WEBVTT - The Evolutionary Tug-of-War: Today’s World, Yesterday’s Psychological Software | Bill von Hippel - 898 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:07.480 She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood. 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.479 I'm tiff. This is Role with the Punches and we're 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:17.119 turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.599 to court, and don't. My friends at test Art Family 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:25.160 Lawyers know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution. 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.240 Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:32.960 all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples, 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:37.280 custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.680 and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.440 reach out to Mark and the team at www dot 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:54.040 test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Bill von Hippel, Welcome 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:55.240 to Roll with the Punches. 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:57.160 Thanks great to be here. 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.600 Tell you what I'm pum. I'm pumped for this conversation. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.720 Where have you been my whole life? 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:07.800 I've been just getting older. 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.240 I feel like when I landed upon the stuff you 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:16.360 do and started looking at everything that you talk about 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.520 and your research, and I'm like, these are the questions 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.440 that fascinate me. And I didn't know there was someone 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:28.280 out there giving the answers to this stuff trying. I'm 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.480 down for it. Do you want to explain to my 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:32.679 listeners what it is you do? 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.279 Sure. So, I'm an evolutionary psychologist, and what that means 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:42.080 is that I'm particularly interested in how our attitudes, not 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.000 just our bodies, but our mind has been shaped over 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.440 evolutionary time. And my particular interest is the last six 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.400 million years. So that's the time span since we separated 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.640 from our chimpanzee cousins, and so I'm particularly interested in 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.080 what happened during that time period to the best of 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.680 our knowledge, and how the things that happen and let 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:02.440 our psychology be different from theirs. 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.680 How did your interest land in this space in the 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:08.320 first place. 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.280 That's a great question. So when I started grad school, 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.480 this is back in the nineteen eighties mid eighties, I 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:17.519 had no idea that there was even such a field. 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.919 Like I'd never heard of evolutionary psychology. Everybody knows evolutionary biology. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.960 You know how our body gets shaped and whether we're 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:27.920 big or strong, have hands or hooves, you know, whatever. 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.720 But I didn't know that psychology was shaped the same way. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.520 I've never thought about it, and I was I was 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:37.880 starting grad school, and we always had this picnic at 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:39.520 the beginning of the year. This is at the University 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.840 of Michigan, and so the beginning of the year, it's 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:43.639 still summer, and it's still nice, and there's this big 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:47.160 picnic and all the grad students come and all the faculty, 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.760 all the academics come, and we had this new professor 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:51.880 who had just joined us. He had been a professor 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:53.799 at Harvard, but he was switching over to be a 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.320 Michigan and I was a brand new Chrestien. So he 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.079 and I were both arriving at the same time. But 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.079 of course he's eminent and I'm and nobody, And I 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:03.520 asked him, what do you do when he starts telling me, 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.640 and he's an evolutionary psychologist. His name is David Buss, 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.000 by the way. He's now at Denier, City of Texas. 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.519 Super lovely guy, super productive and smart, and he's telling 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.000 me what he does. And I'm like, that's wild, that's 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.640 totally cool. I've never heard of such thing. And so 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:19.280 they said, well, look, you're welcome to work for me. 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:21.920 And I said, that's a great idea. Let's put it 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.000 on hold for a decade or two because it doesn't 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:27.360 sound very politically correct. And my colleagues are all these 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:29.680 squishy lefties, which I'm a little bit of a squishy 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.680 left too, but they don't like that stuff, and so 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.120 it's not going to It wouldn't be a good career 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:36.839 move for me. I'd rather wait tell him a little 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:37.680 farther down the pike. 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.440 Oh, how interesting? And so where were you? Where did 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.280 you think you were headed? Where did you want to 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:44.720 dive in? 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.320 Well, but before I started doing that, and what I 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:49.840 actually did do for the first so, I've been in 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.040 the field for about little over thirty about thirty five 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.080 years almost, And so for the verse twenty, all I 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:59.120 did was try to understand social psychology, so attitudes and 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:01.400 memory and judge in decision making, things like that that 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.840 are sort of the basic, but not worrying about where 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.360 it all came from, just the way we are right now. 