Health and the Shuar Project with Josh Snodgrass
2026-06-16 12:00:00.000 +00:00

Where are we and what are we doing? We are doing Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast, which is uh about actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists, and we are The Davids. I'm David Pinsoff, and you are David Petrozowski, uh Dave uh for coordination purposes, and we are um here on the podcast and also on Earth and in between those, we're both in California right now. That's true. And you are about to hear some lovely music that I composed. David, today we have Josh Schnodgrath on MLS in the German way. Is it a sh or a s? I think I'm going German. I've I lived long enough in Germany that occasionally German five. I don't think no, probably I have no idea. Okay. Do you want to say it?

So I I I for some reason. I thought it was the S, just snodgrass. Snodgrass, yes, it is, yes. I don't know why. For that moment I was slightly German. Um uh we had a wonderful conversation. Yes, really fun. We talked about all things evolution and health, uh the intersection between health and psychology and social networks. Uh We talked about market integration, how societies transition from more of a forager subsistence mode to a market economy and the effects that has on mental health and physical health. What else do we get into, Dave? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the bottom line on this episode was that moving from a hunter-gatherer, hunter-for-cultural um maybe living into like a modern market thing, which

is something like the Schwar are experiencing, is neither all good or neither all bad. And it's not at all straightforward to just say the move has positive consequence or negative, or or even what the things are that cause that. Um so I I like think a nice analogy for this episode that we talked about was either like historical change or even if you just move from one place to another, you know, there's like good things and bad things. You miss certain things about the past and you like certain things about the future, but there's things about where you live now that are not so great and things about the past or where you used to live that were better. And I think that's generally just true for for what Josh is finding as well.

That's true. In general, a good bet with science is that things are going to be more complicated than you think. And and this episode is no exception to that rule, but thankfully um using an evolutionary perspective helps you navigate the complex complexity and make sense of it. And Josh is a wonderful example of uh using uh the evolutionary lens to clarify what is going on with these complicated interactions between health, mental health, biology, ecology, et cetera. Yeah. And I think this episode returned to an older theme of the podcast that we've we have always been on but haven't hit explicitly is like if you take a evolutionary approach or you don't um uh that mode that was a negative. So let me start over by not saying a negative, but if you integrate biology with psychology

and evolution, it's a more humane way to think about people because it forces you to think about what is good for human flourishing. And I think this conversation was a highlighting that point again, which we was something we've covered in the podcast, especially in earlier episodes. Yeah, absolutely. So without further ado, further ado, enjoy. So thanks for being here. Um, this is great. Um, maybe we can get right into it. Um David and I have talked and we talked about the evolution human behavior um paper lassitude. Uh-huh. And when I saw this paper, and the argument as I understand it is that lassitude, which I think I even had to like double check because I hadn't come across that word. It was not in my uh lexicon, so I learned a word, um, is the emotion of being sick,

but it's the emotion. Um, I thought this was one of the coolest thing. I think it won the Margot Wilson Award for the best paper in the journal of the year. So congratulations. Um what uh how is that an emotion? Tell us about how do you end up writing a paper about that? Tell us the whole story. Yeah, no, I'm happy to. I will start out by saying I'm not gonna take a whole lot of credit for it because I feel like the grad student at the time, Josh Schrock, who was writing it, did so much amazing work to bridge, in many ways, to bridge me, me and Larry and kind of all our thinking, right? And so I mean, I will I'm sure we'll talk more about the the Schwar project, you know, but but sort of out of that kind of grew this bigger perspective of like, okay, how do we

actually do many of the things that had originally been our intention when Larry and I started the Schwarz Project, which is actually integrating human biology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology to get at these bigger questions, right? And so I feel like over the course of the Schwarz project, we'd kind of touched on some of those things and had smaller little projects that really truly brought those together, but there hadn't really been much of the sort of bigger sort of theorizing about how all this stuff works. And so sort of simultaneously we had the disgust work going on, which we could talk about later as well. And then Josh Schrock really thinking about lassitude. But it really grew out of these conversations about changing environments, right?

So, like one of the big parts of the Schwar project is trying to understand this market integration process, this social change, this environmental change. And it's so often been focused in at least the human biology literature on the, you know, the increase in chronic diseases like, you know, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and not so much focused in on infectious disease and parasitic disease, with the exception of like, oh, well, people get vaccinated and infectious disease loads go down as chronic disease goes up, right? It's very simplistic. And so it clearly wasn't simplistic from, you know, from the work that we started doing, you know, like there's this complex relationship between these immune changes to

what's happening in the environment. And so it then became clear that, like, not only did we really have to think about this in a sophisticated way, just from a physiological standpoint, but that the behavioral piece mattered as well. And so I just think that was such a great example of like really us in the project being able to reach what we had wanted to do from the very beginning, which is really think through like, okay, how do we understand the connection between these underlying biological processes and then the behavioral pieces, and then start to think about it in an evolutionary perspective, as well as how the environment that people are living in in the course of their lifetime is shaping things as well.

So, really basically, like the, I think the piece that I'm most excited about is just like really bringing back in the behavioral piece into the human biology. Because I mean, as you guys both know, so oftentimes we've got the like behavior people, right, living in this HBE and evolutionary psych world. And we've got these human biologists kind of living in another world, but they're not really connected. And so this was very much like, yeah, what like how do we actually look at these emotions as adaptive and relevant to these biological systems and functional in terms of dealing with environments as they're changing in the context of human, social, political, and economic change? Amazing. Yeah, and just to kind of uh for for people listening at home to clarify.

So Schwar, uh, Schwarland and the Schwar, we've had several people on. So we've had Clark Barrett, uh, Chris von Ruden, we had Mike Gervin on. Oh, nice. These are all folks who've worked with the Schar Schwar. People know that is the Schwar Project, you mentioned Larry who is Larry Sugyama, who we will have on, who's a colleague of yours, um, who you know, we we we know, I know um he's an academic sibling of mine. Um, uh is the Schwar Project a subset of people studying? Can you what is the is that um is that something you and Larry started within the collection of people studying the Schwar? Or can you clarify what that is? Yeah, it was, you know, Larry Larry had been working with um John and Lita, right.

Don John Tubi and Lita Cosmudis for many years, sort of thinking about starting these types of projects, right? That we needed more of those international projects where there's different environments and different social systems and things like that to be able to really understand these relationships, these evolutionary processes. And so Larry started working in South America and was working with Clark Barrett. And but then I think Larry started to gravitate to working with the Schwar community. So he'd been working with Shiviar before, and there's some papers published in the what late 90s, early 2000s. But those ones were very like those are the Shiviar are very small populations. And so I think it really became clear to Larry that if he wanted to study something like

market integration, that it was going to be something that required a huge amount of data collection in a number of different realms, and that there was really no way to do that with Shiviar, both from the perspective of needing a large population to be able to look at the variation you get. And secondarily, it was going to require a decent sized team to be able to measure these different things in different people. And the prospect of working in these small Shivyar communities was basically impossible. So then Larry started working with Schwar, who um are a much larger population, so over 50,000 at the time when Larry, you know, in the early 2000s. And there was also this huge interest in working with him and then us because they

were sort of in had this really challenging relationship with the Ecuadorian government. And sort of Ecuadorian government came in like, hey, we're going to do a health survey. Here's all that data. Now do what you want with it. And so when I came to Oregon, Larry was Larry had a student, Aaron Blackwell, who's gone on and done amazing things. And um, and they basically had been given a ton of health data from Schwar saying, you know, like we've got all this health data. Can you help us interpret this and write this up? And then so they did and brought me in as well. But then it also sort of opened the door to an opportunity to a larger project to be able to start doing work that really was big in the sense of uniting these

