 18 months divided in a bunch of segments, we didn't work much

513
00:35:32,550 --> 00:35:33,910
at all together.

514
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:38,680
You know, I had my site initially with the Yanemama, later with the Yakwana.

515
00:35:39,720 --> 00:35:45,160
He would visit periodically to see how things were going on with the other two researchers,

516
00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:47,240
Ken Good and Eric Fredlin.

517
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:53,720
And then later in the early 80s, we got an NSF grant

518
00:35:53,720 --> 00:35:55,960
together and we worked together.

519
00:35:57,390 --> 00:36:02,030
uh slept next to that man more than any other person except his wife.

520
00:36:02,190 --> 00:36:08,030
Uh and um uh so we were probably, oh I

521
00:36:08,030 --> 00:36:13,630
would say probably about 11 months over three different periods, you know, working

522
00:36:13,630 --> 00:36:14,270
together.

523
00:36:14,510 --> 00:36:18,270
Uh one thing is that the Alamamo adored him.

524
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:24,440
They thought he was, you know, someone who could speak their language, act like a

525
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:29,320
Yanomamo in terms of having the Yanamamo are very lively people.

526
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:30,840
They like to joke.

527
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,080
They're very spontaneous.

528
00:36:44,090 --> 00:36:47,610
in in terms of the personality, but Nap really had a knack.

529
00:36:49,530 --> 00:36:54,810
They had a personality that he kind of had uh to some extent.

530
00:36:55,130 --> 00:37:00,810
And so uh they just thought he was uh you know totally cool, uh,

531
00:37:01,130 --> 00:37:02,330
glad to have him.

532
00:37:02,570 --> 00:37:08,060
He had a reputation for being very generous, He had a reputation for

533
00:37:08,620 --> 00:37:10,620
speaking the language really well.

534
00:37:11,180 --> 00:37:17,020
And there's a certain kind of, you know, bravado you

535
00:37:17,020 --> 00:37:21,900
have to use when you're kind of like having that stature.

536
00:37:22,540 --> 00:37:24,940
And he was really, really good at it.

537
00:37:29,510 --> 00:37:35,510
So we uh we had a few fights in the field uh because I wanted to do

538
00:37:35,510 --> 00:37:41,110
A and he wanted to do B, or he thought I was too pushy here and I thought he was, you know,

539
00:37:41,590 --> 00:37:46,630
normal sorts of things, uh, but nothing that permanently, just for a couple days, you know,

540
00:37:46,790 --> 00:37:49,750
had us at odds with uh with one another.

541
00:37:49,830 --> 00:37:55,030
But it's you know kind of normal things where you're trying to coordinate each one's

542
00:37:55,030 --> 00:37:59,040
priorities and and different field work styles etc.

543
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:05,600
Yeah yeah I think anybody would recognize that yeah for sure I mean what one uh some

544
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:09,520
people just sort of described him as like sort of larger than life do you think that's

545
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:14,560
accurate or was that sort of a glossing for people who didn't know him so well

546
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:21,600
uh oh yeah definitely larger than life uh yeah that uh is uh true in a

547
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:27,350
lot of uh a lot of areas uh especially with uh a few beers

548
00:38:27,350 --> 00:38:29,830
in him and uh things of that nature.

549
00:38:29,990 --> 00:38:35,830
But uh and also he was uh whenever I would visit him or he'd visit me, it's

550
00:38:35,830 --> 00:38:37,030
like it was playtime.

551
00:38:37,510 --> 00:38:43,510
Let's go uh shoot some skeet, uh let's go play golf, uh let's play some

552
00:38:43,510 --> 00:38:44,230
tennis.

553
00:38:44,470 --> 00:38:47,270
Uh he, you know, let's go fish it.

554
00:38:47,580 --> 00:38:51,580
Um uh I hear there's some good pheasant hunting around here, you know.

555
00:38:51,660 --> 00:38:57,500
So he was a very kind of like uh an active person, a playful person who liked,

556
00:38:57,580 --> 00:38:59,500
you know, uh to do physical things.

557
00:38:59,660 --> 00:39:03,340
And so yeah, larger than life, uh he uh

558
00:39:06,620 --> 00:39:08,750
well I'll stop there.

559
00:39:09,070 --> 00:39:09,630
Sure.

560
00:39:09,870 --> 00:39:14,030
Well one thing I wanted to ask about is sort of you've studied like time allocation, also

561
00:39:14,110 --> 00:39:17,550
hunting, you know, and you have this thing of like gamekeepers.

562
00:39:17,710 --> 00:39:23,550
And um I was sort of reflecting on, you know, uh we're all people with our

563
00:39:23,550 --> 00:39:25,150
own particular experiences.

564
00:39:25,390 --> 00:39:29,950
You know, I had a sort of weird upbringing where I grew up sort of like duck hunting and

565
00:39:29,950 --> 00:39:33,710
trapping in upstate New York and I sort of feel affinity to doing that.

566
00:39:33,940 --> 00:39:38,180
And I think that's sort of unusual, at least among experimental psychologists, you know, or

567
00:39:38,180 --> 00:39:39,780
the people I'm with.

568
00:39:39,940 --> 00:39:45,700
And I wonder, sort of, if like, you know, things like hunting or just subsistence

569
00:39:45,700 --> 00:39:50,100
things, you know, I think it's nice to talk to anthro folks, especially among us

570
00:39:50,100 --> 00:39:52,820
psychologists, because you, you know, you study that.

571
00:39:52,980 --> 00:39:58,510
But I do wonder if sort of like the culture of, you know not doing that sort of blinds us

572
00:39:58,510 --> 00:40:01,310
to, for example, like the importance of the psychology of hunting.

573
00:40:01,470 --> 00:40:04,830
I don't really know much work on that in evolutionary psychology.

574
00:40:04,910 --> 00:40:08,670
I know Clark has a little bit on it, you have a some work on it, but like among us

575
00:40:08,670 --> 00:40:11,390
psychologists, we're not really doing very much on that.

576
00:40:12,590 --> 00:40:12,990
Yeah.

577
00:40:13,230 --> 00:40:19,150
Uh I didn't well, you know, Nap uh essentially sometimes uh brought food into

578
00:40:19,150 --> 00:40:23,520
his family through hunting because they weren't very uh well off.

579
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:29,440
And uh so and he was an extra excellent shot with a shotgun.

580
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:34,720
He would be in competitions where you'd hit 99 out of 100 targets, you know, different

581
00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:35,280
gauges.

582
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:39,680
And so he was really skilled, uh well, I would say a skilled outdoorsman.

583
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:45,230
Yeah, I kind of grew up in that similar environment, and given where I lived.

584
00:40:45,310 --> 00:40:51,150
And so that helped a lot in terms of me studying hunting.

585
00:40:51,630 --> 00:40:57,550
But there were kind of certain limitations in that I had a 16-gauge shotgun I brought into

586
00:40:57,550 --> 00:40:58,190
the field.

587
00:40:58,430 --> 00:41:03,310
And a lot of it was for, you know, you get tired of canon tuna.

588
00:41:03,660 --> 00:41:09,340
uh uh, or someone gives you a piece of eight-day old tape here that is like turning

589
00:41:09,340 --> 00:41:09,980
yellow.

590
00:41:10,060 --> 00:41:12,300
Uh, you know, you want fresh food.

591
00:41:12,460 --> 00:41:17,740
Uh, and so uh, and then also uh just a bit of an aside,

592
00:41:19,180 --> 00:41:23,900
uh as a male, you were expected to be armed.

593
00:41:24,670 --> 00:41:30,590
And I remember one time I was going to go leave the village and I was going to

594
00:41:30,590 --> 00:41:35,470
trail a group of women who were going to go to a fishing spot.

595
00:41:35,710 --> 00:41:40,670
And I heard this shout out from two people, why are you leaving naked?

596
00:41:41,390 --> 00:41:46,750
And I'm looking, I've got more clothes on than the entire village has in their possession.

597
00:41:46,830 --> 00:41:48,190
What are you talking about?

598
00:41:48,350 --> 00:41:51,870
Well, it's another metaphor for why are you unarmed?

599
00:41:52,980 --> 00:41:58,580
And so the idea was that uh I should be unarmed, I should be armed

600
00:41:58,900 --> 00:42:04,740
because I'm with a group of women who could be abducted, and I'm their only uh defender.

601
00:42:04,980 --> 00:42:10,980
Uh and so uh, you know, carrying a weapon is just part of

602
00:42:10,980 --> 00:42:15,780
who you become uh if you're working with the uh with the anomamo.

603
00:42:17,390 --> 00:42:23,310
One thing that really impressed me about hunting, and you read about these,

604
00:42:23,390 --> 00:42:28,830
you know, great white hunters who go to Africa on safari and they have you know

605
00:42:29,150 --> 00:42:32,110
anything from a gun bear to a guide, etc.

606
00:42:32,350 --> 00:42:32,590
etc.

607
00:42:33,870 --> 00:42:39,780
I could have my shotgun and probably only hunt about, you know,

608
00:42:39,940 --> 00:42:44,820
one tenth of the efficiency that the Yanomamal have with their bows and arrows because

609
00:42:44,820 --> 00:42:50,820
where the game is likely to be, how to approach it, where does it go when it's wounded?

610
00:42:51,060 --> 00:42:56,500
How do you chase it if they you discover, you know, all these sorts of things, you know,

611
00:42:56,740 --> 00:42:59,860
demand a tremendous amount of time and skill.

612
00:43:00,020 --> 00:43:05,910
The thing, and I got fairly good, but the thing I could never uh be good at was going after

613
00:43:05,910 --> 00:43:11,510
monkeys because they're up there and you're running

614
00:43:11,510 --> 00:43:12,470
after them.

615
00:43:12,870 --> 00:43:18,630
And how the animal don't fall over and get tripped was always beyond

616
00:43:18,790 --> 00:43:22,710
me because I would never, I learned never to look up.

617
00:43:22,870 --> 00:43:28,160
I looked at brown butts in front of me uh because i had to you know

618
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:34,400
watch where i was going because it was so so hard to to run through the jungle uh

619
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,400
you know it's kind of i think there's a credence clearwater song about that but anyway uh

620
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:44,480
it's it's really difficult yeah yes what

621
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:50,480
one of the many stories uh uh and for learning that that's things that like just kids are

622
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:55,670
doing running through the jungle uh during the day uh and they're just doing that all their

623
00:43:55,670 --> 00:43:55,990
life.

624
00:43:56,070 --> 00:43:56,710
Yeah.

625
00:43:57,750 --> 00:43:57,990
Yeah.

626
00:43:58,230 --> 00:44:03,830
So anyway, I really learned about you know the the skill of hunting and how long it takes

627
00:44:03,830 --> 00:44:05,190
to uh uh develop.

628
00:44:05,350 --> 00:44:11,110
I remember one time I had this book on birds of South America and this old

629
00:44:11,110 --> 00:44:16,950
guy had a grandson with him and he's going through this book and he knew so many of the

630
00:44:16,950 --> 00:44:22,680
birds and he was telling his grandson about the sounds they make, where they're

631
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:27,960
found, uh, and all this sorts of you know really rich uh what we call traditional

632
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:33,400
ecological knowledge that was being transmitted to this kid through this book uh that I

633
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:34,360
that I had.

634
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:35,880
Yeah, yeah.

635
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:37,080
It's amazing.

636
00:44:37,240 --> 00:44:37,880
Yeah.