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.440 And then I started. Then I was a professor, and 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:11.240 so I felt like, all right, it won't do any 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:12.640 harm that I can start. I can come out of 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.280 the closet, so to speak. And so I did, and 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:17.880 I started asking the same questions, but well, where did 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:20.360 it come from? Why is it that way? And when 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.240 we ask why, what does it help us understand? It 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:22.960 might be different? 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:27.560 I know there was a period of time that only 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:30.120 got I don't even know when I started asking the questions, 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.080 but I know, especially since starting this show we're on 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:36.360 almost nine hundred episodes now, wow, And there was just 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:41.280 this really poignant time where everything just led me to Okay, 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.479 but what what was the purpose of that? There must 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.400 be because everything, because I started to learn that everything 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:48.120 had a purpose. 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:52.240 So well, there's random garbage, but mostly I agree with 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.360 you completely that if it's important, it has a purpose. 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.039 If it's like trivial, do you prefer, you know, blue 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:01.719 cars or a green car? You know, there's probowly no 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.920 purpose to that for these kind of random little things. 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:06.320 But the big things in life have a purpose. And 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.000 then the questions what's safe to that purpose? 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:08.839 Mmm? 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:11.880 I work with a lot of people I do. One 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.480 of my last workshop I did last year was it's 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.200 called why the Fuck Are we Stuck? Or what the 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:18.919 Fuck Am I stuck? James? 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:19.800 That's a good title. 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:24.400 The idea that we we end up stuck and there's 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.839 so many things that influence our behaviors, in our minds 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:31.000 and our thinking, and we and we My first lesson 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:35.440 in the University of tiff was you are a great storyteller, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.120 and you need to start learning when you're telling stories 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.680 and when those stories might be reality or just a 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:42.480 comfortable yeah. 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.719 And that's that's way harder than it seems like. There's 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:47.719 this wonderful research. I don't know if you've ever heard 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:51.760 of Matekauzanaga, but he's this early split brain researcher where 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.479 he would do research on people who had such bad 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.520 epilepsy then it was threatening to kill them, and so 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.280 in order to control it with the surgeons would do 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.359 is literally your brain in half, because your two lobes 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:05.479 are basically independent things, but they talk to each other 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.880 on this dense network of fibers called the corpus colosum. 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.120 And so what Gazanaga does is he cuts people's corpus. Well, 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:13.919 he doesn't do it. He works with people with the 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.719 surgeon has cut their corpus closum right through, and so 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:18.560 now they've got two sides of the brain that can't 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.159 even talk to each other. Now, the wild thing about 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.480 that is that, you know, if you've ever had internal 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.839 conflict where you can't decide if you want to do something, 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:29.960 imagine what that conflict's like like if there's actually two 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.880 of you inside there. And so for example, if you 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.040 wanted to have a donut, but you kind of think 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:37.520 you shouldn't, right, maybe you're training or watching your diet 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.160 or whatever. You might start to reach for it and 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:42.080 you say, oh, if you really shouldn't meet that now, 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:43.680 and you stop, and he say, but I'm kind of 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:45.960 like getting you start and with these guys, but all 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.400 that happens inside you, you know, back and forth in there. 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.000 What these guys do after their surgery is one hand 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:52.560 will reach for the doughnut, the other hand will reach 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.160 out and grab it. And now the fight takes place 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.359 kind of in a real time. And then what's so 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.480 interesting is that over time that stops, like one hand 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.280 starts to reach, the other hand starts to stop it, 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:04.360 and they can see the conflict and so then they 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.080 just kind of work it out by deciding. Right. But 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:11.640 here's the key. So now, the way your brain works 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.600 is really weird. It crosses, and so like my left 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.480 hemisphere actually goes to my right eyeball and my right 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:21.720 hemisphere goes to my left eyeball. So with that annoying 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.200 feature aside, what you can do when somebody has their 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:27.720 brain sliced in half is you can present different images 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.160 to both sides of their brain. Now, we know that 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.920 only one half of your brain can talk. That's where 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.680 language sits. That We don't feel that because it just 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.000 goes back and forth. But if your brain's cut half, 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.680 you feel that. And so what they what gazannagain his 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:43.800 colleagues would do is he'd show them these photographs and 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.000 in one picture they'd see a snowy scene. And then 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:49.600 he'd say, Okay, what are you looking at? And he'd 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.040 give