different fields and really thinking about how do we measure these different things that are changing with market integration? How do we do it in a way beyond just the rural versus urban or you know something like that? How do we think about this as you know the the level of the country, the level of the regions, the level of the communities, the level of the household, the level of the individual. And so because the Schwar communities were interested in collaborating and then also large enough, it just be and had a huge amount of variation across and within them that it just created this prospect for launching this study. but it was going to then also require a lot of human power in that, which then became, you

know, Aaron Blackwell first, and then a number of other grad students who were really important in that. So that then simultaneously was happening while Mike, you mentioned Mike Gervin. Mike was setting up the Chimani project in Bolivia. And so we ended up kind of oddly enough, independently coming up with almost identical names of this life, you know, health life history projects. And so, but what's been fascinating about those is we've really approached them in different ways, right? Like how we're gonna set up those studies. And in many ways, there's a lot of overlap in what we as the Schwar project and they as the Chamani project are interested in. They really started focusing in on aging as the thing that that kind of organized

it. And part of that was funding, right, through NIH. And we sort of look more at market integration, right? And obviously we're interested in aging too. And the projects have kind of grown together, right? And so we'll have sometimes where we're sharing data, and we've got, you know, ones where we're comparing between the groups. Um, but it's also interesting because you know, you look at these populations that sort of superficially look very similar, right? They live, you know, they're both in tropical areas and not far from each other, But then there's some actually subtle differences between Schwar and Chamani. You know, obviously there's cultural ones, but also like even environmental ones, like with

the extent of pathogen exposure being much more extreme in the Chamani, much less in the Schwar, which actually leads to whole different pathways and different health risks between those two populations that could easily have been dismissed as like whatever they're Amazonian populations, they're probably pretty similar. Actually, surprising differences there. So it's been really cool to have those two projects going simultaneously and sort of seeing how they're making decisions at every level from the science to the you know the ethics of community work. And just, you know, we both learn from each other, and it's been there's been some cool opportunities for collaboration. Cool. I mean, what are some of the biggest um insights and discoveries you've made in terms of

progressing through these two different projects? Um what have you learned about the effects of, say, market integration on health or or um you know the different ecological factors that might play a role here as well? Yeah, I'll answer that second part first, which is those ecological factors like presence of tapeworm, for example, just seems like a minor difference, right? But it you you find quite a bit of tapeworm in the area of the chamani and very little in schwar areas, but it seems to have a huge effect in terms of like hemoglobin levels and anemia risk, and immune systems are developing differently for people who are exposed to different things, which then is going to influence their experience of disease, even with chronic diseases, right?

So that's an example, I think, of one small ecological thing that actually seems to have a really big effect. I think the other piece that we're so we're in the we're in the midst of sort of planning a big kind of market integration and health paper that's an update to one that we published in 2013. And I think, I think a big contribution that we've made is that the model, as I kind of alluded to before, the model for market integration and health used to be very simple. It was sort of like people are adapted to their environment and then westernization happens and it knocks people out of adaptation, right? And this is sort of just very vague language, if not well conceptualized, in my opinion,

but that knocks them out of adaptation. And then that lack of adaptation, or you know, whatever you want to call it, sends them into higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And so I think we approached it as like that's theoretically kind of problematic, but also like the way that people have approached this scientifically has been very limited. And so the way that we approached it was okay, how do we look at these different levels of influence, right? So community versus region, that kind of thing. And then how do we understand it in terms of the different health conditions, right? It's not just cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but it's also mental health. It's also osteoporosis.

It's also these other things that are happening. And really trying to pull it apart to say, like, what actually is driving these changes? What is it about the environment that is, is it running through a stress access? Is it running through a nutrition access and access? Is it running through something else? And so really trying to look at those details. And I think what we've really shown is that yes, there are some big regional differences, but the bulk of it is actually playing out like within a community and often within a household, right? That like how people are experiencing this, you know, market integration, it's rooted in their behaviors at an individual level in terms of whether that's their

foraging or you know, types of foraging or the decisions that they're making about this, that, or the other thing. So I think in some ways it's super, it's really complicated this perspective of market integration. And one saying, like, we actually have to look at this in a really sophisticated way to really understand how all these factors are are playing out. And I think we're seeing similar things in terms of how the Chamani project has approached it as well. And I think we've dug in more on market integration and measured it at more of a sort of fine-grained level than they have, but we're seeing the same kinds of things in terms of just a lot of variation. It's not just Western foods come in and everything changes, but how people navigate that

relationship with every aspect of the the sort of social the larger social context really matters. So a a simple sort of naive perspective, which it seems like you're taking issue with is that, you know, the more integrated I am with markets and with the Western world, uh, the more likely I am to have these Western uh diseases like heart disease or these mental health problems, um, or you know, or or or osteoporosis, whatever these these things are that are afflicting Western populations, the more engaged I am with the market economy, the more that's just gonna thrust me into maladaptation. Um and so you might naively expect just a simple relationship with you know market integration and poor health.

But it seems like what you're saying is that that relationship is is not so simple. I mean first of all, do do we see relationship there at all? Um and and you know if so, what what what are the mediators and the moderators of that relationship? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And and the reality is there's no simple answer to that. I would say that even trying to measure health, like what is relevant there, right? And so like is it life expectancy? Is it healthy life expectancy? Is it prevalence of diabetes, or is it some sort of set of all of those, right? I think in general there have been with with increasing market as market integration, there have been some positive effects, right? And often that's related to access to vaccines, for example, or some of the sort of quote

unquote modern medical care that people that people experience and some levels of development, like access to clean water and things like that. But the reality is when you start to look at those details, like it kind of, you know, there's so much variation. And one of the nice things about the Schwarb, you know project is that we've been able to set it up where we're working with in dozens of different communities so that we can see this play out. And so, for example, one thing that we see is some of those more remote communities, they're not having problems with lack of clean water, right? They're small populations without domesticated animals, and they're they're actually able to move around quite a bit in a relatively undisturbed environment.

But as they start to experience market integration, things get worse, And then as they continue on that, things get better and worse simultaneously, right? So initially they start to have larger populations, more domesticated animals, more issues with you know pathogens coming from those animals or from you know whatever, more humans being in the same location. But then as they get bigger, there tends to be more market access to antibiotics and things like that, which then can deal with some of the issues, but then start to also bring in those risks for diabetes and heart disease that, for example, are coming from the fact that now market foods are more available. And so it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's almost infinitely complicated in terms

of trying to pull that all apart. And I feel like our first 20 years of this project is starting to make some progress on this about the sort of trends and all those different factors that drive this and even how we set up our studies. But it's pretty interesting that we're we're 20 years into this, and it feels like, oh yeah, we've had a bunch of successes, right? But I feel like we're still just really learning how to set this all up. And it's been really interesting. I'm now part of this group called Pecan that's um that Herman Ponzer has been running out of Duke. And we've been meeting now for three years. And it's a bunch of people who do this kind of work with small-scale populations. So people who work with the Hadza and people who work with, you know, the Chamani and

others. And so having these conversations about market integration and taking those first steps to basically say, like, how do we actually set this up to be able to compare and contrast between populations. And like, how do we, what is our our relevant variable here in terms of looking at health and longevity or whatever it is? And then what are the factors that are going to influence this? And that's been, it's been, I feel like we talked as Pacan as this group for a couple of years. And we finally, about a month ago, when we all met together, got to a really cool place where we can say, like, okay, here's how we test this across different groups. And here's how we may be able to come up with some general ideas about how all this works,

right? But that it's just surprising. We're like 20 years into the Schwar project and a few years into Pecan. And we're just getting to the point where we can sort of start to make some can draw some conclusions about the general principles of how all this operates, and then look at individual populations as whatever, complying or deviating in different ways. So it seems like what you're saying is the modern relationship we see between sort of non-market societies slowly integrating into market societies is sort of analogous to the historical process of human beings themselves moving away from hunting and gathering, moving into agriculture and sedentism, and then developing more sophisticated economies and technologies.

