Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie, I
Speaker 1: want to kick off the podcast by just giving a
Speaker 1: shout out to our male all of our male listeners
Speaker 1: out there, because according to some studies that we've been
Speaker 1: reading today, uh, they might not be around forever. In fact,
Speaker 1: the males as we know it may become extinct, what
Speaker 1: like like woolly mammoth extinct, like wooly mammoth extinct. Like
Speaker 1: it'll just be just be ladies out there. Uh And
Speaker 1: and I guess it just I feel kind of I'm
Speaker 1: kind of fearful for any podcast. It's not stuff your
Speaker 1: mom didn't tell you whoa Um, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that you're a brave man to introduce
Speaker 1: such a subject. I mean, this is this is gonna listen.
Speaker 1: I think a really emotional response. Well not not really,
Speaker 1: because if you're twoing in and you're expecting me to
Speaker 1: like jump to the defense of males. As we discussed
Speaker 1: the possibility of an all female planet and the extinction
Speaker 1: of of the masculine gender, I'm I'm not gonna defend
Speaker 1: guys too much because I I tend to and there's
Speaker 1: a mistake in this too to rely too heavily on this.
Speaker 1: But I tend to attribute attribute a lot of the
Speaker 1: horrors of the world too to masculine dominance in the
Speaker 1: culture and h and you know, lay a lot of
Speaker 1: the crimes of humanity at the feet of the patriarchy. Wow,
Speaker 1: I christen you, Robert b linhearted lamb uh. So let's
Speaker 1: let's get into that a little bit more. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if the uh, if men aren't going to be around,
Speaker 1: what's going on? What would make them become extinct? To
Speaker 1: to get to that point, we really need to discuss
Speaker 1: what men are like. There's a tendency to sort of
Speaker 1: like if you if you look at like you know,
Speaker 1: see biblical accounts and and all, there's society of like, oh,
Speaker 1: God created a I and then he created a woman.
Speaker 1: But it kind of goes back like we were talking
Speaker 1: about in a previous podcast about male nipples. The reason
Speaker 1: males have nipples is because females have nipples and uh,
Speaker 1: and and the nipples are it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: car that that you get in a car and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: there's just an empty spot where the cigarette lighter goes. Well,
Speaker 1: the other cars have the cigarette lighter because that's the
Speaker 1: main model. Like the female is the main model, and
Speaker 1: the male gender is just this, uh, this offshoot that's
Speaker 1: necessary for procreation. Well so the afterthought, Wow, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So to get there, I think we need to look
Speaker 1: at chromosomes. Yeah, the chromosomes are key like ladies X
Speaker 1: X men X Y. Okay, and so that why isn't
Speaker 1: that the whole story about the Y being this imperfect
Speaker 1: version of the X isn't too far off? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: my understanding of it. Okay, So we all know that
Speaker 1: ourselves contain twenty three pairs of chromosomes, and twenty two
Speaker 1: of those pairs are man matched pairs, and those are
Speaker 1: shared by men and women. But the twenty three is different.
Speaker 1: And I there's the rub, right, because in women, the
Speaker 1: twenty three pair is made up of two chromosomes, and
Speaker 1: men it's made up of an X chromosome and a
Speaker 1: Y chromosome. Yeah, and it's that Y chromosome that determines
Speaker 1: maleness and humans, and it holds genes necessary for forming
Speaker 1: testies and making sperm. So the fact that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a matching pair poses a bit of a problem
Speaker 1: for the Y chromosomes because all the other chromosomes they
Speaker 1: come in two copies, and every time a cell divides,
Speaker 1: mistakes and genes can creep in and so impaired chromosomes.
Speaker 1: That means that if there's a mistake, you can go
Speaker 1: back and a cell can always get the correct gene
Speaker 1: sequence from the other chromosome. But that is not the
Speaker 1: same situation for the Y. Yeah, there's been some some
Speaker 1: really interesting studies. Uh. The one that I was looking
Speaker 1: at was from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Speaker 1: and it's two thousand nine study. And again you need
Speaker 1: a Y chromosome to the mail and they the study
Speaker 1: found it three hundred million years ago the Y chromosome
Speaker 1: had genes on it. Now we're down to about forty five.
