 I'm Leonard Diggins and I am the host of this series called What Sex Got To Do With It. And my guest is, or my fellow guest is, is Heather Remoff, the author and the subtitle of the series? Darwin, Love, Lust and the Anthropocene. Yes. Yes. Quite the mouthful. I could introduce the series a whole lot more, but what would be the point? Let's just get right into it. And unlike most series where you start at the very beginning, where did I start at the end on this one? I started with the acknowledgments. And so, Heather, first off, I'm going to give you an opportunity, I mean, if there was any one or any people that you left out of the acknowledgments that you wish were in, here's your chance. I don't think so. Okay. Well, people like you, people who I met after the book was in place, you know, I wish you were in the acknowledgments. I've met other people since the book was written that have been very helpful to me. If only you could appear into the future, well, hopefully, you know, maybe that'll be something that we can... Yeah. So, yes. You know, I have other people who've been very helpful to me since the book was published. Great, great, great. And, you know, I can kind of relate, you know, to your graduate school experience and to me, even though I didn't go to grad school myself, you know, you went later. I mean, I kind of, to a certain extent, I spent a lot of time in a graduate school setting because I worked in the Lueington Lab as a tech for a long time. And I really appreciate it. It seemed like it was kind of the environment that you had at Rutgers. It isn't so much that it was interdisciplinary as much as it was that it brought in a lot of people from different disciplines. So in that sense, it was interdisciplinary, but it wasn't like... It was a couple of labs from different disciplines that were connected. It was more that Richard Lueington attracted a lot of different people. And so my period of time there was really a wonderful period of time, Ed. And so you mentioned Lionel and Robin, they were like directors there? They weren't directors. They were my mentors. I feel so lucky. I was very naive when I was younger. I guess in some ways I still am. I just didn't realize there were things I couldn't do. And, you know, I did the standard thing of getting my undergraduate degree, but that was in sociology. And, you know, the first thing I learned in sociology, they said, my first professor said the underlying premise of sociology is that all behavior is learned. I did not believe that. I'd grown up around all kinds of animals. I knew that all behavior was not learned within different breeds of sheep or pigs or dogs. Behavior, you could predict it based on the breed. But I went through three and a half years of undergraduate school pretending I believed that because I wanted to get good grades. And then I did the standard thing, got married, had kids, et cetera. And I was living in Kansas City. And a friend started lending me books written by an author who was talking about the evolution of behavior. And I thought, wow, Robert Archery, maybe the field of sociology is ready for me now. And so University of Kansas City, University of Missouri at Kansas City was a short drive for me. I enrolled for a master's in sociology thinking, oh, finally sociology is ready to look at behavior, the link between behavior and biology. And my first graduate level class at UMKC, the professor said, now the underlying premise of sociology is that all behavior is learned. I thought, oh, no, they're still not ready for me, but they were. That was a night school. And I really didn't have a lot of connection with my fellow students and professors. But that department allowed me to do my master's thesis on the relationship between a woman's rank in an all-female hierarchy and her testosterone levels. And the endocrinologist, we drew blood to test it. The endocrinologist I worked with was stunned. I was expecting a positive correlation at three groups of women. And I got perfect negative correlation in two of the groups and a strong negative correlation in the third. So it was that research that Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox were interested in at Rutgers. And again, I never wanted to be an academic. I always wanted to be a writer. The only time, both times for my master's and my PhD, I went back to school when there were questions I wanted to answer, was curious about. And I couldn't find the answers in books. And so once I had my master's thesis, I was really suddenly excited, wow, there is a link between biology and behavior. And then I read a book, Violino, Tiger and Robin Fox, The Imperial Animal. And they were also talking about the link between biology and behavior. It was in the early days of sociobiology. So I thought, I want to study under those two men because I have questions I want answered. And so I applied to Rutgers and based on my master's thesis, I think that they felt I was a good fit for the program because it was the early days of sociobiology. I think one reason I connect with you, Len, and that you connected with my book is because you have some background in population genetics. And so you sort of get the kinds of things that drive my curiosity. Yes, yes. And the Lowenton Lab was right underneath the E.O. Wilson Lab at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. And as you know, E.O. Wilson was a big sociobiology researcher. And there's certainly some tension between the labs, but I hear where you're coming from and certainly there is that connection. And I thank you for that history because I was interested in understanding how you got into a graduate program. And the motive for it, and I can