Or at first, when humans uh you know began, you know, uh concentrating together in large agricultural settings, uh it just became a huge petri dish for lots of different pathogens spreading from uh from livestock to people and from people to one another, given that they were in in larger, you know, uh concentrations. Uh that combined with the agricultural diet and our lack of adaptation to those new foods that we were eating. So at first, it seemed like the uh economic development of humans was a really bad thing for us in terms of health. But then slowly, gradually, as economies developed, um, we started developing more technologies, antibiotics, vaccines, new ways to mitigate the health problems

and cope with the the problems arising from this new agricultural processed diet. And then eventually uh we started seeing positive health effects. So there was kind of we had to get over this hump of of sort of negative uh health effects in order to get to the some of the positive trends. And it seems like what you're suggesting is that that may be a similar dynamic at play as communities like the Shuar, the Chumane begin to transition into a market society where at first it may have negative effects. Um, and and maybe once you get some of the positive effects of, say, antibiotics, uh, those those effects might diminish. And so it might be a similar process of sort of get getting over this hump.

Absolutely. That's definitely a good way to look at it. And then on top of that, we're starting to then see some of the negative things that happen, right? So that some some of the chronic diseases, also mental health issues start to come, you know, become a major issue for a lot of these communities, especially indigenous communities, as you know, they're sort of they're they're more in these market systems, but yet there's a huge level of inequality there, right? And so you start to see the mental health challenges, you know, really becoming much more common in these populations, as well as you start to see things like immune dysregulation, right? Start to see this sort of initial movement towards dysregulated immune systems that leads

to autoimmune diseases and allergies. And so, yeah, you see like even those characterizing this law, the swath of changes, there are these positives that happen after you these initial negatives, but then a whole set of new negatives come online, right? And so again, depending on what we're focusing in on in terms of the health issue, it can look like something that got way better or way worse. And so how do we characterize the collection of those different things? Yeah. I had a much more prosaic example, David. I like the example of history, which is just like even as a as a just individual human lifespan, if I move to a new place, I often uh find when I move to the next place, um, that I'm I'm trying to live the lifestyle that worked in the place I lived previously

and apply that to the next place. And it happens at different scales. But then you realize, oh, this doesn't work here. I have to modify things. And then you also realize even once you get settled in the new place, there are some pros to the new place, but there's some cons. And I'm hearing it's the same, it's exactly the same thing historically or society, social society. It is. And it's really that navigation at an individual level of like those things that work and what you're familiar with, and then the constraints and opportunities that are shaped by the environment that you come from and the environment that you're going in, or you stay in the same place and your environment is changing over time.

And so, you know, there I think the the the piece that I would like to see develop that I've really been pushing some of our, you know, my collaborators and grad students to go is that oftentimes the way we've looked at market integration has been very much like the material conditions changing, right? In terms of like, okay, here's your behavior, here's your physical activity level changing, or here's your percentage of foods coming from market sources, or here's your access to a TV, or those kinds of things, right? But on top of that, I think there's also like the cognitive piece of like how do we make sense of that? And so we've started to do some work sort of taking some of like Bill Dressler's ideas in

terms of like these congruities and incongruities of how we make sense of what's a good life. And and so, you know, like um Melissa Liebert, who was one of the grad students who worked early on in the Schwar project, She's finished and is now actually tenured faculty at Northern Arizona University. But some of the work that she's done, a bit of it published, some of it still in process, has been looking at like kids and how things change and how they perceive things. And so even at the level of like a six-year-old or an eight-year-old, they've got different ideas of like what it means to live a good life, and that they're different between remote living Schwar communities, who those kids are often saying, like, clean water

and trees and things like that, to then some of the urbanized Schwar who are saying, Well, what it takes to live a good life is a cell phone and a TV and things like that. the ability of those individual kids to meet those desires, right? Vary in those different places, right? So your ability to have, you know, and you're you're in a group of 50 people living in a remote area, and what you need to have a good life is good social relationships, good environment. most people can meet that, right? Whereas you look at then people living in, say, a market center of 10,000 people, and you look at then what kids want, inequality is going to play out big time. And you're going to have kids who are six to eight years old who really want cell phones

and access to all these different things or ability to travel, but yet there's a huge range of variation between individuals. Some individuals are able to provide that for their kids and others aren't. And so that ability to kind of reach what you want is going to have huge effects on mental health. And it's going to have huge effects on stress and then understanding stress's effects on the body. So I think the next step really is doing more of that kind of work to really understand like how people make sense of it, not just how their bodies experience it. Yeah. I'm I wanna unpack this this relationship between uh mental health and market integration because um I would imagine it's it's a complicated one and and there there might be some

moderators and mediators to that relationship and and and particularly there's complexity surrounding how you're measuring mental health and what mental disorders we're looking at. So there could be stress, anxiety, depression. I'm not sure what it is you're measuring and and where the the relationships are strongest. But I kinda just want to unpack like w what is going on there uh and and and what you see as as the the the causal mechanisms that are uh at play. Yeah, great question. I think that often it's kind of playing out in terms of like some people are approaching this with the sort of epidemiological tools where it's like, okay, let's measure whether, you know, percentage of individuals that have, you depression, or you know, either people

who have been diagnosed or people who have behaviors that, you know, as they ref, you know, in an interview or a questionnaire, would be classified as depressed if they had access to a mental health professional, right? So there's people who are approaching it in those sort of that epidemiological lens. And what we see is populations, especially indigenous groups that are going through market integration, you're often seeing the increase in in in these things, right? And obviously it's complicated in the sense that like how individual cultures make sense of depression is going to vary a lot. And so those standard tools to applied globally have their limitations, right? But what you can see is definitely more mental health issues, especially

around anxiety and depression in those communities, right? And then there's the other approach, which is sort of coming more out of anthropology and human biology, which is it's partly about prevalence of these, but it's also more about measurement of anxiety or mostly stress, right? And so trying to understand both the subjective experience of stress, but more the sort of biological experience of stress through biomarkers. And so what we see is, you know, let there, and we can chat more about this too, is like, you know, with measuring stress at a biological level, the body is experiencing it in different ways, right? But we're often seeing increase in chronic psychosocial stress as people are going through this process of market integration.

Obviously, there's a lot of factors that influence that, but that is something that people are experiencing in general more of as they're going through market integration. And I think, you know, some of it in my mind connects to social, like a lot of it would connect to like social networks and sort of social support. And then also with sort of feelings of control. And so I think oftentimes in these types of new environments that people are moving into or having the environment change around them, that oftentimes as you're starting to introduce whatever, new economic systems and, you know, increasing population sizes and increased inequality, you have perceptions of people being able to control their

environment and their own circumstances less, in that that tends to lead to higher levels of psychosocial stress, whether that's a measured in the HPA axis, axis in terms of like cortisol levels being higher or dysregulated, or in an inflammatory axis, or other ways to look at things. I mean, that's that's just a general character characterization, and there's a lot of factors that influence it. But in general, we're seeing more chronic psychosocial stress as people go through more market integration and are more within living within these complex sort of Western type environments. That's that's interesting. So it seems like part of it is kind of the mundane thing where moving into any new place or

culture or setting where things work differently is going to be stressful because you understand how things work less. Right. Um so that that I want to set aside that mundane part and focus on what I think is the more interesting part, which is you're you're you're also uh seeming to argue that uh it's affecting people's social relationships. Um and that in turn is having these negative uh uh physical health effects in terms of stress and uh mental health uh effects as well. Um, and I I'm curious about that because you know, naively you might think, you know, you're you're more integrated with you know a market economy, you're you're meeting more people, uh, your social network is expanding. You might think that might have a positive effect on your social relationships.