637
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:44,120
Um and what uh for for sort of moving back a little bit towards the

638
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:49,850
science thing, um What was, you know, when you're in the field and

639
00:44:49,850 --> 00:44:55,770
then going back to sort of scientific conferences, what was it like

640
00:44:55,770 --> 00:44:59,370
at that point when you were, you know, where you were presenting your data?

641
00:44:59,530 --> 00:45:01,690
Were people sort of saying, well, what are you doing?

642
00:45:01,850 --> 00:45:07,050
Or was it, were you just presenting at the uh Human Behavior and Evolution Society?

643
00:45:07,210 --> 00:45:10,970
Like, did you feel like you had a scientific home among people?

644
00:45:11,130 --> 00:45:16,800
Or were you sort of feeling like uh you didn't have anywhere to to present this work.

645
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:23,920
Well, uh initially the the the uh the work uh that I

646
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:29,600
presented on on hunting, you know, was pretty straightforward uh and uh presented at the

647
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:32,160
American Anthropological Association meetings.

648
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:37,520
Uh but there was a change going on uh as I was uh

649
00:45:38,150 --> 00:45:43,830
early in my career where you know science and science is science was was less appreciated.

650
00:45:44,070 --> 00:45:49,990
Uh and it became a point where science became the enemy of any good uh

651
00:45:50,310 --> 00:45:51,270
researcher.

652
00:45:51,670 --> 00:45:57,510
Uh and so initially um no problem uh presenting papers,

653
00:45:57,590 --> 00:46:01,990
but then of course I got interested in the Evolution Behavior Uh Society.

654
00:46:02,470 --> 00:46:08,000
Uh and it was a better home for some of the things that I wanted to do because people are a

655
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:09,680
lot more interested in it.

656
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:15,920
Uh one thing that was uh disheartening about the American Anthropological Association

657
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:21,760
was that uh you go to a meeting, there are literally hundreds of sessions, there are

658
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:26,960
10,000 anthropologists there, uh, and you're looking through the uh program

659
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:33,190
guide, and you can't find anything that you really want to listen

660
00:46:33,190 --> 00:46:33,510
to.

661
00:46:34,070 --> 00:46:38,870
It's like the uh Bruce Springsteen song 57 Channels and Nothing On.

662
00:46:39,270 --> 00:46:44,870
It's like, why am I going to this meeting if I'm gonna only go to two or three sessions?

663
00:46:45,030 --> 00:46:50,740
So later on, uh the Evolutionary Anthology Society was developed and

664
00:46:51,220 --> 00:46:53,380
and I started participating in that.

665
00:46:53,460 --> 00:46:54,580
That was better.

666
00:46:55,220 --> 00:47:00,500
But to go to a national meeting and only want to go to six sessions,

667
00:47:00,660 --> 00:47:04,500
maybe, uh, you know, good cost benefit proposition.

668
00:47:04,660 --> 00:47:10,420
So I I tried to, you know, I was became the president for a couple years, uh,

669
00:47:10,740 --> 00:47:15,810
and uh I just kind of like gave up on going.

670
00:47:15,890 --> 00:47:21,810
So I haven't been to an anthropology meeting since about maybe 2015

671
00:47:22,690 --> 00:47:23,890
or something like that.

672
00:47:23,970 --> 00:47:29,970
And again, it was like, you know, uh nothing to listen to, and then

673
00:47:29,970 --> 00:47:35,500
kind of like a basic hostility to one science, uh and then two

674
00:47:35,580 --> 00:47:41,500
especially evolutionary science and so uh it wasn't a good place

675
00:47:41,500 --> 00:47:47,020
to network and to make connections to be effectively

676
00:47:47,020 --> 00:47:51,500
criticized in terms of you know your approach you know you know why don't you look at it

677
00:47:51,500 --> 00:47:57,180
this way as opposed to a condemnation you know what the hell are you um doing

678
00:47:57,340 --> 00:47:59,730
practicing science etc Right.

679
00:47:59,890 --> 00:48:03,010
So it was just such a broad, you know, it wasn't even helpful criticism.

680
00:48:03,090 --> 00:48:08,130
It was just sort of like just leave as opposed to like, you know, do something, do analyze

681
00:48:08,130 --> 00:48:08,930
the data a different way.

682
00:48:09,010 --> 00:48:10,370
Or have you thought about this question?

683
00:48:10,530 --> 00:48:11,170
Yeah.

684
00:48:12,370 --> 00:48:12,770
Yeah.

685
00:48:12,930 --> 00:48:18,930
So uh uh the uh evolution of human behavior meetings were, you know, much uh more

686
00:48:19,170 --> 00:48:23,010
more useful because you could get good feedback.

687
00:48:23,580 --> 00:48:25,500
And you know, the evolutionary psych.

688
00:48:25,900 --> 00:48:30,860
I remember one time gave a paper at at uh at Michigan.

689
00:48:31,020 --> 00:48:34,700
Uh, I think Monique Berghoff Mulder invited me.

690
00:48:34,860 --> 00:48:40,140
And then after the meeting, talking to Randy Nessie, they keeps asking me all these

691
00:48:40,140 --> 00:48:41,740
psychological questions.

692
00:48:41,980 --> 00:48:47,850
And I said, I said, if I were a psychologist, I would be, you know, trying to work

693
00:48:47,850 --> 00:48:48,970
on those questions.

694
00:48:49,450 --> 00:48:53,930
But you know, the real problem that I think a lot of evolutionary psychology psychologists

695
00:48:53,930 --> 00:48:59,770
don't realize is that trying to do what some of

696
00:48:59,770 --> 00:49:05,530
you do in terms of getting a bunch of you know students or or what

697
00:49:05,850 --> 00:49:11,500
a sample to answer a questionnaire is it just

698
00:49:11,500 --> 00:49:17,500
can't be done for a lot of populations because I remember I had uh

699
00:49:17,660 --> 00:49:23,660
someone from Creighton University who was a psychologist wanted me to translate

700
00:49:24,140 --> 00:49:30,140
a set of questions he had that he thought uh because he got some money we

701
00:49:30,140 --> 00:49:32,140
could investigate among the Yanamawa.

702
00:49:32,380 --> 00:49:35,340
And I had to tell him, I can't do the translation.

703
00:49:35,650 --> 00:49:38,050
It just makes no sense.

704
00:49:38,290 --> 00:49:42,690
And so a lot of what uh uh

705
00:49:43,330 --> 00:49:49,010
psychologists do is depends on a kind of set of

706
00:49:49,010 --> 00:49:55,010
assumptions about uh culture and psychology, you know,

707
00:49:55,170 --> 00:49:57,250
about like, do you feel depressed?

708
00:49:57,490 --> 00:50:02,540
Well that's a hard word to translate to the Yanamamo.

709
00:50:04,060 --> 00:50:05,980
You know, are you horny?

710
00:50:06,060 --> 00:50:12,060
That's easy to translate with the with the Yanamamo or the Aquana.

711
00:50:12,860 --> 00:50:17,900
So there are a lot of, you know, and then the idea of a lighter scale, you know, that's

712
00:50:17,900 --> 00:50:23,350
another kind of like, what the hell are you asking me, uh, anthropologist?

713
00:50:23,510 --> 00:50:25,910
You know, it it it's just so difficult.

714
00:50:26,470 --> 00:50:31,990
Um this is not to say it can't be done, uh, and I think it should be done.

715
00:50:32,150 --> 00:50:37,110
Uh, but um I think maybe Zach can help me.

716
00:50:37,510 --> 00:50:42,980
You know the research done by Stubbard Hox on the Hazza, where he did the

717
00:50:42,980 --> 00:50:48,820
translation and how it just didn't work out at all in terms of could you

718
00:50:48,820 --> 00:50:54,500
recall that that that paper I was yeah they're looking at if so a lot of times research

719
00:50:54,500 --> 00:50:59,220
might be done in uh a third language or a common language, like let's say you can use

720
00:50:59,220 --> 00:51:04,020
Spanish and among let's say you're working with some Yaquana or for example, or you can use

721
00:51:04,020 --> 00:51:07,090
Swahili, um, but it's the participant's second language.

722
00:51:07,250 --> 00:51:12,290
And as it turns out, that sort of intermediary language can be a big have a big influence

723
00:51:12,290 --> 00:51:14,690
on the ways per people respond.

724
00:51:14,770 --> 00:51:17,970
And I mean that makes sense for everyone who speaks a second language, even if you're

725
00:51:17,970 --> 00:51:21,730
fluent in that language, it kind of patterns your your thinking in a way or your behavior.

726
00:51:21,810 --> 00:51:27,090
And so that's yeah, language is really a even if you can translate the concepts, the the

727
00:51:27,090 --> 00:51:32,850
language through which you translate them has like a a filtering effect or adds some noise.

728
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:34,320
Right.

729
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:40,400
And I I would uh uh maybe you could post that paper uh somewhere uh uh on this podcast.

730
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:43,200
Uh but uh it's it's a really important paper.

731
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:49,360
And it also, you know, when we talk about things we might ask people, there's

732
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:51,760
a tremendous amount of cultural conditioning.

733
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:56,160
So people thoroughly understand what you're talking about.

734
00:51:56,320 --> 00:52:01,680
But to try and figure out how to translate it to another culture is just enormously

735
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:02,240
difficult.

736
00:52:02,720 --> 00:52:03,410
Yeah, Yeah.

737
00:52:03,570 --> 00:52:07,010
And I think that's one of the values, right, of us talking to anthropologists.

738
00:52:07,090 --> 00:52:10,130
And I think like also developmental psychologists deal with this too, right?

739
00:52:10,210 --> 00:52:15,810
Is you can't rely on this sort of the water that all the fish are swimming in, just the the

740
00:52:15,810 --> 00:52:17,970
collection of common sense assumptions.

741
00:52:18,290 --> 00:52:19,650
And to really see that.

742
00:52:19,730 --> 00:52:25,570
I mean, I, you know, I love talking to Zach and all of all of you anthropologists, just

743
00:52:25,570 --> 00:52:28,210
because it does keep us honest in terms of our assumptions.

744
00:52:28,370 --> 00:52:28,690
Yeah.

745
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:31,920
Well, now I just want to do a research project on horniness.

746
00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:40,320
Well, uh, I know all the words in Yatomal that relate to

747
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:47,120
you know this also is an interesting point that as an anthropologist, you have to have your

748
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:48,960
rapport with the community, right?

749
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:53,120
And then you have to kind of be strategic about certain questions you asked because it's it

750
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,560
can potentially kind of burn your your social capital with your community.

751
00:52:56,870 --> 00:53:00,390
so there might be some topic that could be very interesting to ask scientifically, some

752
00:53:00,390 --> 00:53:05,910
questions, but like, God, do I want to actually ask that question to people who are, you

753
00:53:05,910 --> 00:53:08,630
know, in my social world in this community?

754
00:53:08,950 --> 00:53:10,790
Like they think you're already weird enough.

755
00:53:10,950 --> 00:53:13,990
You know, you can't come in asking about certain there's just certain things, not that it's

756
00:53:13,990 --> 00:53:18,950
culturally taboo, but it's just gonna make you seem even weirder and like a like a psycho

757
00:53:19,030 --> 00:53:20,230
than you already are.

758
00:53:20,740 --> 00:53:23,540
Yeah, I I I've I've that's a great point.