Speaker 1: And at the rate we're going, we're going to run
Speaker 1: out of genes on the Y chromosome in about five
Speaker 1: million years according to this particular study. Now, I think
Speaker 1: you found an even uh shorter estimate, didn't you. Um.
Speaker 1: The estimate that I looked at was a thousand years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reason though, is because the mistakes have crept
Speaker 1: into the Y chromosome um and every time a gene
Speaker 1: on the chromosome goes bad, it basically disappears. So that's
Speaker 1: why it's gotten down so low. So scientists theorized that
Speaker 1: the X and Y chromosome did start out with the
Speaker 1: same amount of genes, but you're seeing in the Y
Speaker 1: chromosome quite a depletion, okay, and entered geneticist Brian Sykes,
Speaker 1: who is introducing this sort of lightning rod idea that
Speaker 1: the chromosome, the Y chromosome will become extinct in a
Speaker 1: d twenty five thousand years because of its lack of
Speaker 1: ability to recombine with other chromosomes and repair itself. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what people have found. The researchers
Speaker 1: have found that over a millennia, the Y chromosome has
Speaker 1: lost most of its genes, which is really stunning and
Speaker 1: it's not the sort of information they were actively looking for.
Speaker 1: Is just as they were studying, they went, WHOA, what's
Speaker 1: going on here with with the Y chromosome. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: worth mentioning that that there's a gene called the s
Speaker 1: R Y and uh, this is important because it switches
Speaker 1: on the development of testes and pumps out male hormones
Speaker 1: that determines maleness or masculinity. Yeah, and when you look
Speaker 1: at Brian Sykes, he's basically saying that regardless, regardless of
Speaker 1: that function men as you had had already pointed out
Speaker 1: to our genetically modified women, so flaws are never repaired
Speaker 1: and if that goes on for generation after generation, Psykes argues,
Speaker 1: eventually there are no functioning Y chromosomes left and those
Speaker 1: I mean huge implications for the future of the world,
Speaker 1: Like we could basically potentially go the way of the vole.
Speaker 1: You could. Yeah, apparently the vole, which is kind of
Speaker 1: like a mole, except it begins with a V. Right,
Speaker 1: a rodent. Yeah, this is scientific explanation. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a rodent typically found in Eastern Europe, Europe, and then
Speaker 1: they're also a country rats in Japan that have this
Speaker 1: as well. They have no Y chromosome and no s
Speaker 1: R Y gene. So how are they getting by? Okay,
Speaker 1: So what they're doing is because they have seemed to
Speaker 1: have lost their Y chromosome somewhere down the line, they
Speaker 1: have genetic material that confers maleness and has transferred itself
Speaker 1: to another chromosome, So it's jumping chromosomes and applying that
Speaker 1: chromosome on there. But if I'm under if I'm interestaining
Speaker 1: this right, it's only going to produce two X chromosomes.
Speaker 1: It's not actually going to reproduce another Y. So it's adapted,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily carrying on its male nous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: According to study I was looking at, they said that
Speaker 1: there are several candidate genes that could potentially um uh
Speaker 1: you know, jump in and take over from the s
Speaker 1: r Y to uh you know again to switch on
Speaker 1: the development of tests and pump out male hormones. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's even possible that two or more different sex
Speaker 1: determination systems based on different genes could pop up in
Speaker 1: different populations, which I think which I think is and
Speaker 1: this is in the human population. Um so you could
Speaker 1: conceivably have have this situation where you have different in
Speaker 1: a way different species sort of splitting off. Okay, so
Speaker 1: be like divergent paths. Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a very
Speaker 1: interesting problem without the s r Y, Like one group
Speaker 1: of people like suddenly their systems are using this gene
Speaker 1: to determine sex, but then this other group has this
Speaker 1: other method like there there are other sex determining tools
Speaker 1: in the toolbox, and it's kind of we're kind of
Speaker 1: unsure what nature might go with for different groups. And
Speaker 1: then of course these groups would not necessarily be compatible
Speaker 1: with one and another. That's what the studies talking about.