You know, you're you're you're forming new opportunities, new working relationships, you're with with people in different um work environments. Um so why when when these social relationships seem to increase, do we see uh deterioration of people's uh uh social support systems? Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great question. I do think for some people, for a subset of people, it does get better, right? And and I think that there are more opportunities. There may be ways that they connect with people in new and different ways. There's travel opportunities, there's ways to make money, those kinds of things. I think often though, a larger segment of people are finding less stability in this. So that they may be doing wage labor without a lot of support and a lot of

predictability, that they may be going off to whatever, you know, some somewhere that's distant from you know where they grew up and where their family is, and that all of a sudden they're, you know, working in the city that's 200 miles away and they're not making a whole lot of money and they're sending some back. They're trying to come back when they can. And the relationship that they're in the relationships that they're in in those new communities are ones where they're very hierarchical and there's a lot of in inequality in them. Right. So I think it's it's it's the details of what happens with these, the quality of those, you know, relationships and and sort of like the level of ine inequality w within them.

So so it definitely it's not universally a bad thing to to have these changes in terms of like social networks and things like that. But I think often the way it plays out is that more often people tend to be more exploited and it and it and it disrupts social networks that that are going to be really useful for whatever for people staying afloat. I know that some of the some of the studies that we've done, we've asked people like in our in our questionnaires or surveys about like their social networks and can how many people do you have that you can go to that if you're in an emergency and you need money or you need to get taken to the hospital or things like that. How many people and who are those people?

And I think that oftentimes going out of one of these communities leads to that disruption of those, those, the social support that's going to be necessary when things get bad. Right. Yeah. And and is the idea too that in just as the example of history or personal life experience, you try to find the principles that work across locations. So would the long-term goal be something like given that this is a natural experiment, um, if somebody has more family around or less, or has more predictability in their job or less, which is harder to code. But I think the ideal would be that it's as you're saying, it's not as simple as just in the market or not. It's sort of coding these more situation specific things, but that will still

happen across instances and seeing if those factors are at least protective. Is that the long-term goal? Absolutely. Yeah. And really trying to understand that those details of like, yeah, perceptions of control, perceptions of autonomy, perception of social support, those kinds of things. And so, you know, again, keep saying perception, right? Because sometimes like measuring the absolute number of these things doesn't really get at how people perceive them. And that's going to be shaped by the culture, that's going to be shaped by history, that's going to be shaped as individuals. And so, but yeah, really trying to understand those details. I mean, I feel like it's funny being 20 over 20 years into this project and sort of still

feeling like we're laying the foundation for getting some of these big questions answered. I feel like, again, we've like been really productive, but it's it's so like some of these larger patterns and generalizations are just so hard to get at that it's really taken like setting up this enormous project, right, which is measuring like many, many, many hundreds of variables and working with, I think we're over 3,500 people over these 20 years. And so, and and yet I still feel like it's almost like pilot data in some ways, like to set stuff up. So it's cool. And now an increasing number of studies are using kind of our approaches. And then now we can compare and contrast with, for example, groups going through similar

processes in Malaysia or East Africa or other places, but it's still, I don't know, I to me, it still seems like we've done a bunch, but there's still so much potential to really get at those, like, how do we really understand the big processes and and why they exist the way that they do? Yeah. It even reminds me, like, I mean, there's work on just even like there was experimental work, I think, in the UK on advertising. And if you just remove what is presumably the effects of the perception of relative deprivation by removing advertising. So, you know, advertising is largely like you're deprived, you should buy this product and not be deprived anymore. There's there were slight in this as an experiment in a natural experiment, there were

slight changes in well-being, even just by removing the ads people were exposed to. So this is a a real world example of exactly the thing you're describing, which is like even that is just one study, but you're doing this natural experiment across many things. Trying to measure people's experiences or perceptions is really hard. Yeah, but that proximity piece is so important, right? And so, like, are you seeing other people getting more of these things that you might want or that now you really want? And so in the past, human biologists have measured that in like distance to these different communities, or are you in a neighborhood, a poor neighborhood that's right next to a rich neighborhood?

But yet with advertising, you're you're bringing you're doing that in a different way. And and so I think one of the challenges has been with the Schwartz project is that you know, we've set it up and we're doing this work, but every year it changes. And so, like, you know, oftentimes we'll have enough, we'll collect data over 10 years to really address a question. But then are all those 10 years and those communities equal? Right. And and it's accelerated. Like the last five years has accelerated even faster with the sense of like, now there's these like little internet cafes. I guess they're not really that, but like access to Starlink in the middle of the forest where you were all of a sudden getting connection on the internet in a way that literally a

year before there was no opportunities. Or like all of a sudden this road goes in and it totally changes this entire region in terms of their access. So like it's cool from a sort of natural, you know, like experiment standpoint, but I just wish the natural experiment would like slow down. Slow down exactly. Like I want to compare this versus this. I don't want it like everywhere. Yeah. Your time machine. If somebody's got a time machine, if somebody has a time machine, please contact Josh, please. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, we're also really we're we really focus in on doing this work ethically and responsibly. And and and I think really Larry has been fantastic and has been the push on this: is like,

how do we how do we work with communities that they're getting something out of this, right? That it's not just us, obviously, it's not just us coming in and taking and then reproducing stuff and then like essentially the parachute research model, but it's one where like, how do we navigate this where like they are getting as many things out of this that they want as we are? And so what that translates to is we're not always controlling where we go, right? It's kind of like, you know, we work with the Schwartz Federation and the the leadership within Schwartz. And then we sort of navigate like, okay, what are the communities that are possible to work in because they want to work with us? But it may not be perfect in the sense that, like, if I got to choose or Larry got to

choose, we'd be like, oh, let's pick this, this, this, and this. And we've got our whatever five communities designed scientifically. It's the reality of it is there's some of that, but also this like, okay, well that we can't really do that. So let's try to find a way that works for everyone. So it's just, I think it's the reality of doing this work with people, you know, in communities in a responsible way. Obviously international is is really makes it really clear because of you know working with indigenous communities, but find the same thing here. I do work with homeless communities in Eugene. And you know, it's the same kind of thing. It's like, how do we figure out how it's mutually beneficial and how we balance the sort

of ethics of it with the science of it? Because that's the way you have to do it. Yeah, one of the many pitfalls of doing research on humans rather than rats, which you can just pick up and you know put wherever you want. Exactly. Yeah. Uh with humans you have to, you know, offer them something that they want. You know. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, it gets really challenging. Yeah. Um, speaking of of of what humans want, I want to return to an idea that you touched on uh um earlier that uh is you know sticking with me, this idea of, you know, what a good life means and how that differs between um people as they navigate this transition into market economies. And so you you mentioned that um, you know, prior to this transition, people's life

aspirations or what they view as a good life are are much simpler. It's just if they have access to clean water and and friends, like that's that's good enough. That's that that's what it means to to live a good life. And yet that changes such that people's aspirations get much higher once they transition into uh market economies, where it's it's no longer enough to just have clean water and friends. You also need the cell phone, the TV, uh w whatever it is that that the the market is offering. Or or you think you need, right? Or you think you need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and so I I'm I find that puzzling and interesting. So why why shouldn't I be ecstatic if I'm living in a in a market economy and I

have all the clean water I want? And I have these amazing new technology, I have air conditioning. I have, you know, maybe I have a uh a cell phone or or whatever. Maybe I have these all these new amenities that are above and beyond my basic needs, and my basic needs are being met. Why shouldn't I be ecstatic? What what is it about this new environment that makes me unsatisfied with that? Whereas I was satisfied with it in the previous environment. Yeah. I it's yeah, that it's it's such a it's it's so interesting to think about. So I think part of it is that you start to see there there's going to be variation in who gets what, right? I think that's always true in these market economies. And that often is particularly true in these fast transitioning communities, right?