759
00:53:23,700 --> 00:53:27,780
Uh because you know you're you're you're with an intimate group and could you imagine let's

760
00:53:27,940 --> 00:53:31,940
uh say you have a group of people you hang out with and you start asking them about their

761
00:53:31,940 --> 00:53:36,740
sexual behavior, they're gonna be going like, you know, what the hell is he trying to you

762
00:53:36,740 --> 00:53:40,660
know pourn in on what I've, you know, blah blah blah, et cetera.

763
00:53:40,740 --> 00:53:42,820
So yeah, you're you're absolutely right.

764
00:53:44,090 --> 00:53:49,370
Um, Ray, you have a really cool paper on you know the myth of the ecologically noble

765
00:53:49,370 --> 00:53:53,770
savage, where you've you know taught and you've talked a lot about you know representations

766
00:53:53,770 --> 00:53:54,570
of indigenous people.

767
00:53:54,650 --> 00:53:58,330
And I'm just wondering like it doesn't seem like we've really made much progress in the

768
00:53:58,330 --> 00:53:59,690
past 20 years about that.

769
00:53:59,850 --> 00:54:05,530
Maybe the rise of social media also gives people like more of a voice, and so we have more,

770
00:54:05,770 --> 00:54:11,290
let's say, less than charitable or ignorant perspectives talking about indigenous

771
00:54:11,290 --> 00:54:11,930
peoples.

772
00:54:12,170 --> 00:54:14,600
I don't know, just where do you think we are as a field?

773
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:17,880
And like what should anthropologists or scientists be doing?

774
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:23,800
And um where do you see like the representation of indigenous peoples today

775
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:24,840
as to where they were?

776
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:29,080
You know, I think that paper was in the 90s or early 2000s when you wrote that paper.

777
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:29,960
So I don't know.

778
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:31,640
I mean, it doesn't seem like we've made much progress.

779
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,280
Do you have any hope for well?

780
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:39,000
I I think we've made a a bit of progress, but but here's the the catch.

781
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:45,030
Uh Tribal populations have been oppressed, marginalized,

782
00:54:45,270 --> 00:54:47,750
and harmed in so many ways.

783
00:54:48,390 --> 00:54:54,150
And so the tendency is to essentially argue that these are really

784
00:54:54,150 --> 00:54:55,030
nice people.

785
00:54:55,750 --> 00:55:01,510
And a lot of the problems that they face are a consequence of colonial incursions,

786
00:55:01,670 --> 00:55:06,040
which, you know, is is right on in many, many respects.

787
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:12,200
And so to suggest that they are not stewards of the environment, or the other

788
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:18,200
issue uh related to this is how much warfare or violence do they engage in, how often do

789
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:20,920
they uh uh beat their wives, etc.

790
00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:27,000
Uh so if you point those things out uh that we regard as

791
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:32,830
reprehensible from our cultural perspective, and so and I'll leave it

792
00:55:32,990 --> 00:55:38,990
I'll I won't leave it I'll emphasize from our cultural perspective uh

793
00:55:39,230 --> 00:55:44,990
then you essentially tell others who may not care about native

794
00:55:45,150 --> 00:55:50,910
peoples that these people aren't worth saving helping etc etc we got this

795
00:55:50,910 --> 00:55:56,670
reaction from cultural survival how dare you suggest the Yanamam are warlike because

796
00:55:56,990 --> 00:56:02,840
we can't get donors to help them out if they believe that they are warlike

797
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:06,120
because you know, screw them, they're not worth saving.

798
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:10,200
Uh, may they kill each other off, you know, or something of that nature.

799
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:16,280
And so uh the degree to which we want to help Native

800
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:22,120
peoples depends on how much they measure up to values that we

801
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:24,040
hold very, very highly.

802
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:28,870
So there's a huge hypocrisy there uh going on.

803
00:56:29,030 --> 00:56:34,070
And you know, I think one should just essentially say, well that's true, but let's help

804
00:56:34,070 --> 00:56:35,430
them because they're terribly oppressed.

805
00:56:35,590 --> 00:56:40,870
They have uh like what you're doing in in in terms of of of health among the people you're

806
00:56:40,870 --> 00:56:45,270
working with, Ethiopia, uh, you know, let's do what we can to help out.

807
00:56:45,430 --> 00:56:51,040
So uh so we still have this

808
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:57,200
Rousseauian view that still dominates uh how people regard native

809
00:56:57,200 --> 00:56:57,920
peoples.

810
00:56:58,080 --> 00:57:03,920
Uh and it's you know much more complex than that in terms of uh you know, uh

811
00:57:04,080 --> 00:57:09,440
humans used to be nice until things got modern, you know, until we discovered

812
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:14,730
warfare, until we discovered effective technology to take

813
00:57:14,730 --> 00:57:15,610
resources.

814
00:57:16,330 --> 00:57:22,330
And so, you know, and you can't go back.

815
00:57:23,530 --> 00:57:28,890
And if you do go back, you found out that they were just like us, uh,

816
00:57:29,050 --> 00:57:34,440
self-serving, uh, short-sighted, uh, no care for the environment.

817
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:36,520
Well care a concern for the environment.

818
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:42,200
In fact, I'll I'll I'll I've taken a little bit of a of a change on on

819
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:43,160
conservation.

820
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:49,080
There's some really good evidence for the Pacific that conservation does occur

821
00:57:49,080 --> 00:57:50,440
among resources.

822
00:57:50,840 --> 00:57:56,680
And essentially it has to do with the regulation that chiefs make

823
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:02,610
in terms of uh can fish where, in what seasons, et cetera,

824
00:58:02,690 --> 00:58:03,490
et cetera.

825
00:58:03,650 --> 00:58:09,570
Uh, but you know, these are very hierarchical sorts of systems, uh, and

826
00:58:09,570 --> 00:58:14,530
where there's some real punishment uh for people who who break the rules.

827
00:58:14,770 --> 00:58:20,690
And so one could say that uh we have examples, uh at least in the

828
00:58:20,690 --> 00:58:25,570
Pacific, uh, where there were really good and effective

829
00:58:25,570 --> 00:58:29,000
conservation uh methods employed.

830
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:31,320
And you know, you wonder about the Pacific.

831
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:33,480
Well, you know, you live in an island.

832
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:39,480
Uh, you can't move away if you screw up your resources, and so the populations

833
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:45,800
that uh manage to persist have ways of conserving resources

834
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:51,470
by regulating uh the uh the exploitation of those resources.

835
00:58:51,710 --> 00:58:57,310
These systems have been destroyed largely because uh

836
00:58:57,630 --> 00:59:03,070
entrepreneurs on those islands didn't want any restrictions put on their

837
00:59:03,390 --> 00:59:09,230
uh uh catches so they could make more money and uh so you

838
00:59:09,230 --> 00:59:15,140
had these rare systems of effective conservation that essentially

839
00:59:15,140 --> 00:59:20,900
were were wrecked uh by self-serving uh individuals who were, you know,

840
00:59:21,300 --> 00:59:26,740
uh one thing to look at is that these systems can work if the

841
00:59:26,740 --> 00:59:28,260
demand is local.

842
00:59:28,500 --> 00:59:33,780
That is, you're just trying to supply, but when you make the demand international, then

843
00:59:33,780 --> 00:59:39,220
there's no check on what uh uh what exploitation can

844
00:59:39,220 --> 00:59:39,860
occur.

845
00:59:40,630 --> 00:59:41,510
That's really interesting.

846
00:59:41,670 --> 00:59:41,830
Yeah.

847
00:59:41,910 --> 00:59:44,390
That's a really interesting distinction, local versus international.

848
00:59:44,470 --> 00:59:44,630
Yeah.

849
00:59:44,950 --> 00:59:49,190
I mean, these stories that you're telling us from the Anamama are just so uh vivid and

850
00:59:49,190 --> 00:59:49,910
wonderful.

851
00:59:50,070 --> 00:59:56,070
Um I'm curious if you think there are any um puzzles in the field of

852
00:59:56,070 --> 01:00:01,510
evolutionary behavioral science that you think still remain unsolved, or what you think is

853
01:00:01,510 --> 01:00:04,950
the is the future of the field and where what directions we should be headed.

854
01:00:05,740 --> 01:00:08,540
Well, uh how cooperation works.

855
01:00:08,700 --> 01:00:14,540
Uh, you know, we have models of uh of kin selection, we have models of uh

856
01:00:14,540 --> 01:00:16,220
reciprocal altruism.

857
01:00:16,780 --> 01:00:22,300
Uh one thing that uh really impressed me and I don't know if it impressed other people is

858
01:00:22,300 --> 01:00:27,610
some of the work done by uh Kaplan and and and Mike Gervin

859
01:00:28,010 --> 01:00:33,930
in terms of intergenerational transfers of resources and

860
01:00:33,930 --> 01:00:39,930
how cooperation, you know, we tend to think of it as you know, mature adults, dyadic sorts

861
01:00:39,930 --> 01:00:44,890
of relationships, but you see this kind of horizontal pattern, uh, excuse me, vertical

862
01:00:44,890 --> 01:00:50,650
pattern going on, where actually, and I'd love to test this, uh, it looks

863
01:00:50,650 --> 01:00:55,660
like young couples beginning their

864
01:00:56,620 --> 01:01:02,220
family lives often can't produce enough food that they need to

865
01:01:02,220 --> 01:01:02,860
consume.

866
01:01:03,660 --> 01:01:09,180
And so that requires a kind of vertical transmission from older

867
01:01:09,180 --> 01:01:14,940
relatives, not necessarily grandmas, as Chris and Hawkes would have it, but

868
01:01:14,940 --> 01:01:20,590
from others and uh how that works to me is, you know, as an

869
01:01:20,590 --> 01:01:23,150
economic anthropologist, is really, really interesting.

870
01:01:23,230 --> 01:01:28,270
And it's something that is, I think, uh really unique about humans.

871
01:01:28,350 --> 01:01:33,710
Although we see it, for example, in like killer whales, and how the mother-killer whale,

872
01:01:33,870 --> 01:01:39,580
the grandmother, seems to have this wonderful knowledge about where resources are

873
01:01:39,740 --> 01:01:43,340
in good times and bad times and also hunting techniques.

874
01:01:43,500 --> 01:01:49,500
And so I think this kind of vertical generation interaction is

875
01:01:49,500 --> 01:01:55,500
a really important area of research that uh that we uh to uh

876
01:01:55,500 --> 01:01:56,380
take a look at.

877
01:01:56,540 --> 01:02:01,900
And part of it, you know, is stimulated early on by Kristen Hawk's work on the grandmother

878
01:02:01,900 --> 01:02:03,100
uh hypothesis.

879
01:02:03,340 --> 01:02:09,230
Although I like that an awful lot, it's kind of like overextended uh in

880
01:02:09,230 --> 01:02:15,150
terms of her suggesting that men are just showing off uh and are mate guarding and are

881
01:02:15,150 --> 01:02:20,750
not really concerned about their own kids, uh only about their reputations as big hunters

882
01:02:20,830 --> 01:02:22,750
uh or big time hunters.

883
01:02:22,910 --> 01:02:28,830
Uh but so that I think is is is to me, you know, personally,

884
01:02:29,150 --> 01:02:34,830
uh understanding those dynamics because it kind of we see these patterns in other animals

885
01:02:34,910 --> 01:02:40,820
too, whereas this kind of like uh intergenerational transfer of uh

886
01:02:41,140 --> 01:02:45,060
of goods and services are actually you know cooperation.