Speaker 1: So I'm also thinking about David Page of m I. T. S.
Speaker 1: Whitehead Institute, who disagrees that the Y chromosome actually become
Speaker 1: extinct because he says that in his research that the
Speaker 1: Y chromosome has been secretly creating backup copies of itself
Speaker 1: and its most important genes, not all of them. Cocy
Speaker 1: theory exactly, Um, but I think it's important to know
Speaker 1: it's not all of the genes, just the most important ones, uh.
Speaker 1: And these are stored in the DNA as mirror images
Speaker 1: or palindromes. Palindrome is you might remember from everyone from
Speaker 1: English class. That's a word that's also a word that
Speaker 1: has felt the same way backwards as farward, like race,
Speaker 1: car or none or two yes my favorite. Um. So
Speaker 1: basically Page is saying that you know, looking at that logic,
Speaker 1: they're not it's not necessarily going to go stink. That's
Speaker 1: how it's actually been repairing itself um and and still
Speaker 1: been in circulation, so to speak. And so it kind
Speaker 1: of brings me to a natural question though, if if
Speaker 1: men in the Y chromosome more specifically, are imperfect the
Speaker 1: imperfect expression of X are or they needed biologically anymore,
Speaker 1: especially given our technological advances. Well, it's interesting when you
Speaker 1: look at you look at at examples in nature. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of examples of a sexual reproduction promogenesis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, there are also plenty of examples that I
Speaker 1: find rather interesting of situations where the male is just
Speaker 1: not necessary in the long run. There's another rodent called
Speaker 1: the brown and techinnus, also known as mac Lee's marsupial mouse.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's not maybe it's not a rodent, maybe
Speaker 1: it's marsupial. But any rate, this is a particular species.
Speaker 1: The male mates like crazy for like twelve hours at
Speaker 1: a time. I believe this was featured on Life or
Speaker 1: Planet Earth, one of those two programs. Just mates like crazy,
Speaker 1: mate mate mate, mate, mate, mate mate, then day night,
Speaker 1: and then eventually just humps himself to death, just dies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the benefit here is, at this point, he's he's
Speaker 1: done his part. He's uh, he's Uh, he's facilitated, uh,
Speaker 1: sexual reproduction. That's so cold. He's fulfilled his biological and
Speaker 1: now he's dead. And by being dead, that's one less
Speaker 1: mouth to feed, right, because otherwise he would just be
Speaker 1: setting around, you know, eating food, watching TV until then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know how how men are and uh, and this
Speaker 1: way he's he has at least the common courtesy to
Speaker 1: die afterwards. And you see this, you know, in in
Speaker 1: insects as well in another species, where the male, having
Speaker 1: performed his role, uh, just kicks the buck bucket or
Speaker 1: the female devours his head. Yes, yeah, I do recall
Speaker 1: hearing about that praying man. Yes, well, you also have
Speaker 1: virgin births, which happened um in boa constructs for instance,
Speaker 1: and I happened actually pretty recently, were a bow constructor
Speaker 1: fused a copy of herself, of her of her eggs.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, she took her eggs and she fused a
Speaker 1: copy of her genetic material, which stimulated embryonic development. And
Speaker 1: the reason they know that that happened because she was
Speaker 1: housed with males, is that she had this caramel colored
Speaker 1: broad of little bow constrictors, which wasn't a genetic trade
Speaker 1: of any of the males and you know this, it
Speaker 1: happens every once in a while. Wow. So they can
Speaker 1: get by, Yeah, they can get by. They can bring
Speaker 1: home the bacon fried up in a pan. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of exams, other examples they don't have to
Speaker 1: even acknowledge or a man. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: other examples from the insect to the world that I
Speaker 1: really like. One there is there. Well, there was a
Speaker 1: study from North Carolina State University and they were looking
Speaker 1: at termites and they found that like basically with termites,
Speaker 1: you have like a young ueen goes out, finds it,
Speaker 1: found a new colony, and then she has a termite king,
Speaker 1: and as is often the case in the insect world,
Speaker 1: the king is just there for the mating. Again, the
Speaker 1: females are the species. The male is just the um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the the byproduct that's necessary to facilitate
Speaker 1: sexual production. Yeah, he's just a pool boy hanging out