So, like a market center, right, like in lowland Ecuador or wherever it is in the world that we're talking about, is gonna have a huge amount of variation. And some people who are really doing well and got access to all these things, and then the other end of the spectrum where people are really struggling and are sort of the exploited labor class, right? So some of it is that it's not equally distributed, and it's not that the society says, okay, here we're going to give everybody their basic needs, right, in terms of food and water and things like that. And then you've got all these opportunities above and beyond that, right? That's not happening. It's kind of like, here's all these things that are rapidly changing, right?

And people are getting access to some of them and not others. And other people are getting access to almost none, right? And then there's the exposure to just all the variation in terms of what's out there, you're seeing it, right? So it's not just that you've got some opportunities and not others, but you're seeing another individual, you know, that's sort of keeping up with the Joneses or whatever it is that like I'm now seeing on advertisements or TV, or I'm in a large society that, or I'm in a large community that's now 10,000 people compared to like 200 people. And the range of variation what you have in the 200 person community versus in 10,000 is different. So that inequality becomes really obvious.

And so that that becomes something psychologically, not and also practically in terms of those things, right? Becomes they becomes really meaningful. So not to say that market economies are bad or that these transitions are bad at all, but I think it it naturally, maybe naturally is not the right word, but it typically becomes one where there's a huge amount of inequality. And and and so oftentimes it's the indigenous populations that tend to experience the bad end of the inequality, right? And I actually had a review paper now about 10 years ago with Claudia Vallegia, who that was looking at indigenous communities around the world as they go in through market integration. And universally, you see these communities, you know, because of racism and

discrimination and various different things in all these different locations lead to them experiencing market integration in a different way than some of the majority communities. So I think it's just all about the details here in terms of, yeah, like theoretically, there's a whole lot of these amazing things that people get access to, but the inequality matters, and then it also matters, I think, how our bodies and minds are designed by evolution to deal with those environments. I I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I think a lot about the like what psychologically it means to be in a town of whatever, 200,000 or a million versus in a town of or a small community of 50 people, in terms of who

you know, the relationships that you have, the faces you see, the status differences you're exposed to. Like in some ways, I just think we're not designed to live in these, whether it's us talking in the United States or whether we're talking about these indigenous communities transitioning in a place like Ecuador. So am I am I correct in in reading you uh and and saying that um a big part of what we strive for or aspire to in life is really dependent on the people around us and what they have compared to us. And a lot, there's this huge social comparison element. And in some sense, you might expect that from an evolutionary perspective. And that fitness is a relative uh thing. You know, um, it's about you know some doing better than others.

Uh competition is integral to Darwinism as we know it. And so when I'm stri when I'm deciding what I should strive for as an organism, uh it makes sense for me to evaluate that striving relative to my competitors in the environment. And insofar as I'm doing better than the people or the organisms around me, then that is a good sign from an inclusive fitness perspective. Or if my family is doing better than the families I see around me, that is a good sign that my inclusive fitness is in a good place. Right. And so it could be that, you know, if if I'm living um in a in a different type of social setting where um maybe the the best maybe there's just not a lot of accumulatable wealth. Right. And and the best that people can do really is just have clean water uh and and and good

friends and that's really like as as good as it gets in this place. Whereas if you move to a different place where as as good as it gets is like 10 times higher up in terms of the amount of stuff you have, then all of a sudden what I should strive for changes dramatically because now I'm I'm comparing myself to a different set of people. Um and my my competitors have changed. And all of a sudden I've moved from a place where I, you know, you know, perhaps somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy, I've entered into a new social system where I'm at the bottom of the hierarchy. So when when these communities are transitioning into the market uh economy, they're not, you know, uh moving right into the top of the of the economic stratum of that society.

They're moving into the bottom of the economic stratum, both socially and economically. Absolutely. And so uh uh uh am I correct in in seeing that this is really a phenomenon of of social comparison? Aaron Powell I think a lot of it is, right? And I think it it in some ways we're just not designed to deal with the levels of inequality and the various factors that that are gonna be used to evaluate people, right? And at one level we could say like, what does it really matter if we have a TV or it really matters, but we really do know that it matters and people even in the US, right, are evaluating people based on wealth and things like that. And it can have effects in terms of fitness, right? Right.

It's obviously super complicated given all the other factors, but it's it's still relevant, right? But I feel like we often get very disconnected from the like, what do we actually need and what do we want? Right. And that oftentimes there's just so many messages in a place like the US where it's just like, oh, you need this to be happy or whatever. And what I'm not sure it's it's it's like even the language around this or the variables that we're looking at are not necessarily the best ones. Like, is happiness the thing that we really want to focus in on? And or is it finding meaning in your life or those kinds of things? Right. And so I don't know, I guess my for me as a human biologist who's spending a lot who spent

a lot of my career focused in on market integration and health, and simultaneously have done a lot of work on sort of larger trends in human evolution and human evolutionary history. I guess I keep on wanting to sort of step back and be like at a root level, what do we as humans, whether whatever society we're living in, what do we need to be healthy, to be happy, or whatever it is that we're evaluating this? And oftentimes it's not that complicated, right? I mean there's always going to be haves and haves nots, and there's always going to be competition. I mean, I think that's normal, but it doesn't have to be the way that we've designed societies and in like Western societies, right? And so oftentimes it's it is about social relationships fundamentally that really

matter. It's about individuals who feel like they have autonomy to be able to reach whatever their potential or do things that are meaningful or do things within a society that matter to that society to get access to the foods that we need to survive and whatever thrive. It's really not a whole lot of things that we need. And so I think we're just in some ways we've totally lost the plot in places like the US, I think, in terms of being able to evaluate like what is human need and desires and then how does that map on or how should we try to map human society or country and politics onto those basic human physical and psychological needs. Yeah it's really weird. There's this thing called human factors engineering, which I'm sure you you know about

you've you've heard of, but just saying it for out loud for people. Um, which is, you know, designing like a cockpit around like how a human thinks, right? So it's more intuitive. Uh and and and even like urban planning or things like that, ideally one would have that. And I think I hear what you're describing is there's this weird paradox where people are aware that they're unhappy or happy based on their local conditions. But there's another layer of in essence human factors engineering of a society. Whether in probably no no one person is doing it, right? It's just this dynamic emergent outcome. But that different places end up in different sort of parts of this landscape of human flourishing.