them a bunch of options. What's the closest to 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.040 the snowy scene? And they'd pointed a shovel. Now he'd ask, 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.080 the side of the brain that's pointing at the shovel 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.080 is the side they can't talk. So now I'd say 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.240 to them, why are you pointing the shovel? Now, the 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:03.280 tricky thing is that the side the brand that can 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.280 talk is looking at a chicken coop. And so you'd 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:08.760 think it will go I don't know, because it doesn't 0:08:08.760 --> 0:08:10.840 though right, It has no idea. But instead of what 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:12.880 it does immediately, it goes, oh, well, chickens make a 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.160 lot of poop. And so I thought the shovel was 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.120 the closest match to the chicken poop because they got 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.840 to shovel it out. It's just making it up. But 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:21.640 the amazing thing is they have no idea. They're making 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:24.440 it up. They're telling stories just like you're saying, and 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.400 they're doing it in within seconds, and they have no 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:30.560 idea because the brain can't talk to itself. But what 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.600 Gazannager pointed out is we probably do that all the time. 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:35.719 He just set up this really exotic situation where he 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.640 could catch you at it. But the rest of us 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.160 are doing that all the time. Right. 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:45.840 I always talk about the realization in boxing, and it 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.840 could very well. You might tell me right now that 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:52.640 it's still a story i'm telling. In fact, I'm almost convincedies. 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.440 But I realized when I stepped into the boxing ring 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.120 and I started sport of boxing. I always talk about 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:03.240 this moment in time where I realized I've been telling 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.800 stories and I didn't know myself so and the boxing 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.360 ring became this place or as close to it as 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:14.920 I've ever felt where that can't happen because whatever I 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.800 am innately hardwired for will play out before my conscious 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:23.560 mind can think, choose and tell stories. Yeah. Great, thank 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:27.239 God for that. Otherwise you've just deconstructed my entire philosophy. 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:28.840 For no, I don't want to do that, and I 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.559 agree with you. It's you know, we once now when 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:33.400 you're when you don't know what you're doing, if you're 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:35.079 a novice and it's your first day in the ring, 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.520 it doesn't work that way. But once you actually know 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.600 what you're doing, once you become expert, all the decision 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.280 making processes that usually take place up here shift back 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:48.080 into our premotor motor cortext back here, and you don't 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:50.199 you don't think anymore in the way that you think 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.880 about should I have a burger tomato? Or should I 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.480 have pizza? You know what movie do I want to see? 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.240 That kind of thinking doesn't really take place anymore once 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.360 you're physically an expert in the boxing ring or a 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.360 golfer or anything you want, right, it's all happening in 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.840 a different part of your brain, and so the storytelling 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.640 has just gone, especially something like boxing, where you know, 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:13.200 I could tell you how cool I am on a 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.400 golf course, and I can tell you all about how 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:17.520 I usually play better than today, but you haven't punched 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.719 my face, and there's no there's no the rubber. It 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:21.720 never meets the road right in quite the same way 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:22.920 that it does in a boxing ring. 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.560 Yeah, yeah, Oh I love that talk. Can you talk 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.440 about I guess there's a few pillars of what I'm 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:36.760 fascinated by, but that resilience, courage, and fear underpin and 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:40.480 kind of became an obsession for me. And I'll give 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.400 you context around the idea of resilience. I remember a 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.240 point in time where I was like, everyone's putting resilience 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:50.000 on this pedestal. But I think that a lot of 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.160 what is being framed as resilience is dissociation. Because when 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:56.360 I stepped in the boxing ring and was being in 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:03.080 inverted verted commas courageous, I was actually avoiding vulnerability. I 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.640 was dissociating. So I was doing what scared others people, 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.679 and I was framing that is my own courage And 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:11.560 that was a story that I was telling until I 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.560 realized it was a story I was telling so resilient. 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:18.000 It's the funny thing because it's super hard to differentiate 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:22.000 resilience from dissociation, from just steparating yourself, or even from 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:29.200 vulnerability but refusing to admit it. And so as for example, 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.400 one of my close colleagues, works with the police and 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.200 ambulance drivers, to people who are first responders who come 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:40.840 upon a scene where somebody's got multiple gunshot wounds or 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:44.120 there's drowned children, and how horrible things happen, right, And 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:47.240 if you ask, you know, lots of people think they 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:48.920 want to do that job in they last forty five 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.560 minutes and they go the first job, this is horrible. 