Speaker 1: around in the drone chamber. Yeah. So so so anyway,
Speaker 1: they they start doing it, reproducing, but then the queen
Speaker 1: eventually dies like she it's you know, it's a big
Speaker 1: responsibility run in a you know, a whole community of
Speaker 1: termites stress. Yeah, so then you need another queen. But
Speaker 1: but here's the thing you don't in breeding is typically
Speaker 1: a bad thing for a community. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just on a genetic level. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: because because there's no real social anything, and you know
Speaker 1: in the termite world. Um, so they need a new queen,
Speaker 1: right and we don't. But we don't need the king
Speaker 1: to to start breeding with a daughter. So the queen
Speaker 1: will a sexually reproduce to create the new queen, essentially
Speaker 1: clone herself so that there's no no crossing of the
Speaker 1: genetic streams so to speak. Yeah, and then then I
Speaker 1: read there was another interesting study. Um, and this one
Speaker 1: was featured in a BBC article not too long ago,
Speaker 1: and they covered Amazonian ants, which are essentially an all
Speaker 1: female species at this point. Like they at some point
Speaker 1: they basically were like, you know, ladies, we can do
Speaker 1: this on our own. We don't need the this drone
Speaker 1: just hanging around. Uh, you know, we can just stick
Speaker 1: with a sexual reproduction. So their number of benefits to this, First,
Speaker 1: the ants don't waste any energy producing males, which which
Speaker 1: again they don't do much, you know besides breeding. And uh,
Speaker 1: and you know they've combined two positions you know, in
Speaker 1: their their social uh strata. And it also doubles the
Speaker 1: number of reproductive females that are produced each generation. Now,
Speaker 1: the downside to that is that there's less diversity, which
Speaker 1: means that like you get one new parasite, one new disease,
Speaker 1: and it can essentially wipe out the entire species, which
Speaker 1: is probably you know, a reason why why you don't
Speaker 1: see as as many a sexual you know, species, because
Speaker 1: because it will often you know, open them up for
Speaker 1: potential just disaster when a new parasite, disease, et cetera coming. Right.
Speaker 1: They want to encourage diversity right in a genetic pool,
Speaker 1: right exactly. It's the whole reason for sexual reproduction over
Speaker 1: a sexual in most cases. But I mean here's the
Speaker 1: thing that I think it's spelling out for humans is
Speaker 1: that eventually, I mean right around the corner, I mean,
Speaker 1: two women will be able to fertilize an egg with
Speaker 1: the other genetic material and it will still be a
Speaker 1: diverse pool of genetic material. And this will be this
Speaker 1: will be via a medical procedure or exactly exactly. And
Speaker 1: I mean a good example is just you know, in
Speaker 1: the animal world, is last summer, Japanese team announced that
Speaker 1: female mice had been made pregnant using cells from other females,
Speaker 1: and they gave birth to completely healthy babies. I think
Speaker 1: the only thing that they noticed is that the babies
Speaker 1: were about smaller than the other mice in the control group. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's what's sort of spelling that
Speaker 1: the future might be a matriarchal one. Yeah, like a
Speaker 1: race short women and their robot physicians exactly. They're they're
Speaker 1: female robot physicians. That might add well, Mike, why is
Speaker 1: the wait, why does the physician have to be Like
Speaker 1: maybe they'll be a little nostalgic for the the masculinity
Speaker 1: of the past, and they'll they'll have the robots will
Speaker 1: be like male robot doctors. Uh, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: friend of the ladies listening out there. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had a guyn incologist, you're definitely gonna
Speaker 1: want a female robot gynecologist. Yeah, even if it is
Speaker 1: a robot, it's just that's a comforting aspect. But you're right,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe some people would be nostalgic, Like maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be kind of maybe it'll be programmed to say, I
Speaker 1: don't have much time. My golf gang. My golf game
Speaker 1: is right around the corner. Yeah, it'll be like or
Speaker 1: maybe they'll go after the model. After the doctors in Madmen.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like they're always like smoking in there
Speaker 1: while they're telling the lady. So it is so because
Speaker 1: they'll they'll miss it. They'll you know, it'd be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, victory over all the horrible things that were mailed.