And we're doing this weird thing of everybody sort of is like, yeah, the vibe here feels good or worse. Like you experience this when you go to a nice place or worse place, or like I know in Germany I felt a little bit better, even though it was still Western, you know, because there and and I don't but what I found surprising about that was I was conscious of the experience of the difference between the US and Germany, but I had to be intellectual about it to figure out what it was, and I'm still not even sure it's right. So there's this weird thing of like our evolved psychologies are really good at detecting displeasure and producing. I don't want to I don't want to reify that we're like dumb evolved organisms that aren't

smart enough to figure out the structural differences we need, but I'm kind of getting at that. Maybe that's too cartoonish, but I feel like that's a little bit true. No, I think you're I think you're exactly right on with that. I mean, I do feel like we sort of we we've got this evolved psychology, and then we're situated within, I mean, cultures and histories at a particular time period, right? That we do go these different directions. And I do feel like sometimes we we, yeah, we we evaluate in particular ways and and almost just get away from those basic, not basic needs, but just the kind of ba perspective on what we need to do well, right? At a basic level. And but it is very interesting how different societies go, like the

directions they go for totally weird reasons, like historical factors, too. Right. And and and there are some comparisons you can make with non-human, you know, like primate species, for example, that live in highly social environments like baboons. And, you know, if you've ever read any of Robert Sapolsky's work, right, there are times where, you know, like baboon societies have things happen to them that are not related to fitness or anything like that. They may take out certain individuals and leave other individuals, and then it goes a totally different direction. And you may have these baboon societies that are just really non-functional and highly unequal just because of weird historical factors related to

whatever tourism by some like lodge in Kenya or something like that. And so it's really interesting to see like we have that ability to get shaped by that so rapidly. And now we've got this modern world that's whatever, because of inequality and because of consumption and sort of this situated within capitalism, it really pushes us in a lot of different directions. And we know it doesn't feel good. But like getting out of that or having the perspective to understand that is really hard. And it also goes back to what we were talking about before, which is, but at some level, there's a lot that's good, right? Like I love that I go and like turn on the tap and I don't have to worry about you know

dirty water coming out. And that's true for most places in the US. And and so there's a lot that's good, but I think psychologically, like we've we've really messed things up a lot. Right. And and and certainly there are other axes, right, whether it's physical activity or sleep or diet or things like that, that also have their own challenges. But like I feel like we just keep getting away from or not having our understanding of evolution inform how we design our societies, right? I I've been really wanting to write a book on this topic and I just haven't had the time to do it. But I so I started teaching a class on this and and so I settled on this um it's called evolutionary medicine and how to live a long, healthy and meaningful life.

And it's been it's been interesting sort of figuring out like, okay, how like how do you even approach this? And and it's it's you know, and and and of course, for me, my my experience, like what I was initially trained in is looking at energetics and diet and change, you know, whatever, whether that's long-term perspective on diet or whether that's market integration and dietary change. But then there's all these other factors that matter. And so, like, how do I design a 10-week class where it's like, okay, this week we're talking about this, and this week we're talking, and it's I love it. But the conversations are just so all over the place. But I think at the end of the day, most people are like, what are we doing with where we're

living now? Like, here are the good things that are great about our society and help us thrive as humans. And then here's all this other stuff. And wait, why are we doing that? Right. So it's it's really fascinating to try to map on sort of our evolved biology and psychology with the pace of change and the crazy societies that we live in. I think, you know, the US being a prime example. Yeah. Yeah. I I also like this idea. It comes back to what we talked about earlier, which is this uh David's analogy of sort of this historical change, where, and it's what you were saying a second ago, Josh. I feel like you know, people used to build buildings during the Industrial Revolution that were just really bad, you know, like unsafe.

And then things got better that way. And then you know, we were putting lead in things. And then we like learned, oh, that's bad. So like physical stuff, chemistry, but we are still in the dark ages psychologically in terms of like common knowledge of how to build a large-scale society. And I I think maybe in a broad sweep of history, the fact that psychology and understanding what you need to have a good life mentally is such a new science compared to the effects of chemicals on the body or like what makes a good building or not. We're we're just further behind on that part. No, I think that's such an important observation. I feel like I completely agree. And yes, there's all these other things that we need to learn more about, right?

Whether that's like that this thing is toxic and leads to problems and you shouldn't consume it or you shouldn't be exposed to it, right? That's that there's progress needing to be made. But I think your point that we have made a lot of progress, a huge amount of progress is a really important one. But psychologically, like we are still very much in the dark. And I think because so oftentimes psychologists have been focused in on sort of what's normal, right? Rather than characterizing the variation or focusing in on the US rather than the international. And obviously this stuff is changing and has been changing for several decades now, but we're way behind, I think. And then also, and this is going back to one of the ideas that I was talking about

initially, which is the way that we've set up these different fields, like human biology and evolutionary psychology, is one where like the human biologists who really understand the physiology and the manifestations that change us and lead us to negative health are not the ones who know a whole lot about psychology and our evolved brains and kind of how we perceive things. And so I think some of those just the way that academic disciplines have grown up in the US and in other places too have really prevented us from getting at some of these connections. And that really it's that integrative work that's being done now, but only in the last several decades, that's really putting these pieces back together that should have been

obvious pieces even a hundred years ago. Yeah, it's weird too, because policymakers, especially like, I mean, forget about academics, but even just like policymakers, you don't often hear about people talking about like people's mental well-being. Or if they are, it's almost sort of like a trope of this is a bleeding liberal. So, I mean, like a good example I would say is like breastfeeding and we know there's really good data that if if you know w all these people worried about like people getting dumber and like using that as a political cudgel like the best thing you could do for a developing brain is like let it breastfeed for two years. That's like what we're just saying. How many people talk about that or how many people talk about like what we should put in

food because it affects how well people feel and like can think and be productive members. Like that's not a discussion, and that's sort of weird. Right. Absolutely. I I teach a human growth and development class and I talk about these ideas about like, you know, what we know about breastfeeding and both from the science Western sort of scientific model, but also what we know from hunter-gatherer societies and other small-scale populations. And it's so interesting. It's so already ingrained in like the minds of people that, like, okay, your your statement I completely agree with in terms of like the best thing we could do for a developing brain is you know breastfeeding for at least a couple years, right?

And then you're close to you know the mother, and there's so many benefits of this, right? But immediately people are like, but like that's gonna make them dependent, right? Like that, like all of a sudden, like the you to be a good American, you know, that kid needs to be in another room separate from the parents from like literally day one. And like, no, like not not really. Like, and you know, and if you're it if you've ever been a parent, you know that that doesn't generally feel right. But then situate that within these ideas of what it means to be independent and the the importance of that in terms of the sort of American spirit, and then parents working and trying to like manage their lives and their careers.

Yeah, and then this little infant that like you're just like, can you just go to sleep? Right. So there's like so many layers of it. But I do feel like, yeah, we're we're rarely connecting down to the evolved biology and psychology that is going to help us understand all of these different things and what we need, what we want, and then I guess how we would manage that in the context of this complex and changing world. Yeah. I wonder I'm looking at David. I mean, David's one of David's things is common knowledge. And I think if you can moralize something by pointing to it, then you create common knowledge. So if there's something like this chemical makes causes cancer, and look, here's a baby

with cancer, that's really vivid. A lot of this stuff that we're talking about, it's hard to get common knowledge because it's so abstract, because somebody could very easily um say it's kind of could make a counterargument, and there's not a lot of sort of common ground to look at yet, as evidence to say, look, we need this. Um, and so I wonder if that's part of it too, that it's just hard to it's hard to have common knowledge yet around these things that would make life better, even if everybody individually agrees on it. It's just that nobody else thinks that everyone else thinks that they would want this too, you know. Absolutely. That makes total sense. And it's just so bloody complicated too, right?

