 and welcome to episode number four of what sex got to do with it and again we have my favorite great-grandmother and Arlington actually it goes beyond that in the Boston region. We're on chapter three and chapter three is called moving right along and yeah I think it's just gonna be a pattern now why moving right along for chapter three. Discussing evolutionary speed really because as I read a book by Jonathan Lawsos and in it he had a line he discovered evolutionary speed how rapidly evolution happened in the species of lizard he was studying and he had a line in which he said Darwin was wrong when evolution doesn't always progress at snail's pace when the conditions are right it can happen almost overnight that's not it you know that's I'm summarizing what he said the part I remember was Darwin was wrong and I thought I've been waiting for 40 years to hear a respected scientist out of those words Darwin was wrong and he demonstrated how how rapidly evolution happened in the particular could happen under certain conditions in the species of lizard he was studying and again given that I believe that sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction really speeds up the rate of evolution I was hooked and fascinated interestingly enough he doesn't I've never yet convinced him we've been in the email exchange of my take on sexual selection he thinks the speed that he documented was due to other reasons that I'm drawing a blank on on on what he attributed it to but I suspect that he was looking at sexual selection in the same way as we discussed in one of our earlier sessions where researchers because of Darwin's take on it believing that sexual selection always resulted in sexually dimorphic traits traits that were very different between the males and females of that species that in less sec unless mating produced that kind of dichotomy between the male and the female it wasn't sexual selection and I suspect that that's what that what's the snag between Jonathan and me and discussing yeah evolutionary speed yeah and almost like seems to be just a what's the word for it semantic you know issue and the reason I say that is because you know you discuss the hearty Weinberg equation and once again this from this manuscript 61 62 where you're talking about selective breeding and you said think of it as sexual selection by proxy you'd objectively selected breeding is really nothing more than a rather interesting form of what hearty Weinberg called a sort of mating or maybe phrase that assortative mate mating and what I call sexual selection you know yeah Darwin referred to that as artificial selection and I say the only thing artificial about it is the fact that a species other than the one doing the reproducing is is is making the sexual choice and Darwin himself was a pigeon fancier so he bred pigeons for all kinds of exotic traits obviously very quickly he could modify the appearance of a pigeon but he wasn't really thinking of that as sexual selection because he was the one of course it's sexual selection man was doing it also making the choices but in fact it's it's it's just the difference in who gets born right so so it just makes me kind of wonder what is the block me that people have in comprehending this but for me and this is why I'm really enjoying doing this series is that me this is kind of a little what's the word I want to say mystery stories not what's where I use thriller means is a thriller means so you're leading us somewhere and and you can almost see this as a little bit of a slow build-up being which is appropriate for evolution you know even though it goes faster than most people think we need to still be a slow build-up so you're headed to a certain way and we're gonna get there you know man but we're learning a lot in the process and what the all I can say to people watching this is that he really just getting the tip of the iceberg here means she gives so many interesting educational examples to back up me her statements and even if you don't agree with the statements being the stories and the the science that you are exposed to in the process means very much worth the reading he then and one of the things that you talked about I think we mentioned this the last episode is how you dubbed the gene recognition theory of attraction in and that how people with similar DNA you know that of course differs but then what you get randomly me or attracted each other and apparently me there was some research me to back it up that married couples me have DNA that it's more similar than you would find randomly more similar than would be predicted randomly married couples their DNA is more similar than you would predict randomly and you can sort of see you know we're the human brain is is actually not a skilled worker Len but the human brain evolved to be really good at two things one was reproduction and the other was survival and quite frankly if we're better at reproduction than we are at survival we're good at survival and in the immediate get out of the way of that lion but in terms of something coming at us like climate change we're really good at denying that it's happening but reproduction we're good at so it's understandable why people select for that which looks similar to go back to our last discussion because if you're drawn to creatures that are very different from yourself you're not likely to have viable offspring you know we have to mate within our own species and so that the trigger is oh this creature is like me and so as everything humans do we take it to extremes we take it to more to excess and so we tend to be drawn to people that I what I used to dub is the gene recognition theory of attraction the first book I wrote the editor took that out of there feeling that it could have racist interpretations that is not my intent yeah and that is not my intent because yeah skin color is is the tip of the iceberg women look at so much more than the immediate appearance that's funny I hadn't really thought about that but yeah yeah you have to yeah yeah interesting yeah you know so yeah and and I was well you explain you actually answer the question I was going to ask so since we have a limited amount of time I'm not gonna ask it you know we'll just move on and and and I'll talk about something that if you take that to it's logical extreme we're not extreme but push it a little bit then you get into why it is that the people who related me don't we have relationships