 and welcome to episode number 13 of what sex got to do with it. And we're here with my favorite 84-year-old great-grandmother. You know what, maybe I'll just have to live a real long time, and then you can start with my favorite great-great-grandmother. Yes. That's a goal to strive for, right? Yes, definitely. And then the fact that you say you've kind of started off. And then there wouldn't be so much competition. You know, the thing about being a late bloomer, I mean, I think means that, you know, it's all just kind of shifted, you know. It means I have to live a long time in order to do everything I've wanted to do. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, let's have it. You know, but this chapter, chapter 12 is called the economics of desire, as we always do with the basis. The basis for this is that sexual desire, particularly in women, can be triggered by the economic prowess of the man in question. And I say can be. It often is. The women I interviewed, the trait that headed the list, intelligence, of course. But that's kind of a generic term. People mean different things by intelligence. But control of material resources was at the top of the list. The trait that influenced a woman's choice of her partner. This is going to be a hard chapter for me to, you know, interview you on, because there are just so many questions I have on this one. I mean, I could really spend easily an hour talking to you probably an hour and a half. So I might be a little rude. Oh, be rude. And cut you off because I'm just going to try and get a bunch of questions in. But I love listening to you. So you talk about me, how we eat that when we do surveys or whatever, it becomes apparent that for women, an older man is preferred. And for men, a younger woman is preferred. First off, is that across cultures? Yeah, I think so. Although my area of expertise is within this culture. So I don't want to speak for all cultures. When you say women prefer an older man, it's not the age that they're selecting for. It's age. Enough time enables a man to accumulate resources. When I did my research, there was no internet dating scene. But today in the era of internet dating scene, one of the statistics that was in, again, the New York Times and the Washington Post informed a lot of my ideas that was reported in the paper, was because it's easy to measure how many swipes left, swipe right, that men, the ideal age for women, in terms of what men preferred, was 18. In terms of women, the ideal age for men, I think, was 55. That doesn't really mean much, except that a 55-year-old man has had much more time to establish some economic stability. I think if a woman saw, if an 18-year-old woman saw a 22-year-old man with the same control of economic resources, that would be more likely found in someone 55, his youth would not work against him. So I think it is correlated to just economic security. What's the preference, though, for younger women? You say our brains are wired for reproduction. So there would be a preference on younger women because there would be more reproduction potential. Oh, absolutely. That's it. And, you know, useful vigor. I mean, young women look healthier, stronger. They move easily, more easily. So, you know, they're a good choice if you want healthy children and they have more years to be reproductively active. So, yeah, there's a reason. You know, there are evolutionary reasons, obviously. There are people who run counter to that. But, you know, we're used to seeing men who were they not wealthy would not be sporting the trophy wife on their arm, what we call a trophy wife, that they are. And that's kind of a cliche, you know, the old man with his trophy wife, which may be his fifth or sixth wife, because as the age he might tend to divorce them and his wealth enables him to attract a younger woman. I don't, I don't, that's not particularly behavior that I would recommend or that I personally admire. But, you know, I think we all are aware of the existence of that behavior. Right, gotcha. You know, so this is a minor curiosity question because you mentioned that, you know, most men and women do eventually have children. Do you have to know what percentage, you know? You know, that's hard data to find. There is more women reproduced than men. But it's hard to get the exact figure. But in fact, women are more personally reproductively successful than men are. Interesting. That's really interesting. Go ahead. Well, because women are selective. And so, you know, they're trying to mate up. And so if a man is sort of at the bottom of the economic pile, he's going to have a harder time finding a partner. Oh, I get it. Yeah, so yes, women are more selective than men are in terms of choosing their partners for all kinds of things. I get that. Yeah. But then you said that most so. So essentially, I think the conclusion I'm drawing is that women will choose me. They're more selective about them than they choose. And because of that, the fewer men get chosen, you know? And so it would. Like one man, I just was talking about a very wealthy man who might have multiple wives. That's one man, you know, say he's had five wives and had children with all of them. Right. That means there are a bunch of men that might have wanted to have children with those women who have been shut out. So that's how it works. Right. So it's really trying to get at how the... The dynamic of it. Well, not so much the dynamic, but that's part of it. But also how you end up with a mismatch because you would imagine that you'd have equal number of men and equal number of women you'd have in children. So are you saying that there are more men who have multiple