And and so even just thinking about like whatever dietary recommendations or something like that, like the sort of common knowledge, conventional wisdom, the like how do you do that given all the different messages and the different factors that are gonna influence that, right? So it's both like, am I getting the energy I need, the protein that I need, the microbiome that I need, like all all of all of those are people are hearing in from so many different sources. Like there's the, you know, whatever what you learn in school, and then the, you know, whatever things that you learn from books versus advertising versus social networks and social media. And I think it's hard to have a simple message that's right, that then it

could become something that is common knowledge. Yeah. And mean it's a job for cultural evolutionists to tag where ideas come from and then figure out how they got shaped. Yeah. Yeah. And then reshape them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, why do you think that is it just a disciplinary convention or a historical thing that we need to get over that psychology and biology and health are so separated in terms of how they're studied? Um, is it more than that? Because it seems to me like they should be and are so deeply intertwined. Like uh getting sick is is affected by behavior and the types of activities I engage in, the people I hang out with, the decisions I make, that determines my level of of uh

pathogen exposure. And likewise being sick also affects my behavior in countless ways, as you've written about with lassitude. Uh stress, likewise, the things I do can affect my stress levels, which affects my my health. And being stressed also affects my behavior. And so pretty much every aspect of our physical health and our biology has this bi-directional relationship with brain and behavior. And yet we're studying them as if they're separate, disconnected things when they're fundamentally intertwined. Uh so, like why why do you think that the these two things are are just are seen as so separate and so different? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great, great point. Great question. I think that, yeah, I think most people recognize that these things are all intertwined.

I think the the reasons, I guess two things that come to mind as really important. One is sort of a positive and one's a real negative, but they both contribute to that. I think at one level, kind of this reductionism can be useful, right? Like, okay, let's just take a subset of this and let's kind of focus in on it and then have specialization in that, right? And and that certainly, you know, it really comes out of the Western scientific model. And certainly there's been a huge number of successes based on that, right? But I think we've reached the limit of that, right? And I think the the recognition that there is a limit to that is something that's really important, right? So in some ways I see that as like positive things, but then it's kind of got to a point

where it's now starting to have negative implications. So that's one. I would say the other is just kind of the history of like, especially in the US and how sort of science and social science and humanities and sort of different ways of understanding the world have jockeyed for position over the course of the 20th century. And that I think many of the things that were happening in the 1960s and 70s really are still reverberating, right? In terms of like, I see a lot of these different fields and different effects on this. But just one perspective coming from human biology. I've been super frustrated with many of my, you know, human biology colleagues, and I'm obviously not going to name names, but people who have this very old school view of like,

well, you know, the brain evolved, and then then basically like it stopped evolving and then really culture is really everything and there's not really this sort of a I mean I don't have to tell you guys this right and that like it's all about culture and let's let's forget about talking about like selection and like whatever right and then let's just focus in on the body, right? As totally disconnected from the brain or the mind. And that let's just focus in on these physiological systems. And that's like, I mean, I've actually read some like textbook chapters that I got as a reviewer. And I'm like, are you insane? Like this can't, that doesn't work like this, right? And like if you step back and think about it, like this couldn't exist this way.

But yet it's so entrenched in the like anti-sociobiology training that in fragmentation of fields that like we're still haven't put this all back together. And I think part of it is then the way that those fields then developed and they have different opportunities for funding and sort of some of them are science and some of them are not. And that that whole piece of it has just really we it didn't start out in a good place, right? In terms of just this, like, you're in, you know, you're coming into my territory and like whatever. I mean, I really think it's in many ways as simple as some of those conversations that were going on, especially in the sort of 60s and then EO Wilson sociobiology.

Like we're still there in some ways. And there are effects of that that I think people would deny that it's related to that, but it a hundred percent is related to that. So I think r you know, obviously, you know, there is some need to sp to focus in on individual systems and things like that to really understand. But I think stepping back and saying, like, the the way that we move forward on all this stuff is integration of of of and understanding this across these different physiological systems and that like it's not this brain you know body dualism like it's all we're all it's our it is us right and it is one thing and it is in you know it's all connected all the time for every reason and and even those things that

like yeah I don't know I I you know like all of those things that are so seeming obvious in some ways, but yet difficult to understand, make total sense when you think about it all as one, right? Like one example I always give is just kind of like the gut microbiome and how that's connected to mental health. And right, we know that there are these relationships between that. And I think at one level, people are like, How is that even possible that like what your gut microbiome biome composition is and that's affecting your like whether you experience PTSD or anxiety or depression. But at another level, like of course those are related. Like we're these are our bodies. Like our brains are literally made out of food.

Like eat only Twinkies for a month and tell us how how your mental health Abs Absolutely. So it's it kind of like you step back and look at it and it's almost comic, except for that it's painted us into these weird corners where we're doing these things either academically or societally that are not necessarily helpful. Yeah. I also wonder, I mean, I I I completely agree with everything you're saying. And I think it's also alluding to something you said earlier, which is just like there's this institutional selection dynamics too. So like a lot of this stuff, there's this community of people who they can do an intervention by doing something to your body when you go into that building, right?

And that's like medical stuff. Um, or in I think like the the the exception that proves the rule is when you can give a drug for a mental disorder, it's still medical, it's within that umbrella. But when it's a mental thing, that the solution is a structural one, yeah. Either changing the the person's immediate small scale social world or the larger literal like social community, like what cues are they exposed to? That's a whole other ballgame. And I think like that's that's the other spot place of that dualism where it's sort of like what are the things that you can intervene by just like poking on the body and then there's everything else. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And this class that I was talking about, this this how to live a long, healthy, meaningful

life, it's really trying to walk that line of like, what can you do as somebody or to somebody versus the structural. And I feel like, you know, you've either got a literature and sort of guides of like that are all about the individual. Like, here's this information, do this thing, right? Like you got to make this change in your diet or you got to change this sleep. And it's all very individualistic, right? And it is also one where it's often really problematic because you're an individual situated within a context, right? Or the other end of the spectrum is ah, you can't do anything as an individual. We really have to change all these structural factors, which in some ways has got an equal number of problems in the sense that it becomes like, well, I can't do anything.

So, like, are you going to change my society now? And so I I don't know. I I I think a lot about the like, how do we do both? Right. How do we how do we think about individuals having agency and information and making decisions? And then also how do we make these changes in society and how do we have those things integrated? Yeah. We've become an anarchist podcast over the course of the hour and a half. Absolutely. I like this, yes. Yeah, no, I I I very much like that way of thinking because you don't want to go on either end of the extreme where you're focusing too much on individual behavior and you're saying, Hey, you're doing it wrong. Do this differently, and you're putting it all on you.

When in many cases, people are just making the the best out of the situation that they're in and dealing with it. Trying to get through the day. Trying to get through the day, like dealing with the hand that you know the world has dealt them. And you know, it's in some sense you gotta change the hand that they're being dealt if you want to change their behavior. On the other hand, if you say that it's all these larger structural things, like that that leads to a certain kind of helplessness, Like, oh well, what the hell can I do anyway? Why, why even bother? And so we have to, you know, navigate, find some middle ground between um over uh emphasis on the individual and and overemphasis on the larger things that we can't control

and and find some middle ground where we can both do things as an individual and start to think about how we can maybe design society differently. Yeah. I think groups of face to face people is a good that that I think is like a simple middle ground. I think like often those that that that range is typically like in person, face to face, small groups of people. Yeah. Abs absolutely. And and so I think a lot these days, especially with AI and all these like things that make it even more difficult to know what is real. I think a lot about the like sort of re-localizing, right? Rather than the sort of globalizing. And obviously you don't want it all sort of provincial and very focused in internally and

then doesn't know how like what's out there and how to interact. But I think so much argues for changing the scale of this, right? So that that community or neighborhood or whatever that means Actually, is what's most important and also allows you to know who you're interacting with and also have a chance to make these changes that are going to meaning be meaningful to you and families and you know, neighbors and things like that. Yeah. How this is a weird question, but how important is have you come across as just like a mundane thing like transportation? Um, so you know, like you go from like the the bush to the city, and like is that a factor that you guys have looked at where like what's the means of actually just

getting around? Are you interacting with people when you're getting around? The scope of the scale of getting around? Yeah, we've tried to get at that. I mean, I think part of that is like, you know, approaching it from a physical activity standpoint and the that that influence, right? In terms of how much you're physically like walking to where you're going in the day versus driving, or there's that's one. Another is like the distance you go and sort of how that connects to market integration and some ideas, some ways of um operationalizing market integration really get at that, like transport or movement of people, because it's going to be related to exposure to ideas or different languages or whatever it is that we're talking about.