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:53.520 I can't do it, but lots of people just keep 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:56.680 doing it. And the tricky question, though, is are you 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.600 doing it but you really are ptsding out the wazoo, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.560 like you are really suffering, but you do it anyway? 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:05.720 Or are you just fine? Are you dissociating, are you 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:09.960 just separating yourself and you compartmentalize that stuff, or have 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:13.120 you found a way to really allow what's happening to 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.920 watch over you but to be strong and robust to 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.640 it anyway? And I think when we think about resilience, 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.120 it's that last thing I know for what was happening. 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.440 It's not nice, but I can handle it. That's what 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:27.840 I think people mean when they say resilience. They don't 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.520 mean I force myself not to think about it, and 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.640 I somehow become a different person, and they don't mean 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.320 I can't sleep at night, but I keep doing my 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:41.280 job right. And so the kind of resilience where you 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:44.160 don't suffer from it and you're able to keep doing it. 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.040 What the data suggest is that where that comes from. 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:49.800 First of all, it's a bit of luck, like if 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.160 you've got genes that are resilient, you've got a better 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.760 shot at getting there right. But where it also comes 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.480 from is not having too much bad things happen to you, 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.040 because especially if you're really young, when they happened, it 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:05.320 disrupts what we call your HPA axis, your hypodermic pituitary 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.720 adrenal axis in your brain, and you you no longer 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.880 get a proper fight or flight response. So if you're 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:15.959 overwhelmed as a child, that doesn't happen anymore. On the 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.839 other hand, if you live this super lithful existence and 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:23.400 you've lived life in this little silver spoon, the little 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:25.840 gold cage for nothing bad's ever happened to you, you 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.680 also never developed the skills, and so there seems to 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.160 be this happy middle ground. The resilience comes from this 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:34.600 place where you get a little bit of bad things 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:36.600 happening to you and not at such a furious pace 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:38.480 that you can't deal with it, and then you just 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:40.480 slowly learn to handle it. 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.800 I worked with the ambulance Victoria when we went into 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:50.840 lockdown in Melbourne online with them, and was at the 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:54.880 same time as I studied epigenetics through a health platform 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:58.520 here PhDa sixty and the same time that I started 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:00.960 the podcast, I was having come a SETAs I was 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:04.760 working through some of my own story of childhood trauma 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.200 and piecing that together and starting to connect dots. And 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:10.800 one of the questions that came up with that reminded 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:15.240 me of was so learning some of these personality traits 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:19.200 from biological sense through the epigenetic platform of pH three sixty. 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:25.320 And I remember thinking, I realized this sense of comfort 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:29.200 slash familiarity that I felt in the boxing ring, which 0:14:29.440 --> 0:14:34.360 eventually we have to go that's weird, that's not typical TIF, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:37.240 So what's the deal with that? That's a funny place 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:42.400 to feel at home and familiar? And then and I went, 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.080 is it a specific personality type or trait that is 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:51.560 going into these roles as first responders? We're also having 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.720 a lot of mental health conversations. Is there a biological 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:02.360 trait personality trait that gets people susceptible to mental health 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:07.960 struggles or is there a relationship with that a little 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.920 bit like my relationship with the boxing ring, where I 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.480 was drawn into a space maybe because of experiences that 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.640 it happened to me and a feeling of unconscious safety 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:19.480 or familiarity. 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:22.800 Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we don't know 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.400 what brings people into those fields. Often it's just a 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:30.880 strong desire to help. Often people don't know themselves very well. 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:33.400 They think, oh, I'd love to be a doctor, and 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.600 then the first time they see blood and gore everywhere, 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:37.160 they pass out and they go, oh, de friends that 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:39.760 I wouldn't love to be a doctor. You know, I'd 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:41.640 love to buy I remember thinking, do you know the 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.520 martial art? I think it's called kendo or ken po. 