and you talk about negative imprinting yes and so do you want to expand on that that's completely fascinating to me there was a gentleman who did research on the on the kaboots I'm drawing a blank on his first last name first name is last name was Sheffer and he children that were raised communally in the kaboots of course their parents would love it if they grew up and married each other and in fact he could document almost no marriages that occurred between children who were reared together at a certain age and so just the proximity of siblings being together in that critical period there was negative imprinting for romantic attachment so that's from zero to six I you you you it's it's I think that sounds right I don't remember the exact the exact age I have it in the book but like so many things I have in the book you know I've taken notes and then I I move from my notes the book and I don't know what but I think zero to six sounds right but children that were reared together during that period in the kaboots just did not marry but what was even more interesting I found was that you said that even the children of the children who were had the negative imprinting still didn't connect with each other right I don't I I'm not as certain on that okay so it's the children who were reared together for sure there was negative imprinting that the children of the children that data I think is more inclined to epigenetic inheritance so I was just gonna read so I'm gonna read maybe yeah so it's like what about the kids who grow up in communal peer groups Joseph Shepard yeah Arthur the study on incest avoidance and negative imprinted imprinting reports that among 2769 marriages contracted by second generation adults in all kabootsum there were no cases of intrapeer group marriage yeah the second generation just that's not the children of the original but he means people who were second generation born on the kaboots not it's what he's meaning there it is the children who were reared together who have negative imprinting not their children we're reading that differently okay yeah so let me so I mean a little slow here so I might not have I might not have quoted it as clearly as I should once again by second generation you mean like their parents had been on the kaboots and and so they're the second generation of the kaboots their kids they're the ones who yeah they're the ones yeah their parents were kaboots and then the children of parents who already lived on the kaboots those are the sec that's the second so those are the ones that experience the negative negative okay because no because if it was that then their children somehow avoided no no it's not that would be an interesting form of epigenetic yeah no no it's this is not epigenetics this is this is just straight negative imprinting yeah okay no great great well well viewer I hope you enjoyed her and confusing me on that one but what I find fascinating are and what I think I mentioned in that this chapter is given sperm donation siblings who are reared apart yeah and don't even know they're related if they meet as adults tend to be very strongly attracted to each other because again they recognize that similarity that I call gene but they haven't been reared together and I joked when I first became aware you know of the number of of babies that are conceived via sperm donation that they ought to tattoo on the heels of the kids the the number of their sperm donor right because they're their anecdotal stories that crop up in the newspapers every now and then of couples that meet full madly in love and then learn their siblings right and that's again that because there hasn't been that negative imprinting of children reared together right and actually above the section that we just discussed me you talk about in that New York Times article that caught your attention that had one was first I met my children then I then my girlfriend they're related yeah and so so this is a situation where it so so I guess well why don't you tell me story I mean I haven't highlighted here me but okay now I'm gonna try to he was a cab driver right right who'd made he'd done sperm donations as a way to enhance his income right and what was the headline first I met my children then my girlfriend they're related yeah they're related he he met his children who wanted contact right with with their biological father and of course in the course of meeting those children he met their mother right and she she fell hard for him right in part because he exhibited behavioral mannerisms etc that her children had the people she loved most in the world he was so much like the people that she loved most in the world that she fell in love with him yeah I just found that completely fascinating yeah it is you know it he was so much like his biological kids yeah that she found him irresistible yeah yeah no that's all that is fascinating you know and you know yeah so I just kind of wanted to point that out because that was in once again as I said I mean there those contibutes in the in the book mean that if you don't know about them mean they're really quite fascinating and I had a question here about me do you think the causality could work in opposite direction and at the point I wrote this question it made sense to me it's like what was it get it out of here but it was just something about about a I guess I guess it could be a case of me them having mannerisms that she didn't like but that's not opposite direction that's just a contrast to the mannerisms you know but oh yeah I just it's almost like reverse causality there it is because she's not recognized recognizing her own genes she's recognizing genes that exist in her children in this man who happens to be their father yeah that's the point yeah yeah that is but then I want to go back to something you said originally when you first read my book and I will always be grateful to you for your response when you first read it you were so curious and so interesting and you described it as a mystery yeah and that was really gratifying to me because I do my writing and thinking between disciplines right between the discipline of anthropology economics linguistics and biology so I haven't fully absorbed the dogma of any one of those four disciplines and in order to present my challenge to Darwin I needed my reader to know all the things that I've picked up right in bits and pieces operating between disciplines yeah and so when you say and