certainly relate to the desire to want to learn things and answer questions, figure out stuff. And the research environment is really a great place for doing that. One of the outside members of my dissertation committee was Robert Trivers, who at that time was at Harvard. And when I read a paper that he'd written on sexual selection and lizards, I thought, oh, this man gets it. I didn't realize these were important people because, again, I was naive. And I hopped in my little VW bug and drove from New Jersey up to Cambridge to ask Robert Trivers if he'd be the outside member of my dissertation committee. And at that point, he showed me through the labs, E.O. Wilson's lab, and so forth, and that showed me the answer. But again, I didn't know to be excited about that. Now, I have to say that I really credit Bob Trivers with doing the research that was foundational to the whole discipline of what is now called evolutionary psychology. But that back then was called sociobiology. And his research is really foundational to that field. And so I was very, very lucky that he agreed to do that. And he was very, he's more than anyone has influenced the way I think about the world. Interesting. So yeah, that was actually one of the person I wanted to talk about because you mentioned that he was the first person that made you aware of our very human talent for self-deception and deceit. So that's an intense statement. So can you tell me more of the, so what is it, hardly the question to ask here. What is this talent that we have for self-deception and deceit? It's a talent that's a bit of a double-edged sword. It's a talent that's based in our language ability. And of all the species that have ever evolved on this planet, there's only one that has symbolic communication, and that's humans, that's language. All species communicate. I happen to think that plants even communicate, but all species have systems of communication, but only humans have language. And it's through language that we employ self-deception and deceit. I mean, that is the source of our dubious ability to do that because we're very good at lying to ourselves, convincing ourselves of the purity of our own motives. And then once we believe that, we're very, very good at convincing other people. And Bob Trivers actually has written several books in which he deals with that, but it was in personal conversation that he first made me aware of the concept. That's interesting. So I mean, having read your book, I mean, I know what role language is going to play. And so his conclusion about humans being very good at self-deception and deceit is based on language. I don't think he made languages central, part of it as I do. I've come to understand the importance of language, only since, I mean, I've always known language is important even when I was in graduate school, there was speculation about what drove the evolution of human language, and there's all kinds of reasons that are given. But it was not until I was here in Arlington, I moved here in 2008. And as I mentioned, I had a 20-year period where I kind of got lost in the field of economic activism, and it was only when I moved up here that my interest in evolutionary theory came roaring back because of Harvard, MIT, the Broad Institute, Radcliffe, all these wonderful lectures that are made available to us, to the public. And suddenly I was so excited, and I have a friend who's a linguist. And when she came to visit me from California, she said, oh, let's have a salon. We'll get a bunch of people and we'll talk about the evolution of language. She gave me a bunch of books to read prior to doing that, and suddenly I'm seeing languages so central to everything that is human. But for Trivers, what was he basing the statement that humans are good at self-deception? I think he was just aware that that's how humans behaved. I think he described it behaviorally and could see how it worked in terms of getting genes passed on. He's definitely saw its importance in terms of evolutionary success, reproductive success, getting your genes into the genes of the next generation. And since men and women, if you're looking at it biologically, might have competing ways to get to the same conclusion of getting their genes into the gene pools of the next generation. Self-deception and deceit become important in that as well. So I think that was more his basis. Got you. So moving along in the acknowledgments, you mentioned James Tyrone Lane, you don't say much. You say that he understands creative passion and it's been a part of my life since he was six and I was 46. You don't say much at all, but I'll tell you why. First off, you don't say much. And secondly, we share a similar, what we share, the identical middle name. So now there's that connection to me. So that was kind of like, do you care to say more? Well, you know, the reason I don't say more is because I want him to tell his own story. But James, I'm going to say more now because he's coming to Boston. This is going to make me cry. Oh, wow, I love him so much. He's coming to Boston next week because he has a major role in the musical Ain't Too Proud, The Temptation Show, and my family and I will be going in to see him perform. But also I'll be meeting up with him, you know, otherwise. But yeah, he was the most wonderful kid. I lived in Center City, Philadelphia. And he was friend. He went to the magnet school. There was a magnet elementary school just around the corner from me. And it was school performing arts, which is what he wanted to do. And he went to that school. But he played with a little boy who lived next door to me. I wanted to hear, knock, knock, knock on the door. And there are these two