887
01:02:47,700 --> 01:02:48,020
Yeah.

888
01:02:48,260 --> 01:02:53,860
And you know, uh especially considering that in Western societies we seem to be so

889
01:02:53,860 --> 01:02:59,380
severed from uh our extended families, and the extent of grandparental

890
01:02:59,380 --> 01:03:04,090
investment is so low because our culture is changing so quickly, and the knowledge that our

891
01:03:04,090 --> 01:03:06,890
grandparents has accumulated is currently out of date.

892
01:03:07,050 --> 01:03:12,010
You know, our elders have never been more irrelevant than in any time in human history,

893
01:03:12,250 --> 01:03:16,490
because what they know and what they know how to do is no longer relevant to the future to

894
01:03:16,490 --> 01:03:20,650
the to the most current generation because because you know society and technology is

895
01:03:20,650 --> 01:03:25,370
changing so quickly and what was useful in the previous generation may not be useful to the

896
01:03:25,370 --> 01:03:31,120
present generation, which is diametrically opposite to what you see uh in hunter-gatherer

897
01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:37,120
societies or in uh forager societies, uh where uh uh elders are repositories of

898
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:41,360
of wisdom and knowledge and and they're and they have a con and they're revered for for

899
01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:42,560
that for that knowledge.

900
01:03:42,640 --> 01:03:47,520
Uh and it's hard for us to wrap our heads around that from a Western uh standpoint.

901
01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:51,600
And and how we I mean I I guess another outstanding question will be how we have gotten to

902
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:57,350
this place where we are are are so um disconnected from uh

903
01:03:57,510 --> 01:04:03,430
familial and kin sources of cooperation and so dependent on non-kin cooperation relative

904
01:04:03,430 --> 01:04:06,950
to at any other point uh in human evolutionary history.

905
01:04:07,430 --> 01:04:08,870
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

906
01:04:08,950 --> 01:04:14,870
And you know the th the the gist of the problem is that uh older people are costs.

907
01:04:15,110 --> 01:04:15,430
Yep.

908
01:04:15,590 --> 01:04:21,420
Uh because we have inadequate uh health care, especially in this country.

909
01:04:21,580 --> 01:04:23,020
And so what good are they?

910
01:04:23,100 --> 01:04:27,740
Except, you know, uh we've got to uh uh spend our money.

911
01:04:27,900 --> 01:04:33,660
Uh there's some interesting research uh like uh from Germany, where it turns out that uh

912
01:04:33,820 --> 01:04:39,660
uh grandmothers, especially uh living on pensions, allocate a large

913
01:04:39,660 --> 01:04:45,340
fraction of their income to their grandchildren, and so they're still trying to

914
01:04:46,220 --> 01:04:47,100
help out.

915
01:04:47,410 --> 01:04:49,250
So you're you're absolutely right.

916
01:04:50,050 --> 01:04:51,890
So what are the value of older people?

917
01:04:52,050 --> 01:04:57,330
Because back in the day, well, they had a lot of knowledge about uh resource distributions

918
01:04:57,330 --> 01:05:01,890
and how to adapt to uh environmental contingencies.

919
01:05:02,210 --> 01:05:08,130
But today uh the whole making a living situation is

920
01:05:08,130 --> 01:05:13,730
new to them just as it's you know uh new to you and so they have um

921
01:05:15,580 --> 01:05:21,340
I hate to be cynical, you know, but you know, the the reasons that back in the day

922
01:05:21,420 --> 01:05:25,900
perhaps one could argue, and I'll just make this argument maybe it's not i inaccurate, they

923
01:05:25,900 --> 01:05:27,020
were valuable.

924
01:05:27,660 --> 01:05:29,660
They were fonts of knowledge.

925
01:05:29,820 --> 01:05:32,380
Uh they were good to have around.

926
01:05:32,620 --> 01:05:38,390
Uh and in fact, you know, I I gave uh Mike Gervin's got a new book coming

927
01:05:38,390 --> 01:05:40,950
out uh on uh old people.

928
01:05:41,190 --> 01:05:41,990
Was it 70?

929
01:05:42,070 --> 01:05:43,590
I think I forget what it's called.

930
01:05:43,750 --> 01:05:49,750
But but I sent him a picture of this old, old Yanomamo uh shaman,

931
01:05:49,830 --> 01:05:55,670
Dedahewa, being groomed by a bunch of little girls to another photograph to

932
01:05:55,670 --> 01:06:01,480
show you how valued old people were uh in societies and so i don't

933
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:06,840
i i gave him two four deman was this guy who an old guy who knew how to make really potent

934
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:12,600
curare uh and he would make the curare and give it to everybody he no longer

935
01:06:12,600 --> 01:06:18,440
hunted but you know he was really really valuable uh to the to the local

936
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:23,640
groups so uh the problem i see uh is that

937
01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:29,690
older people are viewed as costs and not

938
01:06:29,690 --> 01:06:35,050
viewed as uh as benefits to uh to have around, um,

939
01:06:35,370 --> 01:06:38,490
especially as people are scattered all over the place.

940
01:06:38,810 --> 01:06:42,090
You know, uh, who's gonna help you out on date night?

941
01:06:42,250 --> 01:06:47,130
You know, uh grandma's not around, or grandpa's not around.

942
01:06:47,210 --> 01:06:52,520
So I think uh as you're pointed out, we're we're entering a really kind of

943
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:54,440
interesting time.

944
01:06:55,240 --> 01:07:00,840
Uh, but I think uh as I mentioned before, I think that if there were

945
01:07:01,720 --> 01:07:07,320
I'd like to you could do a comparative study perhaps, uh, where we have like uh

946
01:07:07,640 --> 01:07:13,230
universal health care, our grandparents or elderly kin

947
01:07:13,470 --> 01:07:19,390
more valued and loved compared to our own nation where uh you've got to

948
01:07:19,390 --> 01:07:20,190
help out.

949
01:07:21,870 --> 01:07:22,190
Yeah.

950
01:07:22,430 --> 01:07:26,830
That our attitudes toward the elders would would depend on the costs and benefits that

951
01:07:26,830 --> 01:07:28,190
they're associated with.

952
01:07:28,270 --> 01:07:33,630
And if those costs are uh taken care of by someone else, then maybe we might view them as

953
01:07:33,630 --> 01:07:35,470
more of a net benefit for us.

954
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:36,560
Exactly.

955
01:07:36,640 --> 01:07:39,360
I mean, that's a harsh way of looking at humanity.

956
01:07:40,080 --> 01:07:45,360
But I think the test implications are pretty obvious.

957
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:49,760
It might be harsher to ignore that implication of humanity too, right?

958
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:50,640
Yeah.

959
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:53,280
Well, I'm sensitive because you know I'm an old person.

960
01:07:53,520 --> 01:07:55,840
I'm 77 years of age.

961
01:07:56,080 --> 01:08:00,400
But fortunately, uh we have you know adequate savings, et cetera, et cetera.

962
01:08:00,480 --> 01:08:06,270
Uh, and we still want to see our grandkids and and uh always believed that, you know, it

963
01:08:06,430 --> 01:08:07,950
push came to shove.

964
01:08:08,590 --> 01:08:14,510
Yeah, thankfully thankfully, you know, we're we're in a a subculture, you know, uh

965
01:08:14,590 --> 01:08:20,350
a group of scientists where elders still are, you know, repositories of of knowledge and

966
01:08:20,350 --> 01:08:25,070
you do have a lot of valuable knowledge, you know, for us uh as as scientists, you know,

967
01:08:25,150 --> 01:08:27,550
based on all the experiences you've accumulated.

968
01:08:27,710 --> 01:08:30,190
Um and so thankfully you're at least still valuable to us.

969
01:08:30,590 --> 01:08:31,710
I don't know about your grandkids.

970
01:08:31,950 --> 01:08:36,760
Yeah, but I just had a eighteen hundred dollar chest x-ray.

971
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:42,120
That uh uh blue crosses were sh anyway.

972
01:08:42,360 --> 01:08:43,240
Yeah, it's terrible.

973
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:43,560
Yeah.

974
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:48,280
I I just as like I lived in Germany for nine, ten years, and people on post Facebook would

975
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:52,120
be like, Oh, we there we did this GoFundMe to like, you know, prevent like these poor

976
01:08:52,120 --> 01:08:56,690
people who have like there's a childhood child with leukemia, and we did a go fund me so

977
01:08:56,690 --> 01:08:57,490
they wouldn't lose their house.

978
01:08:57,570 --> 01:08:59,490
And all the all the Americans are like, that's great.

979
01:08:59,570 --> 01:09:01,730
And all the Europeans are like, that's horrible.

980
01:09:10,530 --> 01:09:10,850
Yeah.

981
01:09:11,090 --> 01:09:16,130
Well w one of the mysteries that I often get asked about from an evolutionary perspective

982
01:09:16,450 --> 01:09:18,450
is um homosexuality.

983
01:09:18,610 --> 01:09:22,690
Uh I know you've done uh a bit of research on this question, and that to me I think is

984
01:09:22,690 --> 01:09:26,820
still one of the one of the major outstanding mysteries in evolutionary behavioral sciences

985
01:09:26,900 --> 01:09:31,860
is how how we can understand this uh phenomenon uh from a Darwinian perspective.

986
01:09:32,020 --> 01:09:36,100
Uh and I'm curious what you know what you think about that question, how you've approached

987
01:09:36,100 --> 01:09:40,020
it, and whether you uh have any insights on it, or whether you think there are certain

988
01:09:40,020 --> 01:09:42,740
directions that are more promising uh than others.

989
01:09:43,620 --> 01:09:48,340
Well, Zach can answer that question too, because he helped uh affect my my thinking on the

990
01:09:48,420 --> 01:09:49,700
uh on the topic.

991
01:09:49,860 --> 01:09:55,550
Uh I think, you know, uh back in the day, everyone was expected to marry and have

992
01:09:55,550 --> 01:09:56,190
kids.

993
01:09:56,510 --> 01:10:02,430
And so I would say that in many cultures, homosexuality was no big deal, as long as you

994
01:10:02,430 --> 01:10:07,870
could, you know, uh have your uh sexual desire satisfied uh by a

995
01:10:07,870 --> 01:10:09,470
same-sex relationship.

996
01:10:09,630 --> 01:10:15,160
Uh what's really interesting is that uh if you look at the work of Lisa Dynam,

997
01:10:15,480 --> 01:10:21,160
uh women are much more uh flexible, uh, much more likely to engage in

998
01:10:21,160 --> 01:10:23,880
intimate relationships uh than men.

999
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:29,880
And part of it is culture, but also I think that uh the selection pressure

1000
01:10:29,880 --> 01:10:35,720
for women to be in heterosexual relationships

1001
01:10:36,150 --> 01:10:41,910
was much weaker because back in the day, you're gonna get married, girl, and you're gonna

1002
01:10:41,910 --> 01:10:45,350
have kids, and there was no two ways about it.

1003
01:10:45,750 --> 01:10:51,110
Uh, and so there wasn't, I'm thinking, I'm

1004
01:10:51,350 --> 01:10:57,350
hypothesizing this point, a kind of uh uh having a a

1005
01:10:57,350 --> 01:11:02,880
strength of you know, a strong heterosexual relationship in women that was

1006
01:11:02,880 --> 01:11:07,840
relaxed because they were going to be heterosexual in the practical dimensions of it in

1007
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:09,120
terms of having kids.