Speaker 1: But then they're like, but I kind of miss those jerks.
Speaker 1: So you know, let's start programming robots stuff to behave
Speaker 1: really horribly maybe. So this presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. Actually it makes me think
Speaker 1: about the article that you sent me called the End
Speaker 1: of Men this is the Atlantic, Yeah, yes, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was it was sort of spelling out a future
Speaker 1: not necessarily through science, maybe more socio economic terms. I
Speaker 1: actually might even call it says economic Darwinism, in which
Speaker 1: the future of um of the earth seems to be
Speaker 1: geared a lot more toward women right now. So what
Speaker 1: happened to the men? Are they they're not going extinct,
Speaker 1: but they're just what being relegated to like brood chambers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're in their main caves. It turns out that
Speaker 1: they're not adapting as well as women. Uh, it turns
Speaker 1: out and that this economic environment that if you're really
Speaker 1: flexible you communicate well, uh, you can mitigate arguments, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and in the global economy that
Speaker 1: you're going to be pretty useful. And Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: book called The Evolution of Culture by Leslie White, and
Speaker 1: the crux of that idea or that book was that
Speaker 1: social systems are determined by technological systems. So we're at
Speaker 1: a point in our history, are technicol technological history, where
Speaker 1: women are beginning to dominate the workplace. And so you're
Speaker 1: looking right now at this year or the balance of
Speaker 1: the work force has tipped towards women for the first
Speaker 1: time ever. And for every two men who get a
Speaker 1: college degree this year, three men, three women will do
Speaker 1: the same. And right now women earn six of all
Speaker 1: master's degrees. So there's definitely a trend here happening, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this is being diascerbated by the fact
Speaker 1: that typical male industries like construction, for instance, I've sort
Speaker 1: of evaporated in the recession. But I think what's interesting
Speaker 1: about that article is that it's it is pointing uh
Speaker 1: to a time in our history where women are entering
Speaker 1: the workplace and dominating fields that were typically thought as
Speaker 1: thought of as a mail fields and doing them really well.
Speaker 1: And of course, the the wage gap still exists. Women
Speaker 1: are still getting paid less than men, and so you
Speaker 1: have to wonder too if the economy is rewarding women
Speaker 1: for not being paid as much and actually employing them
Speaker 1: over men. That that's certainly got to be an asked
Speaker 1: aspect of it. Kind of serve men, right though, you
Speaker 1: think so, yeah, kind of like like, oh, you're only
Speaker 1: messed up there, didn't you You thought you were you
Speaker 1: were a cheating amount of something that you're just opening
Speaker 1: the door, that's right. Well, I mean, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the good thing about this is that it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of time where pay will become equal. Yeah, particularly
Speaker 1: when you've tipped the scales in the workplace with more
Speaker 1: women working there than then. But I should also note
Speaker 1: that CEO's top positions as are still filled by men obviously,
Speaker 1: and only three percent of the fortune CEO CEOs or women.
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of astounding. And then NFL coaches
Speaker 1: m alright, guys, they're most like they're not none of
Speaker 1: them are women? Are they yet until they see my game?