little kids. And they said, do you have some string and some paper cups because we want to make a telephone? I thought it was all in. Okay. So next thing, these two little guys are there with paper cups and string, and they're talking to each other, and they're talking to me. And James and I have been talking to each other ever since. He is just an important person in my life. And although I was drawn to him because he was so adorably cute, there was also some recognition, intellect. We made an intellectual, a very, very strong intellectual connection. I don't know how else to describe it. I sort of recognized him as a kindred spirit. So even though I was maternal with him and protective of him, we kind of connected at an intellectual and friendship level. One day we were riding bikes on Penn's Landing, and he said to me, Heather, don't you think we're funny friends? I said, I don't know. Why? He said, well, you know, I'm a boy, and you're a girl. So no, you think we're funny friends? I said, well, I don't know, not really. He said, well, you know, you're white, and I'm black, and I'm young, and you're old. Don't you think we're funny friends? I said, well, I guess when you look at it that way, we are funny friends. But the main thing is we're friends, and we were, and we always have been. Well, that's great. Yeah. That's great. And that's the ace difference that made me key in on it, because me, you know, a friend of mine who actually worked at, it was a museum of comparative geology, and he was very much into crocodiles, meaning so he and his wife had a daughter, and so I started babysitting her from the time that she was two months old, and I babysitted her at least like once a week. So we developed a really good relationship, you know. So something about it made me think, oh, I wonder if it's kind of a similar relationship. And even though it wasn't babysitting because he was older, it's still that kind of like, I imagine kind of regular interaction where. Yeah, and even when my late husband and I moved from Philadelphia, you know, to a rural area of Pennsylvania, we stayed in touch, and he would come visit, and when he was in college. And then he, you know, once he began auditioning for shows in New York, I knew he wasn't going to finish college because he's very talented. Right. And so he's, you know, he's very successful Broadway performer. Excellent. Excellent. Well, I'm happy I asked, and that almost makes it the whole thing worthwhile, and I'm certainly glad that we started at the end. And particularly since Ain't Too Proud is coming to Boston next week, so I hope people go see the show, and they're going to be grand. Excellent. You know, so, so, so as you mentioned a couple of times already, you moved here, I mean, in, in 2008, where were you right before you moved here? Well, a little, we'd lived in Philadelphia for a while. We'd lived in Burnardsville, New Jersey for a while. We, we moved a lot. We moved here from Eaglesmere, Pennsylvania, which is a tiny little resort town on the top of a mountain in North Central Pennsylvania, had 123 year-round residents and between two and three thousand summer residents, we lived there year-round. And then from there I moved up here. And as I said, once I moved up here, I just, oh, oh, oh, evolutionary biology. But what brought you here? My late husband had been in business, a business executive, but he'd always wanted to teach. And so he took an early retirement to apply for teaching jobs. And he was hired at UMass Boston as an adjunct professor. And I have a daughter and a son-in-law and a granddaughter in Arlington. And so, you know, it was, it was a no-brainer once he got offered that job. That's what brought us up here. But it's the perfect spot for me now. I loved Eaglesmere when I was there. I wrote a book about how much I loved Eaglesmere. But this is the perfect place for me now. And it just feels like this is so meant to be. I love this area. Love, love, love Arlington. Of course, that warms my heart because, you know, I have a little nice little roll in town, so it's good to hear that you like the town. Do you know what made you say you have a daughter, a son-in-law, and a grandson? Here in Arlington, I have a daughter, a son-in-law and a granddaughter. A granddaughter who's now in her first year at UNH. You know what made them come to... My daughter went to BU. She rode from BU, you know, she was, and she fell in love with Boston. And so she was very eager to come back. She stayed, actually, and worked in Boston after she graduated. Then moved to Philadelphia where she met the man she's now married to. And when John was looking for a job, they focused in on Boston, the Boston area. Yeah, gotcha. And they love it too, yeah. Gotcha. So... Oh, okay, now I remember the question. And this will probably be the last question. So you've written more than one book, apparently. Yes. You know, how many? Well, I can tell you, I've written many more than I've had published. I can't stop writing. But the three that have been commercially published, or this one, what sex got to do with it. My first book was called Sexual Selection. I'd called it Female Choice. Darwin's Theory of Female Choice and Sexual Selection. My publisher at E. P. Dutton changed it to Sexual Choice. Cleverly figuring out that a book with sex in the title would get me on all the talk shows, which it did. So that was my first book. I turned my dissertation into a trade book, is essentially what I did. But my original editor, not E. P. Dutton, but a small publisher had purchased it first and then sold it to E. P. Dutton. They edited out all the theory. And so that was left... You know, I didn't have my evolutionary theory, and