wives over the course of... Or have children with multiple wives. And there are women that have children with multiple men. Like I've been married twice, but I've had children with only one man. Right. My second husband was very, very generous about contributing to the well-being of my children. Was that a timing issue or a choice issue? What's a choice issue? I had a child from a former marriage. I had two children from a former marriage. I want neither one of us wanted more children. Was that a possibility? I was young enough that I could have had more children. But his enthusiasm, more than willingness, his absolute enthusiasm to invest in my existing children was one of his charms. I must confess, not only my children, but every time he came to see me, he brought dog biscuits for my dog. I mean, the man was a master of courtship feeding. He not only fed me, he fed my kids. He fed the dog. How could I not fall in love with this man? You know, in the generosity thing, because you're saying that, that's one of those like... What do you call it? I mean, not soft traits. You call it... There's a term you use for those types of traits. Generosity was one of them, that you think that women could be selecting. Oh, women do select for that. But you called it something. I'll scroll back at some point. I'll mention folks at the beginning of the next chapter, because I'll scroll back and find it, because you called it a certain kind of trait. Generosity was... Oh, generosity. I mean, really, for a woman who has children, when Jean, that was my second husband's name, and I was a poor starving graduate student when he met me. I mean, my kids and I were living on a very minimum income. And he would take us out to a Chinese restaurant and essentially order everything on the menu. My two kids, his daughter, and any of their friends who wanted to come were more than welcome. Early on in our marriage, and Jean and I married very quickly after we met my daughter, looked at all the food coming to the table and looked up at me and said, don't you just love Bob's? He's so excessive. And yet he was. He was over the top generous in all ways. Well, food is the way to a person's heart. So, look, I just have to... One of the other things I really enjoy about reading, your writing, I think you're a really good writer. You have a lot of turn and phrase. So we're talking about Fifty Shades of Grey. And you say, Fifty Shades of Grey is less about the erotic turn on of bottom spanking and more about the economic turn on of the bottom line. Actually, let me read that correctly. It's less about the erotic turn on of bottom spanking and more about the economic turn on of bottom lines. That's great. I think that's really good. But you do say that. What kind of makes it not so creepy is that it's a wealthy guy and that if he had been a poor guy he would have a whole different tone being more like a stalker. And maybe an abuser. But how about this? What if it was a penniless woman dominating a billionaire? A penniless man? No, a penniless woman. A penniless woman dominating a billionaire. Well, I'm sure he would be paying her plenty to dominate him. Okay, now, you didn't take my premise. You took my premise and you changed it. Let's stay with my premise. A woman? Give me your feet back to me. Sure, sure. So would it be creepy if it were a penniless woman dominating a very wealthy man? Not quite as creepy maybe because she's not exploiting his need for income. So the fact that a very wealthy man is actually dominating this penniless woman in some sense he's really exploiting her vulnerability, her economic vulnerability. So in the case where it's a, what was it? A penniless woman. A penniless poor woman dominating a billionaire man. She's not exploiting. He's not economically vulnerable. It's happening because he wants it too. Yeah, that was just kind of a fun question for me. No, it was fun to think about. Yeah, so I'm bouncing around a bit here because like I said there's just so much in this chapter. So you talk about greedy people and it's essentially a problem caused by greed. Do you think people who are greedy realize that they're greedy? Oh wow, I'm not a psychologist. Do you think they just rationalize me? Oh, I think they rationalize it, sure. Yeah, I think they rationalize it. Because the character in Wall Street, I mean Gordon Gekko, I mean he said greed. Greed is good, yeah. People often forget though that parenthetical phrase that he then says like greed for lack of a better word is good. And so for me, that to me was sort of like, you could say well he embraced greed. But that parenthetical phrase though kind of softens it up and then you kind of realize... Can we the parenthetical phrase? Greed for lack of a better word is good. Yeah, I don't think there's a better word for greed. I think that's a little bit of rationalization going on there for lack of a better word. Greed is not good. Controlling more of the resources... Controlling so many resources that by your controlling them other people are being denied. And that's what greed is, that is not good. Yeah, so I wasn't saying it was good, I mean. So I was just kind of pointing... No, no, no, I didn't think you were. But really what I was getting at though is that do you think that people who are greedy realize that they're greedy? I think we're all very good at rationalizing. I don't have more than my share. I've earned this. I've worked hard for it. Nobody wants to believe that what they have did not come to them honestly quite frankly. I'm good at doing that myself. This very generous man that I was married to worked for a very large corporation. And his quite nice salary was built on the