Speaker 1: But um, the reason that I wanted to bring this up,
Speaker 1: but not to get into you know, cultural um happenings
Speaker 1: for today because we're more of a science podcast, is
Speaker 1: to talk about Ronald Ericsson. He's a biologist, so he's
Speaker 1: kind of a cowboy biologist and yeah he I mean,
Speaker 1: he's the Marble Man. In fact, I think they eat.
Speaker 1: He owns the property where a lot of the Marble
Speaker 1: Man stuff was shot and he's really proud of that. Um.
Speaker 1: But he's the guy that's responsible for separating uh sperm
Speaker 1: carrying the mail producing Y chromosome from the X chromosome.
Speaker 1: And he's the guy who basically brought this to market
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, Almo, assuming that a lot of people
Speaker 1: are going to want to have boys and be able
Speaker 1: to determine sex, and this is the guy who who
Speaker 1: made that happen. Of course, the big irony now is
Speaker 1: that people are choosing girls over boys something like two
Speaker 1: to one, and in some clinics upwoards to seventy. So
Speaker 1: it's also spelling out a story that's being told in
Speaker 1: something like the Atlantic giving us stats about women and
Speaker 1: how they're dominating the workplace. And then when you look
Speaker 1: at these clinics and you see that people are opting
Speaker 1: for more women than men, we kind of gotta wonder
Speaker 1: what's going on. And in fact, this guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's quite a character. He basically says, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be all about men, because historically
Speaker 1: that's what we've chosen men over women. But you know,
Speaker 1: here I am a grandfather of a granddaughter who is
Speaker 1: now a genetic scientist. Yeah, there was a time, and
Speaker 1: this has pointed out in several works, but also in
Speaker 1: the comedic film Sting Ray Sam, which I encourage everyone
Speaker 1: to check out, that there there was a there was
Speaker 1: a time where the idea of having a a female
Speaker 1: child was was pretty disastrous if you were either really
Speaker 1: poor or really rich, right, I mean China is still
Speaker 1: kind of shaking that off, yes, because if you're really rich,
Speaker 1: you need a male air and a female is not
Speaker 1: necessarily gonna cut it. And then if you're really poor,
Speaker 1: it can be rather heartbreaking too. You know, you're you
Speaker 1: have this female child who can't you know, necessarily work
Speaker 1: on the farm like you need or do the manual
Speaker 1: labor that needs doing, um, and may suddenly find herself
Speaker 1: morally compromised by the society around her. Right, You've got
Speaker 1: the whole dowrything to worry. Yeah, that too. So so
Speaker 1: it was kind of like a middle that for a while.
Speaker 1: They even the idea that like the you know, the
Speaker 1: female child could be the you know, the you know her,
Speaker 1: you know, daddy's favorite was more of a middle class thing, right, yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean again, you look that historically and you
Speaker 1: see that men in ancient Greece were tying off their
Speaker 1: left left testicle, uh, in the hopes of producing a
Speaker 1: male air. I mean, people were taking it very seriously.
Speaker 1: And some women, you know back in the day, we're
Speaker 1: actually losing their lives if they didn't produce a male air. Well,
Speaker 1: that's worse. That's I'm sorry to grow at the torture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to bring it down there. Um. But
Speaker 1: so some people are in a panic over this, and
Speaker 1: specifically I will talk about Japan, where they're they're in
Speaker 1: a national panic over the rise of something they've called herbivores,
Speaker 1: which are men who are gardening and organizing dessert parties
Speaker 1: and basically declining to have sex while their female counterparts
Speaker 1: are out in the workplace and they're being known as carnivores. Huh.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I've I've seen some some interesting documentaries about this,
Speaker 1: particularly BBC's Japan Rama. Uh. They did a whole show
Speaker 1: about sexuality in Japan, and in particular they were looking
Speaker 1: at like a taku culture of the nerd culture in Japan,
Speaker 1: where a lot of them in a very kind of
Speaker 1: awesome way. It's like there was this, uh, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of feel. It's kind of kind of this sort
Speaker 1: of the way a lot of people look at nerds.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, these guys can't get dates, you know.