1008
01:11:09,280 --> 01:11:11,040
So yeah, be fluid.

1009
01:11:11,200 --> 01:11:14,560
No, no, no, no kind of problem uh at all.

1010
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:20,480
And then also uh for men, uh heterosexuality is you know

1011
01:11:20,640 --> 01:11:23,920
having kids is really important in every culture.

1012
01:11:25,410 --> 01:11:31,250
And so I think what I want

1013
01:11:31,250 --> 01:11:37,170
to say is that we seem to find it everywhere, that is homosexuality everywhere.

1014
01:11:37,810 --> 01:11:43,410
And to me, it's not too surprising that the

1015
01:11:43,970 --> 01:11:48,930
uh mechanism, psychological mechanisms that lead to

1016
01:11:48,930 --> 01:11:54,400
heterosexuality, they can be weak as long as the culture, or they can be weaker as long as

1017
01:11:54,400 --> 01:12:00,160
the culture demands that in order to achieve uh high social status

1018
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:06,000
or reasonable social status, uh, is to engage in some heterosexuality that engages

1019
01:12:06,080 --> 01:12:08,080
that leads to uh to reproduction.

1020
01:12:08,880 --> 01:12:13,680
It's an interesting irony that it seems like the idea there is that um

1021
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:19,990
heteropatriarchal norms ironically led to the evolution of homosexuality,

1022
01:12:20,070 --> 01:12:24,390
or at least it led to the relaxed selection pressures on heterosexuality.

1023
01:12:24,470 --> 01:12:30,230
Because when you have such strong social norms that you have to have kids, um, that relaxes

1024
01:12:30,230 --> 01:12:36,150
the selection pressure uh for um you know uh being exclusively heterosexual in

1025
01:12:36,150 --> 01:12:38,790
terms of your your uh desires and your orientation.

1026
01:12:38,870 --> 01:12:42,790
Because if you're if you're gonna have kids anyway, then it you know, your your actual

1027
01:12:42,790 --> 01:12:47,240
desires are free to be a little more off that beaten path.

1028
01:12:47,320 --> 01:12:47,720
Yeah.

1029
01:12:48,040 --> 01:12:48,360
Right.

1030
01:12:48,440 --> 01:12:51,720
I I I think that's a it's it's a really good way of uh putting it.

1031
01:12:51,960 --> 01:12:57,640
What's interesting is that if we look at Western societies, uh two to three percent of

1032
01:12:57,640 --> 01:13:01,400
males seem to engage in be heterosexual, excuse me, homosexual.

1033
01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:04,360
And that kind of low-up is kind of interesting.

1034
01:13:04,520 --> 01:13:08,550
We keep finding that figure, you know all over the place.

1035
01:13:08,870 --> 01:13:14,230
Uh and uh I'm not quite exactly sure what it means but it's it's uh

1036
01:13:14,630 --> 01:13:15,990
it's really interesting.

1037
01:13:16,070 --> 01:13:21,510
But I think yeah patriarchy is something that uh has

1038
01:13:21,510 --> 01:13:27,430
allowed uh homosexuality or bisexuality whatever to

1039
01:13:27,430 --> 01:13:33,160
uh to emerge Now, at the same time,

1040
01:13:33,560 --> 01:13:38,760
a de-emphasis on fertility also may be having the sort of same effect.

1041
01:13:40,120 --> 01:13:42,200
How so could you elaborate on that?

1042
01:13:43,080 --> 01:13:44,120
What was I thinking?

1043
01:13:44,200 --> 01:13:49,960
Uh in terms of if it's if the expectation is that

1044
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:55,570
you don't need to have kids to achieve social status,

1045
01:13:56,130 --> 01:14:02,050
then your sexuality is free to vary in terms of what your your

1046
01:14:02,050 --> 01:14:03,890
inclinations may be.

1047
01:14:06,930 --> 01:14:07,570
Interesting.

1048
01:14:07,810 --> 01:14:08,690
Does that make sense?

1049
01:14:08,850 --> 01:14:09,810
Maybe not.

1050
01:14:12,690 --> 01:14:15,380
Um yeah, I think so.

1051
01:14:15,540 --> 01:14:16,500
I mean, i it's interesting.

1052
01:14:16,580 --> 01:14:22,580
At least in the contemporary US, social norms surrounding having kids and having

1053
01:14:22,660 --> 01:14:27,700
uh a large family and devoting resources into family and child rearing, that tends to go

1054
01:14:27,700 --> 01:14:32,980
along with uh homophobia or anti uh homosexual attitudes.

1055
01:14:33,380 --> 01:14:38,740
And so at least in the US, uh kind of uh preference for uh monogamy,

1056
01:14:39,170 --> 01:14:44,370
uh intensive parental investment, you know, having lots of kids and being uh against

1057
01:14:44,370 --> 01:14:49,730
homosexuality, those things those things uh go together um statistically.

1058
01:14:49,890 --> 01:14:53,970
Um and so that that's an interesting um phenomenon.

1059
01:14:54,050 --> 01:15:00,050
Uh I I'm not sure if if there are analogs in other places or how you would understand that.

1060
01:15:01,060 --> 01:15:03,460
I I guess I can add a little bit to this.

1061
01:15:03,780 --> 01:15:08,980
What Ray and I did and what what this work involved was also going through the ethnographic

1062
01:15:08,980 --> 01:15:14,340
record to sort of document all the forms in which um you know same-sex

1063
01:15:14,340 --> 01:15:16,900
behavior was documented to have taken.

1064
01:15:17,140 --> 01:15:20,820
And you know, just like kinship systems where basically humans have invented every

1065
01:15:20,820 --> 01:15:25,270
possible, seemingly probably not all, but maybe most of the possible ways we could organize

1066
01:15:25,270 --> 01:15:30,230
ourselves in terms of kinship, we also organize ourselves along these varied dimensions in

1067
01:15:30,230 --> 01:15:31,430
regards of gender.

1068
01:15:31,670 --> 01:15:37,030
And this sort of third gender or multigender system is quite common across societies.

1069
01:15:37,110 --> 01:15:40,870
So we also kind of bring our Western perspective to say, you know, what is homosexuality,

1070
01:15:41,030 --> 01:15:42,630
what is heterosexuality?

1071
01:15:42,790 --> 01:15:48,140
And part of this work was trying to unpack that using more biologically and the sex

1072
01:15:48,140 --> 01:15:53,020
research oriented terms, trying to disentangle behavior and preference.

1073
01:15:53,260 --> 01:15:57,740
And as it turns out, you know, you have many different societies with multiple gender

1074
01:15:57,740 --> 01:16:01,180
categories, not just a binary gender category.

1075
01:16:01,420 --> 01:16:07,180
And in those contexts, let's say a male, a biological male who identifies as

1076
01:16:07,180 --> 01:16:12,930
a man, may have sex or engage in sex with a biological male who identifies as a third

1077
01:16:13,010 --> 01:16:16,770
gender or even a fourth or a fifth gender categories in some contexts.

1078
01:16:17,090 --> 01:16:22,370
And then neither of them are seen as a anormal or

1079
01:16:22,370 --> 01:16:28,370
atypical, or would be considered engaging in homosexual relationships because it's

1080
01:16:28,370 --> 01:16:34,240
still a pattern of sex that's socially acceptable given their gendered categories.

1081
01:16:34,400 --> 01:16:38,880
But there's a wide range of gendered categories and you know social rules about who engages

1082
01:16:38,880 --> 01:16:42,240
in sex based on what gendered category you're a part of.

1083
01:16:42,400 --> 01:16:47,680
And the families kind of identify individuals at a young age and sort of socialize them

1084
01:16:47,680 --> 01:16:50,240
into these different different gender categories.

1085
01:16:50,480 --> 01:16:56,080
Um so it's uh it's the full spectrum of human variation uh in this

1086
01:16:56,080 --> 01:17:00,320
intersection of gender and sex is as mind blowing.

1087
01:17:00,640 --> 01:17:06,230
Well the Yeah, the the uh one one element is that typically

1088
01:17:06,390 --> 01:17:12,310
the uh uh those third, fourth genders, uh

1089
01:17:12,390 --> 01:17:15,510
they don't have high social status most of the time.

1090
01:17:15,910 --> 01:17:19,430
Uh they're regarded uh as as somewhat inferior.

1091
01:17:19,670 --> 01:17:25,350
But as you all probably know, uh my friend and colleague Paul Vase has done the best

1092
01:17:25,350 --> 01:17:29,110
research uh on this sort of phenomena.

1093
01:17:29,700 --> 01:17:34,980
And you know, the the his classic work on the uh uh Samoans, the

1094
01:17:34,980 --> 01:17:40,900
Fafine, uh essentially uh it's a culture where they recognize

1095
01:17:40,900 --> 01:17:46,740
it and they don't discriminate against it, and they say, okay, well, that's the way

1096
01:17:46,740 --> 01:17:50,900
he is, uh, and they have these legitimate relationships.

1097
01:17:51,060 --> 01:17:56,990
Um he doesn't talk a lot about status in terms, but they uh clearly

1098
01:17:57,070 --> 01:18:03,070
you know don't have as high a status but still they're they're accepted it's like you know

1099
01:18:03,310 --> 01:18:09,310
that's the way uh uh that person is and they just kind of leave it at

1100
01:18:09,310 --> 01:18:15,230
that but he's uh has done some really interesting research both in Mexico and

1101
01:18:15,230 --> 01:18:21,230
Samoa and now in Southeast Asia uh on how it works out in these societies where

1102
01:18:21,230 --> 01:18:26,980
it's they're recognized uh as quote a legitimate s kind of

1103
01:18:27,300 --> 01:18:28,980
orientation to hell.

1104
01:18:29,540 --> 01:18:35,300
Do you think uh there is a a explanation or a theoretical approach

1105
01:18:35,620 --> 01:18:41,300
to um you know sexual orientation, uh uh uh gender

1106
01:18:41,300 --> 01:18:42,020
atypicality?

1107
01:18:42,100 --> 01:18:46,420
Do you think there is a theoretical approach that that can offer a good explanation for

1108
01:18:46,420 --> 01:18:48,660
these phenomena from an evolutionary perspective?

1109
01:18:48,900 --> 01:18:54,110
Or do you think there there is you know one set of ideas that is more promising than

1110
01:18:54,110 --> 01:18:59,870
another uh well you know the the thing that probably uh

1111
01:19:00,830 --> 01:19:06,590
frustrates us all is that how can a behavior that leads to

1112
01:19:06,590 --> 01:19:12,510
zero fitness persist in a population generation after generation that's

1113
01:19:12,510 --> 01:19:18,110
the the rub yeah and also it's kind of interesting that it seems to be two to

1114
01:19:18,190 --> 01:19:23,520
three percent of any population and we overgeneralizing here.

1115
01:19:24,240 --> 01:19:29,280
And so um there are

1116
01:19:30,240 --> 01:19:35,680
some ideas about, you know, um the it was the the

1117
01:19:35,680 --> 01:19:41,440
sexually antagonistic uh theory by some Italian researchers that somehow the

1118
01:19:41,600 --> 01:19:47,550
the women uh are uh uh of or or excuse me the the the the the

1119
01:19:47,550 --> 01:19:53,550
sibl females are the uh female siblings of these homosexual males have

1120
01:19:53,550 --> 01:19:59,150
higher fertility and somehow I don't know what and and there's been some research that

1121
01:19:59,150 --> 01:20:03,870
shows that it's not the case et cetera et cetera there's also you know a weird thing it may

1122
01:20:03,870 --> 01:20:08,500
be a totally a side effect Ray Blancher's birth order uh model.