it was very gratifying to me that you felt like I was leaving clues yeah I was yeah because I wanted my reader to know everything I know right and I know a lot of things on the surface not necessarily in depth and I wanted them to know them all at once but you can't know them all at once and so there was this sprinkling bread comes here here's a piece you're going to need later incorporate this way of thinking you're this this will help you make sense of where I'm going in the end yeah so thanks thanks for for making that I thought oh good I hope other people are able to read it the same way again because of this anchor bias it's so difficult to let go of the things that we believe to be true I have the advantage of not having absorbed the doctrine from many of the fields that I find fascinating for example early on I talked about how a Robert Trivers had convinced me of how a female choice worked long before I read Charles Darwin right so when I first read Darwin I my anchor bias then was a way of looking at the world that Robert Trivers had given me which was not Darwin's way of looking at the world at all so when Darwin is talking about female choice I'm more looking at it the way Trivers did so that but anyhow to get back to just scattering scattering little tidbits and thinking hold on to this this is interesting you may need this information later now this is perhaps basic and maybe just a quick internet search would tell me this you know but I'm going back to the negative imprinting what what is that exactly what what is negative imprinting I mean what causes it well and I mostly don't think in terms of cause as much as I think of successful outcome it prevents inbreeding that might be you understand that yeah but I'm really interested in the cause well it to me things evolve if they result in a favorable outcome yeah I understand but it doesn't you don't necessarily start with the intent to get there yeah I understand you know but this is really a tactical question because I'm really interested in like what's what's what is negative imprinting I mean I understand what the results from it but I'm trying to understand like what is it that causes the negative imprinting because the the dynamic of that mean is like does that have some application beyond the imprinting does it reveal something else about the way the brain works you know you know we're familiar I think we many biologists and I'm not you know my degrees are not in biology our familiar was a work of Conrad Lorenzen is great great like geese and the imprinting many species of foul imprint positive printing on the first creature they see when they hatch right because that would be beneficial it happens to be their mother and she's going to do all the things that are appropriate to that species in the case of Conrad Lorenzen is gray line geese he was the first thing they saw when they hatched and so he treated them like they treated him as if he were their parent their mother they followed him everywhere etc when we were kids again because I was around so many animals when I was young we put duck eggs under a setting hen because we wanted ducks was the cruelest thing we could have done first of all chicken eggs hatch in 21 days duck eggs take 28 so that poor hen is sitting there for an extra week and she you know she hears the peeping in the eggs there's obviously alive she's not going to bend in the nest but she's hanging in for a week more than would be normal we lived on a property with a stream yeah the minute those baby ducklings hatched they headed for the stream went in and started swimming there was a strong instinct poor hen almost had a heart attack she you know they don't swim she's pacing up and down waiting up to her ankles and actually vomiting she was so stressed that her ducklings went into the water so you know that there the ducks could have positively imprinted on the hen and followed her behavior but there was an instinct in them that overrode that positive imprinting and they had it right for the water I find with my godson we hatched a little egg in an incubator when he was a little guy because he was a city kid and had no exposure and of course when that chick hatched it imprinted on Tyrone yeah and he took it to his class to show the other kids and I explained to the kids about imprinting and I said the cool chick thinks Tyrone is his mother he quickly said no no he thinks I'm his father but in fact that chick was strongly imprinted on Tyrone because he was the first first thing that the chick saw when it hatched so that's positive I'm really just in the negative so I'm gonna end up doing some research on this because me to me it's like what is it that causes negative imprinting and the notion that's coming to mind is that familiarity breeds contempt mean and so I really kind of want to understand that mechanism because I think if we can get in to figure out like what is it that's causing people to do the negative imprint it may give us some sense as to emotional development mean negative we see so many examples of a positive imprinting it seems like there may be fewer of negative imprinting but maybe there are and we're just not aware of it because we don't focus on it well Joseph Schaeffer's work in the Caboose it was my first exposure to it and I found it fascinating because I'd always wondered about the incest taboo and it does seem to be cross-cultural and I thought well anything that is that's that taboo is so strong even cross-culturally it probably has it's probably biological in origin and he explained the mechanism for it a critical period in which exposure to yeah well he describes it but so far I've not seen an explanation okay you're gonna research it then you let me know so so I think we're really gonna draw this chapter to close if there's something else you want to say about chapter 3 I'm gonna let you have the last word why maybe try and scan for a quick sentence to end it well you can scan I you know as I because it's also familiar to me having written the book I unless I look at the notes I took before I came up today I forget exactly which things are in which chapter I got you yeah I totally get that in and so so I think we're just going to end it there and say that we have another exciting chapter coming up and and and I'll give people a little bit of a tease for it and it's called female choice in the origin of man and so join us me for chapter 4 thank you very much other thanks Len