Speaker 1: But there were some of these are talking that were like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't really want a woman in my
Speaker 1: life because I have all these awesome hobbies and collections
Speaker 1: going on. If even if there was a lady would
Speaker 1: just get in the way of this stuff. So no, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, I'm fine. And and again I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of awesome in a way, it's not very good
Speaker 1: for the future ones, um, you know, culture and nation
Speaker 1: in the long run if everybody's buying into that. No,
Speaker 1: but it does kind of point out that a certain
Speaker 1: amount of gender performance on humans parts, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: we obviously have biological differences, and there are some differences
Speaker 1: in our brains. You know, women tend to have, you know,
Speaker 1: more gray matter in the communication parts of their brains. Um,
Speaker 1: men have more braun But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: if we all just you know, had long hair, didn't
Speaker 1: shave um, except for I guess men in their beards,
Speaker 1: we would look remarkably similar. You know, am I performing
Speaker 1: my gender and wearing earrings and lipsticks in certain clothing?
Speaker 1: So your solution is that everybody should stop bathing and
Speaker 1: that's going to fix everything? Yes, it is. I already
Speaker 1: told you I'm a fan of the funk, and I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. But you know, I do think that there's
Speaker 1: aspect of adaptability here that we're talking about. And if
Speaker 1: you look at women in the workplace the last hundred years,
Speaker 1: I've had to adapt. So I don't think it's all
Speaker 1: bad news for guys out there. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that the chromosomes are repairing themselves and they can adapt. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, often fall into the trap of
Speaker 1: blaming everything horrible and human civilization on males. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it can really be related to
Speaker 1: their feet because it's you know, you end up with
Speaker 1: a culture dominated by by males, it tends to be
Speaker 1: more warlike, more violent, and uh yeah, I mean just
Speaker 1: look at the news. I really don't think I have
Speaker 1: to make that strong of a case for this because
Speaker 1: the the the headlines pretty much do it for me.
Speaker 1: But an interesting thing was brought up by that Atlantic
Speaker 1: article was that was there's this theory that it's not
Speaker 1: really a male female thing in terms of like who's
Speaker 1: going to be brutal. It's like whatever the dominant sex
Speaker 1: is just might be brutal and violent just because it's
Speaker 1: dominant like that. So it's more like a human nature thing,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And I think as opposed to any sort
Speaker 1: of what we sometimes think are intrinsic values attached to
Speaker 1: a gender, right right, it's uh, it's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the whole absolute power of corrupts
Speaker 1: absolutely kind of a deal. The Atlantica article that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, they they made this case based on on
Speaker 1: the fact that that the rate of violence committed by
Speaker 1: middle aged women has increased since the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: that you see more and more like high profile female
Speaker 1: killers and serial murders. So, as you know, is the
Speaker 1: female stock and society rises, so perhaps does their capacity
Speaker 1: for violence? Isn't an interesting argument, And and again it's
Speaker 1: it's I tend to sort of I tend to like
Speaker 1: that in that it is maybe a little more of
Speaker 1: a humans are messed up as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: men are bad, women are good, because yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we're beyond that now, Yeah, because we all know women
Speaker 1: can be pretty horrible as well. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: men do not have an exclusive copyright on on being wretched.
Speaker 1: And I think that women are sometimes thought of as
Speaker 1: more altruistic because they have the children and are the
Speaker 1: the the caregivers, and you know, that's that's out of necessity,
Speaker 1: you know. And um, you know, maybe maybe women are
Speaker 1: replicating their DNA because they're selfish, because they'd like to
Speaker 1: see their you know, DNA come to life. Um you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying. You know, I'm a mother and i'd
Speaker 1: have a little DNA replicate myself, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily do that, so I could see some
Speaker 1: gene sequencing and action. But I'm just saying that you
Speaker 1: know to to UH to say that, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: women are are better than men in that sense or
Speaker 1: have a better moral compass isn't necessarily true. I'm all
Speaker 1: on board with what you're saying, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it just depends on the circumstance and what the
Speaker 1: power structure is. And so far, what's proven out is
Speaker 1: that when you do have men in charge, that there's
Speaker 1: a some some sometimes catastrophic events happening, sometimes not, but
Speaker 1: you know, there definitely is more of violence. And then
Speaker 1: there's also the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk. Um.