backs of people paid minimum wage, scooping mashed potatoes and college dorms. And I don't like to look at the fact that I have a nice condo in Arlington and I do love my condo that was paid for by people who weren't earning the money they needed just to have what they needed. So I myself am good at rationalizing the origin of wealth. And certainly my husband who was a generous man and would give anybody literally the shirt off his back neither one of us were very good managers of money. He would not like to think that his salary came at the expense of someone else. He absolutely believed that his talent was fully earned and yet I say absolutely less so than most people because he did one time say to me, he was five years older than I am, he said you're my very privileged generation. He said I graduated from college in nowhere. Men my age did not have to compete with women, people of color, any job that I applied for I got. He said the economy was booming post-Second World War and he said so I don't know what it's like to apply for a job and have any kind of competition. And that points to so he did have an awareness of his privilege that came of being white and being male. I mean the privilege born of being white and being male and my privilege is born of having been married to someone who was white and male. Well it's very touching that I did trust me with my intention to get to that emotional state. No, no, no that's it. I love conversations. You know we learn from each other as I was saying to you before we started this session a question you asked me a few sessions ago I woke up one morning thinking oh I know the answer to that question now. So it's so good to be in dialogue with people because that's how my theories develop. We can always email me or you can even call me when that happens and don't have to worry about waking me up because I turn my volume of my phone off when I go to bed. So it's like a plan. I thought of the answer to that and I love it. So that's now part of my explanation of how the first children born of that chromosome fusion happened to have mates and I'm going to just quickly give it here. I think it's possible that COVID has made me aware of it. Look at all the body parts that a COVID infection can hit. Neurologically, lungs, heart, liver, reproductive organs, COVID toes, taste buds, impacts whole body organs. Look at our genome. There is what used to be referred to as junk RNA and junk DNA just because we didn't know what it did. And then it was called dark RNA, non-coding RNA. Those are viral in origin. And imagine if there had been a huge pandemic that somehow whatever the virus was, weakened the telomeres on the end of the second chromosome, which I now believe is possible because of what COVID has taught us. Most viruses aren't studied that closely. People can have COVID and not know they have it and yet it can be impacting body parts. So imagine that the second chromosome, the telomeres were just a little weaker than normal and this pandemic came through the primate, the non-human primate population and weakened those telomeres enough that suddenly chromosome fusions are happening more frequently than they would have. And so when you were asking me who would that Adam or Eve have made it with, I thought, oh, it could have been the result of a viral infection. So see, that's what conversations make me think. I wish I'd thought of it before I wrote the book. Well, time for another book from the late boom. So focus on the greed thing. So look, greed, I think, to a certain extent, it's kind of wired in because we want more. And as you said, our language allows us to accumulate more whereas other species can't. So it's not like they wouldn't, they just can't because they don't have the language. Absolutely more is, in fact, Michael J. Ryan's book, A Taste for the Beautiful, is what alerted me to this obsession with more and he was not speaking about humans. It's true in all species, but they're limited physiologically and humans are not. Symbolically, we can control everything. But given the greed is such a motivating factor, do you think we could maybe pay people to incentivize them to do things that would be good for the environment? Oh, yes. Or charge them. Rather than pay them to do things that are good for the environment, charge them for doing things that are bad for the environment. But I generally think that the carrot works better than the stick. The carrot does work better than the stick. If you hit that dopamine response, the carrot works better than the stick. So maybe it's just a way to kind of get people to try to pay them. Yeah, well, there are people now who are very given to service that are already doing things that are good for the environment. A lot of people, particularly young people, it's already happening. I don't think that's the solution to our environmental problems. The goodwill of people who feel good. Or even get paid, like working in, like Teach America, those kinds of programs. They have a program you're doing environmental good. It's not sufficient. It's good. It makes people aware. It raises an awareness of environmental damage. But I think if we want to change, we're economic animals. We respond to cost-benefit signals. No, it's good yet. The benefit, yeah. But also the cost signal. We have the cleverness. Those people are good at algorithms, which I'm not. Can look at any item we buy, this cup, this table, and calculate what the environmental cost of everything that went into it is. And charge. For example, organically grown food ought to be cheaper than factory food. Because factory food has inflicted a terrible cost on the environment, factory food