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.720 I can't remember anymore where you use these swords and 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.680 you yeah, I thought, God, that looks like so much fun, 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:52.480 and so I went, I signed up for it to 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:54.480 give it a try, and you were Look, you're like 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:57.200 a hockey goalie, ice hockey goalie. You're covered in pads 0:15:57.440 --> 0:15:58.960 except for the very top of your head. It's just 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.240 like a little cap on it. And the whole goals 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:02.280 to hit you on the top of the head with 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:04.440 the stick as our as you can. And I lasted 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:06.040 one class. I was like, oh my god, that is 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.520 the most horrible experience and this terrible headache. Right, And 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.080 so that you can be drawn to things because you 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:14.480 don't know what is involved, and so you think this 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.080 is going to be fun, but it turns out it 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:19.040 doesn't suit you at all. And I suspect a lot 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:21.120 of the people who go into those kinds of fields, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.040 boxing or first responding or anything any of those types 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:27.560 of things where they're not for everybody. A lot of 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:29.680 the people are making a mistake. They don't know themselves, 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.960 so they don't know what they're getting themselves into. But 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:33.760 a lot of people know exactly what they get themselves 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:35.600 into and they do it really well, and they are 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:39.520 super important, especially first responders. You need someone in ambulances, 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:41.800 you need police officers going to the crime scenes, right, 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:46.080 And so the question is is what enables that? And 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:48.560 we don't know. I mean, that's why this colleague mind 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.840 is working on this problem. But what I suspect is 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.440 it's going to be people who are just the kind 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.040 of right middle ground amount of trauma and are genetically 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.520 just pretty robust to that and maybe had the good 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.560 luck that their childhood taught them it's okay. Every time 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:04.639 they were challenged, they were equal to the challenge. You 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.520 didn't overwhelm them, and they slowly built up the skills 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:11.800 rather than having it all come crashing down on them. 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.240 What year did you write your book about. 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.639 The Social Paradox, the one that just happened? Yeah, So 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.800 my early book, The Social Leap, came out in twenty eighteen, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.440 and then I just finished The Social Paradox. So let's see, 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.800 I finished writing it in early twenty twenty four, and 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.159 then it probably I was done by June or so, 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:36.200 and then it came out about a month ago now. 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:42.119 And what were what were the questions in that that 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:46.359 you came upon after finishing the other book, Like what 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:47.879 was the new angle? 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.399 Yeah? What drove it? Yeah? So I was visiting this 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.600 friend of mine in New York City and he I've 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.919 known him since her little kids, and you know, he 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:00.399 was particularly well to do as a child, but fine, 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:03.560 and then he made a gazillion dollars, like crazy rich, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.960 and so he invited me over to dinner at his house. 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:09.560 He invited me over to dinner at his house in 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:11.639 New York, and I was just super excited to see it, 0:18:11.640 --> 0:18:13.920 because like, he's so wealthy. I've never seen what homes 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:16.880 look like by people to make that much money. And 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.080 so I go visit him and his life is over 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:20.760 the top. I mean, you've never seen such a fancy 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.840 apartment in your life, and you know, the maid's off 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:25.840 there cleaning, and the cook is in there making dinner 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:27.520 and asking us what we want and stuff like that. 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:29.400 And so I turned him and I'm like, Steve Man, 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:31.760 your life is over the top. And he goes, you know, 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.480 it seems that way, but it's I'm not any happier, 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.919 It's not really any better, And I'm like why, and 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.800 he's just like listing all these problems he have. You know, Well, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.840 we can't decide which where to go on holiday. My 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:44.359 wife wants to do this fancy trip. I wanted to 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.399 do that fancy trip, and we're arguing about it. My 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.159 daughter's trying to get into this fancy kindergarten and hasn't 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.280 doesn't know what to get accepted. The cook and the 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:53.359 maid don't get along, and is this constant sous to 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:55.399 come I was just like, I look at it, like, 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.440 are you not saving? Like I felt sort of superior 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.520 to him in that moment. How could you not appreciate 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.080 that the amazing life you have, right? And I just 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:07.400 felt like I was done at his inability to appreciate 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.920 the amazing things that he had. So then about a 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.600 year or so later, I'm reading Frank Marlow's amazing book 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.760 on the Hods of hunter gatherers who are hunt gathers 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.000 live in Tanzania, and they still live very traditional lifestyle, 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.560 and they live right where humanity originated, and so Homo 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.080 sapiens started there. And so they're really an interesting group 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.719 because it's possible that they're living the lifestyle that our 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.720 ancestors lived when we first started out right. Nobody knows, 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:34.680 but we think there's a good chance because it's the 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:40.360 same environment, same pressures, etc. And so I'm reading about 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.440 these people and I'm realizing, you know, compared to them, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.840 I'm a multi millionaire. Two. They bury forty percent of 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:49.240 their kids before they ever reach adulthood. They don't have 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:51.800 a single thing set aside for tomorrow. They own almost 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:53.920 no possessions because everything they own they have to put 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:55.680