Speaker 1: This is I think interesting to point out. This may
Speaker 1: be why men aren't as much of a good fit
Speaker 1: in today's economic environment because excessive risk is seen as
Speaker 1: bad and cooperation, adaptability, flexibility, those are all things that
Speaker 1: are fitting into the archetype of what we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now now. I um, I was, I was curious. I
Speaker 1: also looked up prison stats and I found those. I
Speaker 1: found a report from the Bureau of Prisons and they
Speaker 1: had they have these different codes for UH for for
Speaker 1: different types of crimes. They have like code on codes
Speaker 1: that are in the hundreds like one D one oh one,
Speaker 1: one oh four, and then there are two hundred codes
Speaker 1: like two oh one two, And the two hundred codes
Speaker 1: are things like fighting it fighting, threatening bodily harm, and
Speaker 1: assaulting people. The one hundred codes are killing, attempted murder, um,
Speaker 1: a serious assault, possession of a wet and all right.
Speaker 1: And when in examining gender specific violence, they found it
Speaker 1: was extremely rare for women to commit uh, these one
Speaker 1: hundred level or you know, more like murder level crimes.
Speaker 1: And part of this was in that they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we need a separate system for determining like male violence
Speaker 1: and female violence as far as the prison system is concerned.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's interesting to take into account. But
Speaker 1: then again, you're looking at female or male violence within
Speaker 1: within the culture, within the larger culture, and there's so
Speaker 1: many different layers of that nature versus nurture and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Yeah, I don't know, it's a
Speaker 1: sticky subject. I mean, we started out just talking about
Speaker 1: how the Y chromosome it can't repair itself so great
Speaker 1: and the implications of that, Yeah, I mean the far
Speaker 1: reaching you can't ignore that. Yeah. So I mean I
Speaker 1: guess it boils down to them the answer, Like any
Speaker 1: of these things it's more of a a middle ground
Speaker 1: thing where it's the answer is not that female should
Speaker 1: be in charge and men shouldn't, or that men should
Speaker 1: be extinct and we just need a fe l uh
Speaker 1: culture female race uh in and of itself, but more
Speaker 1: of a uh you know, more gender equality, more uh
Speaker 1: you know, an improvement in communication between the genders, all
Speaker 1: these things that are pretty uh, pretty common sense at
Speaker 1: least I think to most moderns. Yeah, once that makes
Speaker 1: sense in the whole evolutionary scheme of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't necessarily need to go and fight
Speaker 1: tigers anymore, and and and uh and lived the way
Speaker 1: that we lived before, where excessive risk was really great
Speaker 1: in testosterone levels that were high or really great. So
Speaker 1: it would make sense that so many thousands of years
Speaker 1: later we would evolve into creatures that were a little
Speaker 1: bit more sensitive to their environments. It just happens that,
Speaker 1: you know, this discovery of the y chromosome and this
Speaker 1: information from the Atlantic, you know, crossed our desk at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it made an interesting story I
Speaker 1: think of what's going on. But still I'm looking to
Speaker 1: the future when other planets will be populated by short
Speaker 1: women and their robot physicians. I think it's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and uh it'll be. It'll be interesting for those that
Speaker 1: are alive to see what I think that you need
Speaker 1: to uh touch to uh Branson about that, just as
Speaker 1: a side project, you know. So if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: on any of that, you can find us on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter um on either we or blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: We also update both those accounts with all sorts of
Speaker 1: cool science related links from around the net, and you
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