1123
01:20:09,220 --> 01:20:15,220
That the more uh older brothers you have, the higher

1124
01:20:15,220 --> 01:20:19,220
the probability that you are going to be uh homosexual.

1125
01:20:19,460 --> 01:20:25,380
So it has to do with andronization of the womb and how that has an

1126
01:20:25,380 --> 01:20:27,780
effect on sexual orientation.

1127
01:20:27,940 --> 01:20:33,010
So to me, that is the most promising

1128
01:20:33,330 --> 01:20:33,970
area.

1129
01:20:34,450 --> 01:20:40,370
And what it is kind of a you know essentially a side effect, a systematic

1130
01:20:40,370 --> 01:20:40,930
side effect.

1131
01:20:41,010 --> 01:20:46,610
It's not selected for, uh, but it just occurs as this

1132
01:20:46,610 --> 01:20:51,090
process goes on, uh, as you have more and more boys.

1133
01:20:51,330 --> 01:20:55,730
Are you familiar with the uh uh uh Ray Blanchard's theory, that area?

1134
01:20:56,160 --> 01:20:57,760
Yeah, uh roughly familiar.

1135
01:20:57,840 --> 01:21:03,760
Yeah, the idea that the more male siblings you have, the more likely a male

1136
01:21:03,760 --> 01:21:09,680
homosexuality is to arise because of the uh something about the androgens

1137
01:21:09,680 --> 01:21:11,200
and the immune response.

1138
01:21:11,680 --> 01:21:11,840
Right.

1139
01:21:12,080 --> 01:21:12,560
Yeah.

1140
01:21:13,520 --> 01:21:19,490
But what's really interesting is that it looks like it's very dosage dependent because the

1141
01:21:19,490 --> 01:21:25,330
probability increases stepwise with each number of older brothers you have, which to me

1142
01:21:25,410 --> 01:21:30,610
is really powerful indirect evidence that something is going on there to

1143
01:21:31,170 --> 01:21:33,250
have this uh occur.

1144
01:21:33,570 --> 01:21:34,050
Yeah.

1145
01:21:34,370 --> 01:21:38,370
Yeah, that I that that seems probably the most promising direction, especially especially

1146
01:21:38,370 --> 01:21:41,650
when you look at you know the the twin studies regarding homosexuality.

1147
01:21:41,810 --> 01:21:46,460
It seems to be relatively low uh genetic heritability, which suggests that the prenatal

1148
01:21:46,460 --> 01:21:50,540
environment might be um the the driving factor.

1149
01:21:51,100 --> 01:21:51,420
Right.

1150
01:21:51,580 --> 01:21:57,260
And for uh you know the uh the uh uh diamond's idea about uh uh

1151
01:21:57,420 --> 01:22:02,380
female fluidity uh maybe as we mentioned before explained by

1152
01:22:02,380 --> 01:22:03,500
patriarchy.

1153
01:22:03,980 --> 01:22:05,330
Yeah absolutely.

1154
01:22:05,490 --> 01:22:08,210
Well still still I think a lot of different mechanisms.

1155
01:22:08,530 --> 01:22:09,970
Yeah, very different mechanisms.

1156
01:22:10,210 --> 01:22:15,250
I think it's still, you know, probably a you know really mysterious and interesting uh area

1157
01:22:15,250 --> 01:22:19,250
of research that I think we still we we know so little about it.

1158
01:22:19,490 --> 01:22:23,090
Um yeah, do you guys have any other questions?

1159
01:22:23,650 --> 01:22:28,290
Uh just uh remember like the Don Simon's Evolution of Human Sexuality was such a great book

1160
01:22:28,370 --> 01:22:34,300
where it talked about sort of using uh male and female homosexuality as a window into

1161
01:22:34,300 --> 01:22:39,580
like mating preferences because it's not um hindered by having to coordinate with opposite

1162
01:22:39,580 --> 01:22:45,420
sex and that that that thought just I wanted to ask, right, if there's anything if

1163
01:22:45,500 --> 01:22:49,820
if people who are listening who are sort of newer generation evolutionary behavioral

1164
01:22:49,820 --> 01:22:55,180
sciences scientists, um where there might be sort of classic books like I think the

1165
01:22:55,180 --> 01:23:00,730
evolution of human sexuality is one, I think the um evolutionary ecology, the Smith and

1166
01:23:00,730 --> 01:23:05,530
Winter Halder, I think you have a time allocation paper that I think it's 92,

1167
01:23:06,570 --> 01:23:08,570
Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior.

1168
01:23:08,650 --> 01:23:10,410
That's also like a great classic book.

1169
01:23:10,570 --> 01:23:16,010
Are there any sort of uh things that a new student might miss

1170
01:23:16,970 --> 01:23:21,930
that would be sort of a real thing to either read or like go look at if it's up on YouTube

1171
01:23:22,090 --> 01:23:22,570
or something?

1172
01:23:22,650 --> 01:23:27,140
You know, is there something that you would recommend to people that they might miss if

1173
01:23:27,140 --> 01:23:28,740
they're just starting out now.

1174
01:23:29,380 --> 01:23:35,380
Oh, well, uh you brought up Don Simons uh and uh I was uh I

1175
01:23:35,380 --> 01:23:40,820
don't know how many copies I uh or versions I've read of the evolution of human sexuality,

1176
01:23:40,900 --> 01:23:41,860
but it was many.

1177
01:23:42,180 --> 01:23:47,300
In fact, I even translated some French stuff for him on Aceh uh Hunters.

1178
01:23:47,860 --> 01:23:53,780
Uh and uh but Don got it so right in terms of uh

1179
01:23:55,170 --> 01:24:01,010
male homosexuals are just like male heterosexuals except for the object

1180
01:24:01,010 --> 01:24:02,050
of their desire.

1181
01:24:02,610 --> 01:24:07,010
But you know, otherwise they're they're they're stereotypic males.

1182
01:24:07,330 --> 01:24:12,050
Uh and that was a really uh important uh uh insight.

1183
01:24:12,370 --> 01:24:18,290
Uh that uh so that book definitely uh is and the wonderful thing about that book,

1184
01:24:18,450 --> 01:24:20,130
it's really well written.

1185
01:24:20,440 --> 01:24:23,000
He's got a very terse style.

1186
01:24:23,240 --> 01:24:26,520
In fact, almost sometimes too terse.

1187
01:24:27,320 --> 01:24:33,240
But I remember going through version after version, and he was such a

1188
01:24:33,240 --> 01:24:34,760
meticulous writer.

1189
01:24:35,000 --> 01:24:38,600
He really wanted to be economical and to the point.

1190
01:24:38,840 --> 01:24:44,770
And so I think it's a wonderful introduction to the field just because of its

1191
01:24:44,770 --> 01:24:45,890
readability.

1192
01:24:46,130 --> 01:24:46,370
Yeah.

1193
01:24:46,690 --> 01:24:52,690
Uh what uh to me, the most important thing I ever read was

1194
01:24:52,690 --> 01:24:58,610
a paper by Richard Alexander uh called the uh evolution of of sociality,

1195
01:24:58,690 --> 01:25:01,650
I forget in the annual review of ecology and systematics.

1196
01:25:01,970 --> 01:25:07,650
And as a young scholar, it really you know answered a question, you know, like

1197
01:25:07,890 --> 01:25:09,810
why do humans live in groups?

1198
01:25:10,080 --> 01:25:12,960
Well, Dick had an explanation for that.

1199
01:25:14,000 --> 01:25:19,360
And so, and that steps you into you know the whole field of social organization.

1200
01:25:19,520 --> 01:25:20,960
We're a social species.

1201
01:25:21,200 --> 01:25:26,240
And it was like uh it was a revelation uh to to me.

1202
01:25:26,400 --> 01:25:31,120
And also uh Dick was a very good mentor.

1203
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:36,490
Uh and his uh what's his book, The Evolution of morality.

1204
01:25:37,370 --> 01:25:39,610
Yeah, the biology of moral systems.

1205
01:25:40,170 --> 01:25:40,250
Yeah.

1206
01:25:40,490 --> 01:25:44,250
Biology of moral systems is something I would recommend to anybody.

1207
01:25:44,810 --> 01:25:47,610
He didn't have the writing skill of a Don Simon.

1208
01:25:47,930 --> 01:25:52,250
But still, it's it was one of the most important books.

1209
01:25:52,410 --> 01:25:58,010
So I've it was kind of like, you know, I I had I was a Santa Barbarian, like you are, you

1210
01:25:58,010 --> 01:26:03,280
know, and so I had Don Simons on one side, and then I had Richard Alexander on the other

1211
01:26:03,280 --> 01:26:03,520
side.

1212
01:26:03,600 --> 01:26:09,440
So I kind of, you know, had an appreciation for both points of view, uh,

1213
01:26:10,560 --> 01:26:16,080
even though I was much more of a behavioral ecologist like uh Dick Alexander

1214
01:26:16,400 --> 01:26:20,640
was, but still uh appreciated uh Don's uh Don's work.

1215
01:26:20,950 --> 01:26:22,790
Yeah, by by some sequence of events.

1216
01:26:22,870 --> 01:26:28,070
I mean, I know what they are, but uh so I was a graduate student when Don was retiring, and

1217
01:26:28,070 --> 01:26:33,750
I went to his office uh to get some of his books, and one of my most cherished uh science

1218
01:26:33,750 --> 01:26:39,590
artifacts is I have Don Simon's copy of Richard Alexander's Biology of

1219
01:26:39,590 --> 01:26:43,430
Moral Systems, and it's barked up in the margins all over.

1220
01:26:43,760 --> 01:26:49,520
And I can I can read about 90% of the markup, and it's incredible because Don is so

1221
01:26:49,520 --> 01:26:51,520
gracious to him.

1222
01:26:51,840 --> 01:26:57,680
But there's times where Don is marking, oh yeah, no, this is like kind of baby

1223
01:26:57,680 --> 01:26:58,160
counting.

1224
01:26:58,320 --> 01:26:59,840
I mean, he doesn't use exactly that word.

1225
01:26:59,920 --> 01:27:04,400
Maybe he does a few times because it's just notes to himself, but it's real time sort of

1226
01:27:04,720 --> 01:27:10,560
Don's thinking about Richard Alexander is incredible, wonderful, but here is where

1227
01:27:10,800 --> 01:27:16,250
this sort of assumption of sort of omnipresent or omniscient fitness

1228
01:27:16,250 --> 01:27:17,850
maximizing doesn't work.

1229
01:27:18,010 --> 01:27:22,250
It's an incredible uh thing to read those those m notes in the margins.

1230
01:27:22,730 --> 01:27:23,130
Oh well.

1231
01:27:23,370 --> 01:27:24,810
I'm I'm envious that you have that.

1232
01:27:25,450 --> 01:27:26,490
Maybe scan it.

1233
01:27:26,810 --> 01:27:27,930
No, that'd be great.

1234
01:27:28,490 --> 01:27:34,330
The the the only uh physical re rem uh uh artifact I have from Don Simons

1235
01:27:34,490 --> 01:27:40,250
was was um uh as he was writing the evolution of human sexuality, his

1236
01:27:40,250 --> 01:27:41,770
tenure was on the line.

1237
01:27:42,640 --> 01:27:45,920
Uh and we were gonna play tennis.