production. But what those corporate farmers do, what do I say? They privatize the profit and socialize the cost. Once you begin charging for the cost of food produced that way, then it flips. And then the reward is food that doesn't damage the environment and its production. It is actually cheaper when you charge what are called the externalities. All the externalities associated with producing a product. If the product reflects that cost, rather than corporations or corporations and they do it, almost all of them do, privatizing the profit and socializing the cost. I'm sure we're coming from this. Once again I'm trying to think of how do we get me to a point that is better in a way that is politically palatable. I'm talking. I think that trying to force those who have more, it's just going to create a lot more resistance than if you try to create a system where you tell those who don't have, we are going to give you money to do the right thing. And they could then create the political drive to do it. You know, if you say this is what we're aiming for, this is why we want to tax these other individuals. And so sure, the wealthier is still going to have to pay more, but it's being driven by people who go, but you know what? There's something in it for me, and what's in it for me is actually going to help the environment too. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I just don't think it's enough. I don't think it's enough. I think it's a good idea. You know, I think a lot of that is happening already. But we have to get money out of politics. That's a tough one. That's tough because who would vote the programs that take money out of politics, the very politicians who are benefiting from those programs? So I think exposing, I think exposing what's going on, that I think privatizing profits, socializing costs, I think once people catch on, hey, wait a minute, that's not right. I think a recognition, hey, there's something not right about that. And maybe there'd be a level of shame. And I don't know. So I have two ways to go here. So growth, is any growth really sustainable? I mean, certainly, compounded growth is not. Yeah, compounded growth is not. I think... What about linear growth? I think some growth is sustainable. But the thing we have to keep in mind, we have a finite planet and we are a species with infinite desires imposing our infinite desires on a finite planet. I think once we realize that we are destroying, you know, we're killing the goose that's laying the golden egg, actually, hey, wait, wait, wait, what we're doing is going to make life untenable for future generations. I think then we may begin to reevaluate. Certainly, we can use resources more efficiently. And that makes growth more sustainable. There's a sustainable growth, I mean, I remember how many years ago they predicted we were going to run out of oil, we were going to run out of... We haven't run out of those things. And in part because of our technological skills, we've switched to other resources. We're also because we've learned to use those things more efficiently. And what forces the efficient use of a resource, a scarce resource, charging the appropriately cost for using it? If you have to pay a lot for, say, oil or electricity, you begin to use it more carefully. You use less of it. You figure efficient. You design things that, you know, you can get the same outcome with less input of a scarce resource. So that can happen. That can make it more sustainable. Right. Well, as I said, I was going to bounce around a bit. So I'm going to bounce over to you, but you say, I think this is Taki, who sets this, you know, quickly scanning. From each according to his ability to each according to his need, I guess that was a popular slogan in the socialist movement. And you say today's corporate capitalism would be, I would say, summarized from each according to his ability to each according to his power. But his power, actually, isn't always about power, you know, because even in a democratic system, you still have to enforce the laws, you know. So it is going to be like the power of the majority. So it really, I think it's really a matter of do those in power, then watch out be for those who aren't in power. So it's always about power, right? Yeah, a few sessions ago you brought up the issue we got into positive power and negative power. I think it always is about power. But there are ways to design policies that keep power from being exploited, exploitative. I think I would focus on exploitive power. Some power is exploitive, and we have to design policies that punish for exploitive power and charge for exploitive power. You have to pay. Yeah, and also power that looks out for those who don't have power, because even though the majority may, may, should win elections, you know, it doesn't mean that the majority gets to abuse the minority, so I feel that leaders often, they get elected by the majority, but they have to look out for the minority. And I think maybe that's a distinction we need to make, leadership versus power. Leadership is controlled, or is concerned with everyone. Power is not. Power is wanting for yourself. That's it. Yeah, whereas leadership. So you want to elect leaders, not people that are just powerful. We're drawn to powerful people, but I think as voters and as citizens, we have to, and as women, choosing partners to make a distinction between someone who's just interested in raw power and someone who's a leader. And there is a distinction, a pretty major one. And it sounds like you're talking sense to the species with all the answers. That's going to be the next chapter. Thank you, folks. Len, we're crazy. Yes, we are.