Um, and then yeah, then just trying to get at what the range of variation is that you see because of that movement. Um, and so trying to get at those things, but not not easy to quantify or not easy to make sense of. I mean, in some ways it's easy to quantify, but like what does that actually mean in terms of the exposure? So it's it's definitely important, but exactly how it's important or why it's important, I think, is is one that I don't think we know the details of, but it always is relevant in these models. Yeah. And is it like where I can spend time with my family more or less? Can I do it with my family, interact with them? You know, like yeah, like those are all things that are hard to quantify.

Yeah. Absolutely. But yeah, getting at the social networks and and like what is the extent of that? And I feel like a place like the US is at a extreme in the sense of lots of mobility, lots of movement, but also simultaneously lots of loneliness and isolation. Yeah, for sure. Well, Josh, we're we're coming up on an hour and a half and I wanna make sure that we've covered everything that that you're that you've wanted to cover. Is there anything that we have not talked about that you're particularly excited about and would and would like to talk about? Any new uh uh direction you're pursuing? Um what what what have we missed so far in this conversation? Yeah, no, this is great. And I've been trying to sprinkle those things that I'm most excited about into the

conversation so far. But I think, you know, for me, really the the big thing that really excites me, which hopefully has come through with this, is really integrating, you know, and really integrating across anthropology and to psychology and biology and really thinking about like just the ways that we take these sort of methodological differences or theoretical differences and really recognize that we're often looking at the same thing, and that we each have ways to contribute to that. And so I think for me, like where that's most coming out is like the market integration research and really thinking about ways to do this that really get at all the ways that environments, both social and physical and biological environments, change

with these larger economic processes. So I'm I'm just super excited that we're now as a field getting to a place where we can compare across places and use similar approaches and really integrate across these different domains. So anyway, those are the things that I'm most excited about these days. Yeah. Is there any s resource like so if a student is listening, somebody's listening and you mentioned you're gonna you're you might be writing a book and it sounds like there are maybe there's things already that do exist. If somebody's interested, are there books or papers or conferences or journals where people can look to find this integration of these it sounds like roughly three or four different things.

I feel like there are places that that's starting to happen. I wouldn't say it's universally in all of these, but I feel like some of the the the I'm I'm always excited about the Human Biology Association meetings. And now even more excited as we're starting to integrate more of the evolutionary anthropologists who typically used to meet with the AAA meetings, are now starting to meet with the human biologists. And it's a cool opportunity because all of a sudden you've got very different people in terms of their training and how they approach their research now in the same space who are talking about the same issues. And I think the really lovely thing about those meetings is the scale of it isn't too

large, right? I mean, I think that some things like the AAA meetings where you have 4,000 or 5,000 or whatever it is, number of people are really hard to do those kinds of have those conversations and do that integrative work. But I think at the level of two or three hundred people at a meeting, like it's actually very doable to start to have those integrate, those conversations with other people who see the world and approach the world and research in different ways. So I'm I'm very excited about the potential for the human biology meetings. I also think that Evolution Medicine and Public Health, that journal is kind of a cool, um, cool journal in terms of one that's bringing together people in different ways, right?

It's people kind of across the spectrum of anthropology. But then evolutionary medicine has had such interesting contributions, right? Coming from different places. And so some of it is the anthropologists and human biologists, but in other places it's more like the evolutionary psychiatrists. And so they're sort of coming into it with a very different perspective. So I'm liking how that journal and the and the conference that goes with that are grow, you know, now reaching a a really cool time that they um, you know, that that that it really is starting to bring together those different perspectives in the way that I think a lot of us was hoping that it would. It really is being realized. That's fantastic.

And uh the Schwar project itself, does it have a website or it does, yeah. I think it's SchwarProject.org. I could be totally wrong with that. We can put it in the we put it in the show notes, yeah. But I but I will put a plug in. We just had a special issue of American Journal of Human Biology that was published. It actually the full thing came together about two months ago. And the last paper in that was my paper that I led, which was uh basically like a how we navigate political, you know, practical and ethical challenges of doing this long-term work. And so it was one that actually took about two years to write. There's like 10 of us as co-authors on that. But a lot of it was me and Larry Sugiyama sort of talking about like the whole like all

these challenges, but also situating it in sort of the history of it. So some of the conversation that we had earlier today about the history of that project is all within that article. And it's open access, it's in uh the latest, one of the latest issues of American Journal of Human Biology. But there's 10 other Schwar articles in that special issue. So anybody who's interested in the Schwar, right, definitely check out that special issue. Definitely check out the website. Awesome. That's fantastic. Uh Josh, uh, do you only do difficult things? Uh from this impression or from this conversation, I get the impression that you're not afraid to tackle very hard things like you're even talking about the political and ethical

things. Uh uh, do you have a um a guilty pleasure that's uh that's something? Yeah, I don't know. I had some some sort of psychopathology, I think is the way I'm department head too, right? You seem like you're having a great time tackling like incredibly difficult huge projects with huge uh important implications. It's a it's a it's a virtue. But yeah, it's uh yeah. Maybe I think the other piece is just having done this for a long time and and you know, Larry and I working on this and sort of running, keeping this project going. We've you know, we often see other people who are starting out projects and they'll ask us, you know, about you know what we're doing or how we've made decisions. And it became really clear that many of the most of these projects kind of exist in

isolation. And you see what you see in a paper or here in a conference presentation, excuse me, but you don't see sort of what's under the hood of the project. And so I sort of, I guess maybe I'm at that annoying career stage or age where I'm just like, you know, these are the things that we should be writing about these. So like these sort of ethics of the community work. I've also got another paper that I'm working on right now with some other colleagues that's all on data sharing and sort of balancing that, like, yeah, we should from a scientific standpoint share data. But we should also really be thinking about what does that mean for certain communities, especially indigenous communities, and sort of the commodification of data?

And so, how do we balance those and how do we deal with those tensions? And so I don't know, some of it I think just comes from like wanting to share wisdom, such as it is, from the kind of work that we're doing and the and the different challenges that that pop up. And I think oftentimes when we'll say something about these different projects, people are like, oh wow, I didn't think about that. And so I think that's like, okay, that's clearly an indication that we need to do these kinds of things. Um yeah. So I don't know. Yeah, wanting wanting to tackle challenging problems because I think that also leads to some of the biggest successes. But then also just wanting to share kind of the the the dark underside or whatever of

like how this stuff actually happens and how you make it work on the ground. Yeah. Cool. As David says, thank you for your service. To all of our anthropology, uh everybody who's doing the hard, uh, not just in the lab stuff. Yeah. We're all a little crazy. I think that's part of it. All right. Well, on that note, thank you so much, Josh. This was a really fun conversation. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that wisdom with us. This is great. Yeah. This is great. I really enjoyed it as well. All right. Well, you're still listening. We did another episode of Evolutionary Psychology the podcast, which means it is time for us to tell you to support us. Great. You just did it. And you told everyone they're still here.

Uh great. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Yep. Uh kind review, Patreon, social media, you know the you know the rest. Yeah. I yeah, good. Punked period. All right. All right. See you guys next week. Yeah. Bye. See ya.