1238
01:27:46,160 --> 01:27:49,360
And one day he said, he gave me his tennis racket.

1239
01:27:49,600 --> 01:27:51,600
He says, I can't play tennis.

1240
01:27:51,680 --> 01:27:53,040
I've got to work on this book.

1241
01:27:53,120 --> 01:27:54,320
I only have time to run.

1242
01:27:54,640 --> 01:27:58,560
And so he gave me this uh this head racket with a red throat.

1243
01:27:58,640 --> 01:28:03,040
I don't know if you play tennis, you'd know that's an old kind of uh uh aluminum uh racket.

1244
01:28:03,280 --> 01:28:07,760
But then of course I broke the racket eventually after about a couple of years.

1245
01:28:08,720 --> 01:28:09,310
Oh, Don?

1246
01:28:11,550 --> 01:28:12,750
He was a great guy.

1247
01:28:12,990 --> 01:28:13,230
Yeah.

1248
01:28:13,390 --> 01:28:14,030
How did Don?

1249
01:28:14,350 --> 01:28:20,110
I mean, my I understood John Shuby once told me that I think uh Sherry Washburn was at

1250
01:28:20,110 --> 01:28:24,910
Berkeley and didn't like that Don was doing evolution applied to humans, and that's why Don

1251
01:28:24,910 --> 01:28:26,510
ended up at UCSB.

1252
01:28:26,670 --> 01:28:27,950
Do you know that story?

1253
01:28:28,350 --> 01:28:33,790
Well, I know that Washburn didn't like uh uh modern evolutionary approaches, especially to

1254
01:28:33,790 --> 01:28:35,070
human behavior.

1255
01:28:35,360 --> 01:28:39,920
Uh and was Washburn on his thesis committee?

1256
01:28:40,560 --> 01:28:41,200
I don't know.

1257
01:28:41,760 --> 01:28:45,520
I mean, this is all sort of becoming fuzzy in my mind because this is something John told

1258
01:28:45,520 --> 01:28:49,520
me, John Thuby told me just like you know, interpersonally.

1259
01:28:49,840 --> 01:28:55,360
Um, so it wasn't something, but I thought Simons had been

1260
01:28:55,920 --> 01:28:58,720
somehow either a student of, I'm not sure.

1261
01:28:58,800 --> 01:28:59,600
I actually don't know.

1262
01:28:59,760 --> 01:29:04,160
This is something I'm fuzzy on about Sherry Washburn and Don Simons and the relationship.

1263
01:29:04,570 --> 01:29:07,290
So they had a what kind of relationship?

1264
01:29:07,850 --> 01:29:13,610
Well, I I don't know if I don't know if Don was a faculty uh and then sort of was trying to

1265
01:29:13,610 --> 01:29:19,370
get tenure and was a colleague of Sherry Washburn, or um if he was more junior and worked

1266
01:29:19,370 --> 01:29:25,050
with Sherry Washburn and then Washburn was uh uh a senior

1267
01:29:25,050 --> 01:29:26,410
anthropologist Berkeley.

1268
01:29:26,650 --> 01:29:27,050
Right.

1269
01:29:27,290 --> 01:29:33,080
And he was, you know, uh uh one of the things that was the uh so and

1270
01:29:33,320 --> 01:29:39,160
he was very, you know, if you look at Washburn and Lancaster, uh man the hunter kind

1271
01:29:39,160 --> 01:29:44,760
of kind of approach, he did kind of take a an evolutionary approach where he suggested that

1272
01:29:44,760 --> 01:29:50,280
hunting was a thing that made us humans, uh, which in fact hunting made us

1273
01:29:50,280 --> 01:29:50,840
interesting.

1274
01:29:50,920 --> 01:29:56,350
Uh but I don't know that it made us humans any more than uh grandmothers made us uh humans.

1275
01:29:56,510 --> 01:29:56,670
Right.

1276
01:29:56,910 --> 01:30:02,910
Uh but uh but then he kind of uh I'm trying to recall I probably can't get it

1277
01:30:02,910 --> 01:30:08,590
right so I won't say it but he wasn't very in favor of modern

1278
01:30:08,750 --> 01:30:14,270
approaches or or Eil Wilson kind of approaches to the to understanding human behavior.

1279
01:30:14,510 --> 01:30:16,990
But Don got his degree at Berkeley, right?

1280
01:30:17,230 --> 01:30:17,550
Right.

1281
01:30:17,790 --> 01:30:18,830
Yeah exactly.

1282
01:30:19,070 --> 01:30:22,990
And he did his thesis on Reese's monkeys, Reese's play.

1283
01:30:23,200 --> 01:30:24,320
Yeah, that's right.

1284
01:30:24,480 --> 01:30:25,920
Done in uh Kayo.

1285
01:30:26,080 --> 01:30:26,720
Yeah.

1286
01:30:27,760 --> 01:30:28,400
Yeah.

1287
01:30:29,120 --> 01:30:32,880
Well, uh is there anything we should have asked you, Ray?

1288
01:30:34,480 --> 01:30:36,720
I don't think so, but you're absolutely right.

1289
01:30:37,040 --> 01:30:39,440
An hour and a half went by really uh rapidly.

1290
01:30:39,600 --> 01:30:39,760
Yeah.

1291
01:30:40,640 --> 01:30:46,320
Over uh an hour and a half because you guys are really engaging uh and ask a lot of really

1292
01:30:46,320 --> 01:30:48,400
uh interesting uh questions.

1293
01:30:49,350 --> 01:30:53,750
I would say, you know, you started asking questions about uh Darkness in El Dorado.

1294
01:30:54,310 --> 01:30:59,990
And uh if my view is essentially a point of view that uh Alice

1295
01:30:59,990 --> 01:31:04,150
Trager wrote and her characterization that went on there.

1296
01:31:04,310 --> 01:31:06,470
Uh one thing that was really interesting.

1297
01:31:06,950 --> 01:31:11,270
So in my view, it was a kind of a hit job.

1298
01:31:11,760 --> 01:31:14,160
and I don't know who paid for the hit.

1299
01:31:14,400 --> 01:31:20,320
Uh, but uh Tierney published the book, showed up

1300
01:31:20,320 --> 01:31:26,240
at an early meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and then disappeared

1301
01:31:26,240 --> 01:31:28,160
off the face of the earth.

1302
01:31:28,480 --> 01:31:34,480
So he could never be questioned about why he took

1303
01:31:34,480 --> 01:31:39,130
various views, But you know, there was a whole

1304
01:31:40,250 --> 01:31:44,650
group of people who really didn't like Shagla.

1305
01:31:45,210 --> 01:31:50,970
And part of it had to do with his evolutionary approaches to human

1306
01:31:50,970 --> 01:31:51,690
behavior.

1307
01:31:51,930 --> 01:31:57,840
The other part had to do with his demonstration that some uh

1308
01:31:58,160 --> 01:32:04,160
foraging horticultural people were really aggressive, engaged in a lot of warfare,

1309
01:32:04,480 --> 01:32:10,480
and regarded it as, you know, uh uh a really manly thing to do if you were

1310
01:32:10,480 --> 01:32:16,400
in that culture, which, if they had bothered or read anything about Native American warlike

1311
01:32:16,400 --> 01:32:20,400
cultures, they wouldn't have been surprised what Shagnon found out about the about the

1312
01:32:20,400 --> 01:32:21,120
Alamamos.

1313
01:32:21,280 --> 01:32:27,030
So I think uh that book was, I would call it uh

1314
01:32:27,590 --> 01:32:29,110
a hit jump.

1315
01:32:29,590 --> 01:32:35,030
Uh, and that essentially tyranny pulled together all the people who didn't like

1316
01:32:35,030 --> 01:32:39,750
Shagna and who did not like him for, I think,

1317
01:32:40,390 --> 01:32:42,310
illegitimate reasons.

1318
01:32:42,470 --> 01:32:45,750
Uh and so you have that uh that book.

1319
01:32:45,990 --> 01:32:51,820
Interestingly, the last I heard about Tierney was that he was in

1320
01:32:51,820 --> 01:32:56,060
conversation with Wakefield about publishing someone.

1321
01:32:56,300 --> 01:33:02,300
I'm talking about the Wakefield who argued that uh vaccines were causing autism

1322
01:33:02,940 --> 01:33:04,380
among among kids.

1323
01:33:04,700 --> 01:33:07,580
Wow, that's like a circle of hell right there.

1324
01:33:07,740 --> 01:33:08,220
Yeah.

1325
01:33:08,620 --> 01:33:08,780
Yeah.

1326
01:33:08,940 --> 01:33:13,740
Well, he's got a famous brother, John Tierney, who who's a uh a journalist, right?

1327
01:33:13,900 --> 01:33:16,610
Uh, who does pretty good uh research.

1328
01:33:16,930 --> 01:33:19,730
Uh he publishes a lot in the city journal, but anyway.

1329
01:33:19,890 --> 01:33:25,810
So anyway, uh I I thought when I first read it,

1330
01:33:25,970 --> 01:33:31,890
I got this uh autocopy of the book that Kim Hill had sent me,

1331
01:33:32,290 --> 01:33:38,260
and I read it and for days I was I

1332
01:33:38,260 --> 01:33:43,220
was in a daze because I just couldn't believe and here you're here's something I'd worked

1333
01:33:43,220 --> 01:33:48,820
with and it just uh the the

1334
01:33:48,820 --> 01:33:54,660
depressing psychological impact and stressful it had on me was was was

1335
01:33:54,660 --> 01:34:00,330
amazing but can you imagine what it the impact it had on Chad Yeah.

1336
01:34:01,050 --> 01:34:05,450
In terms of you know what it did for his uh his well-being.

1337
01:34:05,610 --> 01:34:09,610
Yeah it's just uh uh incredible.

1338
01:34:09,850 --> 01:34:15,850
But I think now that most people realize that it was a hit job

1339
01:34:16,090 --> 01:34:20,540
uh and uh much of what was said was was inaccurate.

1340
01:34:20,700 --> 01:34:22,300
Shagna wasn't perfect.

1341
01:34:22,620 --> 01:34:24,380
None of us are perfect.

1342
01:34:25,180 --> 01:34:31,180
But still none of us have been kind of like celebrated

1343
01:34:31,180 --> 01:34:35,100
as a horrible person in front of the the whole world.

1344
01:34:35,260 --> 01:34:40,540
And so just try to think of what what impact it would have on you

1345
01:34:41,020 --> 01:34:46,010
if you were the subject of that sort of uh of uh phenomena.

1346
01:34:46,330 --> 01:34:46,890
Yeah, yeah.

1347
01:34:46,970 --> 01:34:51,930
As I think John Tuby once put it, it's like very few people get falsely accused of sort of

1348
01:34:51,930 --> 01:34:53,610
genocide, essentially.

1349
01:34:53,770 --> 01:34:58,970
Uh and just even the prima facie case of, you know, a measles epidemic with vaccines like

1350
01:34:59,130 --> 01:34:59,850
just doesn't work.

1351
01:35:00,010 --> 01:35:04,010
And so the fact that it had any footing at all is just incredible.

1352
01:35:04,170 --> 01:35:09,210
Um, you know, and it's just yeah, it's a terrible, terrible travesty of sort of fact

1353
01:35:09,290 --> 01:35:11,690
checking and scientific literacy.

1354
01:35:11,850 --> 01:35:12,170
Yeah.

1355
01:35:12,700 --> 01:35:17,020
Well, one thing I'll say one last thing about that is that uh

1356
01:35:18,300 --> 01:35:23,420
James Neal and Napoleon Chagnon should have been awarded a

1357
01:35:23,420 --> 01:35:29,100
humanitarian prize by the American Anthropological Association because

1358
01:35:29,340 --> 01:35:35,260
Neil and his research uh discovered that the Yanamama were a virgin

1359
01:35:35,260 --> 01:35:37,900
soil as in terms of measles.

1360
01:35:38,700 --> 01:35:44,510
He got the measles vaccine uh into Venezuela uh

1361
01:35:44,670 --> 01:35:50,510
in anticipation of, excuse me, with plans to vaccinate, discovered

1362
01:35:50,510 --> 01:35:56,030
that uh a measles epidemic had had uh broken out.

1363
01:35:56,190 --> 01:36:01,630
And so it was Shagnon and the evangelical uh missionaries, Protestant

1364
01:36:01,630 --> 01:36:07,540
missionaries, who decided to vaccinate from the outside in, which is the way you deal

1365
01:36:07,540 --> 01:36:08,660
with with epidemics.

1366
01:36:08,740 --> 01:36:11,780
You don't go from the inside out, you go from the outside in.

1367
01:36:12,020 --> 01:36:17,620
And without their efforts, thousands of Yanomamal would have perished.

1368
01:36:18,180 --> 01:36:22,020
But instead, the story became positive epidemic.

1369
01:36:22,260 --> 01:36:22,900
Yeah, yeah.

1370
01:36:22,980 --> 01:36:23,860
It's incredible.

1371
01:36:24,020 --> 01:36:24,340
Yeah.

1372
01:36:24,420 --> 01:36:27,700
It's unfortunately, uh the that's the yeah.

1373
01:36:27,780 --> 01:36:32,710
I mean, hopefully history, you know, if the historical record is corrected, but hopefully

1374
01:36:32,790 --> 01:36:35,670
that story will be told well.

1375
01:36:36,070 --> 01:36:40,470
Anyone who makes a movie, uh, there should be a movie about Nap Shagnon.

1376
01:36:40,550 --> 01:36:43,670
I I think that that's a low-hanging fruit right there.

1377
01:36:44,470 --> 01:36:46,870
Uh well, there may be.

1378
01:36:47,750 --> 01:36:49,830
I know his son was recording things.

1379
01:36:49,990 --> 01:36:52,870
Uh, I don't know what what became of that footage, but there should be at least a

1380
01:36:52,870 --> 01:36:55,590
documentary, if not a movie, about Nap Shagnon.

1381
01:36:55,820 --> 01:36:57,820
David, get on that with your LA folks.

1382
01:36:58,140 --> 01:36:59,500
All right, I'll I'll look into it.

1383
01:37:00,940 --> 01:37:02,780
Well, this is really fun.

1384
01:37:02,940 --> 01:37:08,860
Ray, uh, thank you so much for uh the the hour and a half and also for for all

1385
01:37:08,860 --> 01:37:12,060
the years and for for being present during all those times.

1386
01:37:12,220 --> 01:37:17,100
Your work is, you know, why many of us are here, either directly or indirectly, certainly

1387
01:37:17,100 --> 01:37:18,140
directly for Zach.

1388
01:37:18,300 --> 01:37:21,690
Um uh, You know, I'll let him speak for himself on the way out here or two.

1389
01:37:21,930 --> 01:37:27,690
But just thank you so much for all the work that you've done and continue to do and inspire

1390
01:37:27,930 --> 01:37:33,450
people to do this fun, weird um career of applying evolution to human

1391
01:37:33,450 --> 01:37:34,250
behavior.

1392
01:37:35,050 --> 01:37:39,770
Well, uh at the same time, I'm really uh impressed by this this new generation of

1393
01:37:41,100 --> 01:37:47,100
evolutionary scientists in terms of your uh statistical skills which we were l uh largely

1394
01:37:47,100 --> 01:37:53,100
uh lacking in terms of your ability to uh uh create interesting uh

1395
01:37:53,100 --> 01:37:59,100
hypotheses to to test and find ways of testing them and uh so i

1396
01:37:59,100 --> 01:38:04,540
think uh you guys have become the you know cutting edge now of of uh

1397
01:38:17,770 --> 01:38:18,970
Yeah, thanks so much, Ray.

1398
01:38:19,050 --> 01:38:20,010
It's great to talk to you.

1399
01:38:20,090 --> 01:38:24,970
And um yeah, you know, it's just serendipitous that my introduction to anthropology

1400
01:38:24,970 --> 01:38:27,050
happened to be in your your lecture hall.

1401
01:38:27,130 --> 01:38:30,570
And um I guess I'll close with one one funny story.

1402
01:38:30,730 --> 01:38:34,100
You know, Ray has such a commanding presence in the classroom.

1403
01:38:34,180 --> 01:38:39,060
He's obviously a super nice guy, really collegial, but in the classroom he takes it very

1404
01:38:39,060 --> 01:38:39,860
seriously.

1405
01:38:40,020 --> 01:38:44,180
And I remember it was my first time back to the university in this huge lecture hall.

1406
01:38:44,340 --> 01:38:47,780
And you're talking about the Yanamamo and these ethnographies we're going to read.

1407
01:38:47,860 --> 01:38:51,620
And I think it was one of the first or second lectures and you know you you have a nice,

1408
01:38:51,780 --> 01:38:52,580
very commanding presence.

1409
01:38:52,660 --> 01:38:57,630
And then up in the back row there was this kid one day reading a newspaper and you just

1410
01:38:57,630 --> 01:39:02,830
like stopped your lecture mid-sentence and said something to the effect of like, You can do

1411
01:39:02,830 --> 01:39:06,830
that elsewhere, you better put that away right now or leave the room.

1412
01:39:06,990 --> 01:39:12,910
And it was the whole 300 students just instantly got silent and all the attention

1413
01:39:12,910 --> 01:39:14,270
came right back to the lecture.

1414
01:39:14,510 --> 01:39:19,710
And then years later, like five years later, I was meeting a friend of my brother's and he

1415
01:39:19,710 --> 01:39:22,110
introduced himself to me and said, You might remember me.

1416
01:39:22,270 --> 01:39:25,160
You remember Ray Haymes' class in culture anthropology?

1417
01:39:25,320 --> 01:39:27,160
He called out that guy reading the newspaper?

1418
01:39:27,320 --> 01:39:28,040
That was me.

1419
01:39:30,520 --> 01:39:31,160
Really?

1420
01:39:31,880 --> 01:39:32,120
Yeah.

1421
01:39:32,280 --> 01:39:37,240
So, I mean, you were legendary on the on the campus of University of Nebraska for bringing

1422
01:39:37,240 --> 01:39:39,720
these stories of the Yanamomo and ethnography.

1423
01:39:39,800 --> 01:39:43,960
And there's a whole uh group and generation of us that came from Nebraska that wouldn't

1424
01:39:43,960 --> 01:39:48,330
have any idea about evolutionary social science had it not been for your your presence

1425
01:39:48,330 --> 01:39:48,490
there.

1426
01:39:48,650 --> 01:39:53,610
So thank you for your service to Nebraska and and this is and our communities more

1427
01:39:53,930 --> 01:39:54,730
broadly.

1428
01:39:55,450 --> 01:39:59,210
Well, thank you very much and uh interesting uh story.

1429
01:39:59,450 --> 01:40:02,330
Uh it was effective.

1430
01:40:02,410 --> 01:40:03,050
It was an effective.

1431
01:40:03,130 --> 01:40:05,130
I I'll try it in my own teaching someday.

1432
01:40:05,530 --> 01:40:07,450
Did anything have did the person elaborate?

1433
01:40:07,530 --> 01:40:11,180
Did they say sort of, you know, I was all of a sudden after that day, I sort of woke up

1434
01:40:11,180 --> 01:40:12,620
earlier, worked harder and that kind of thing.

1435
01:40:12,860 --> 01:40:14,940
Yeah, it just scared him, scared him straight, you know.

1436
01:40:15,100 --> 01:40:15,580
No more.

1437
01:40:17,740 --> 01:40:17,980
Yep.

1438
01:40:18,220 --> 01:40:19,020
He paid attention.

1439
01:40:19,420 --> 01:40:22,140
My view back then was that I don't take rule.

1440
01:40:23,180 --> 01:40:28,060
So, you know, don't ask uh I gotta answer this phone.

1441
01:40:28,300 --> 01:40:31,180
But uh so read your newspaper in the lobby.

1442
01:40:33,970 --> 01:40:34,690
Thanks, Rick.

1443
01:40:35,250 --> 01:40:35,490
All right.

1444
01:40:35,570 --> 01:40:35,730
Great.

1445
01:40:35,890 --> 01:40:36,770
It was a pleasure.

1446
01:40:36,930 --> 01:40:37,890
Uh take care.

1447
01:40:38,130 --> 01:40:38,690
Bye.

1448
01:40:42,850 --> 01:40:46,050
Well, you're still here listening, which means that you must like what you're hearing.

1449
01:40:46,210 --> 01:40:48,690
So what can people do if they like what they're hearing, Dave?

1450
01:40:49,010 --> 01:40:51,330
They can uh leave a good review.

1451
01:40:51,490 --> 01:40:57,490
They can share it with uh this episode with somebody on social media, or

1452
01:40:57,570 --> 01:41:03,380
um the old fashioned way of looking over at them through the um sky or

1453
01:41:03,380 --> 01:41:09,300
air, the ground walking around, um, you know, using their voice, not sitting on

1454
01:41:09,300 --> 01:41:14,100
a screen and saying, Hey, look at this thing, which is also on the computer.

1455
01:41:14,180 --> 01:41:16,180
So I guess, you know, whatever, it's all on the computer.

1456
01:41:16,500 --> 01:41:16,740
Yeah.

1457
01:41:16,820 --> 01:41:22,340
I mean I mean sending vibrations through the air by vibrating our vocal cords.

1458
01:41:22,580 --> 01:41:23,620
Uh, you know, that's it.

1459
01:41:23,780 --> 01:41:25,380
Yeah, if you're reductive about it, that's true.

1460
01:41:25,460 --> 01:41:26,820
It's all weird when you're when you're reducing.

1461
01:41:27,140 --> 01:41:31,140
I mean, that's that's the OG social media is just l literal vibes.

1462
01:41:31,550 --> 01:41:36,990
Can I just say that the uh Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys is an excellent, excellent

1463
01:41:36,990 --> 01:41:37,230
song.

1464
01:41:37,310 --> 01:41:42,830
Brian Wilson really just turned as they say, he turned the uh the recording studio into an

1465
01:41:42,830 --> 01:41:43,230
instrument.

1466
01:41:43,390 --> 01:41:46,750
So uh if you haven't listened to Good Vibrations in a while, you should check it out.

1467
01:41:47,150 --> 01:41:51,870
It's a great album and please send some good vibes our way, kind reviews, check us out on

1468
01:41:51,870 --> 01:41:52,510
Patreon.

1469
01:41:52,670 --> 01:41:54,350
Uh we we love to hear all of it.

1470
01:41:54,510 --> 01:41:56,510
So uh we'll see you next week.

1471
01:41:56,750 --> 01:41:57,310
Fantastic.

1472
01:41:57,470 --> 01:41:58,990
Listen to some good music today.

1473
01:41:59,120 --> 01:41:59,600
Yeah.