they're my challenges to Darwin, my update of Darwin. So that was the first book, Sexual Choice. And then I tried to write some books on economics because I began to really see the connection between sexual selection and economic behavior. I did not get them published. Then I was diagnosed with a very, very serious cancer, and I thought, wow, if I'm going to write books, you know, I better quit having so much fun in life. And, you know, time is... I might not have time. And so that... I wrote a book called February Light, which was a memoir about the cancer years, and St. Martin's Press published that one. So I've only three that have been commercially published. I worked for someone who did sort of life histories of people and converted them to books. So I did that kind of ghost writing for that gentleman, and then on my own. But if I count them up, I've written 13 books. And I've really only had three commercially published. I don't totally count the ones that I did, you know, as a ghost writer, but three under my own name. But yeah, I've written 13. I probably shouldn't admit to that. Oh, no, no, no. I think that's great, I mean, personally. So you take... So how many were ghost written? Well, the one that was ghost written that almost, you know, became commercially published, that was the only complete book. The others were, you know, the kinds of things where someone tells their life story, and then they just want a book for their family members. That's what those... I got you. That's what theirs were. I got you. But those that would deal with interesting, as I consider it, intellectual material, how many of those were unpublished? Well, because I was having trouble getting... It is hard to challenge Darwin. People assume that I'm not interested in science. And so I was having a lot of trouble when I would pitch nonfiction books. So I thought, I'll put these ideas in fiction books. I'll sell them that way. So I wrote a trilogy that had many of my ideas about evolution, sexual selection and economics. And that was fantasy trilogy. I don't even read fantasy. The arrogance of writing that is hysterical. So I didn't get that published. And then I've... Since I've been in Boston before I wrote this book, I wrote Near Future Science Fiction that has a lot of my ideas. My nonfiction ideas disguised as fiction, which is not a good idea. But those books, those four, the four attempts at fiction, I'm still very close to. The nonfiction books, one I called Out of England. But I don't think they were so great. Well, the fiction ones, though, sound interesting. I'm intrigued. The whole reason I'm driving at this is to say, have you considered making them available electronically? You don't need to go through a publisher now, unless maybe you're thinking about still having them published. But I'm getting at it because I would love to read them. Lynn, you're a brute for punishment. When I first met you and you said you were interested in seeing the cover design on my book, we were both attending a Zoom meeting. And you heard me offering it to show it to some of my buddies on the committee. And you said, oh, I'd like to see that too, Heather. And we chatted a bit before the meeting. I said, oh, this man understands evolutionary biology. He understands genetics. And so you read it in manuscript form. So in terms of the fiction books, I'm such a dreamer. I think, well, wow, if what sex got to do with it would become a big book, maybe someone would be interested in publishing my fantasy trilogy, because the same ideas are in there. I wrote that so long ago. And I look at it, I predicted so many of the things that have happened in terms of our politics and emphasis on wall building and so many of those things that have since come to pass. You have got to get it published. And what I'm hoping is that in the attempt to try to get it published, I will get to be one of your proofreaders, because I'm not a fantasy person either, but knowing where your whole book is going and the concepts in it, especially the economic stuff, and not what you told me about it predicted. Because essentially prediction, I find it's not like I'm a psychic. I feel the future. It's more like you just kind of say, OK, well, you start here. Sequentially, where do things go? I mean, probabilistically, you're not saying I'm predicting it, but probabilistically, this is what could happen. I go back and I anticipated a lot of the environmental concerns that we had. But, you know, Len, I wrote these thinking it was probably young adult. There's a romance, you know, that's the romance that drives the story. So I was kind of aiming at a young adult female audience. What are you saying that I probably wouldn't be interested in? I don't know. I don't know if you would be or not. Because, you know, I kind of bury the economic ideas. They're in there for me, and my feeling was, oh, I would hope that when young people would be finished reading that they would think, wait, why couldn't that work for us now? Why couldn't we have that kind of a solution that would give us economic equality and would save the environment? Because those were the two things I was concerned about even then. That was like 15 years ago, still concerned about economic inequality and the environment. Well, even if it wouldn't appeal to me because I'm not the demographic and I'm fine with that, you know, I will say that one of the things that I've been working on in town here is getting a youth and young adult advisory board meeting for the town meeting. And hopefully in this session of town meeting, we're going to vote that in. It'll be called the Young Arlington Collaborative. And the whole premise of it is to get youth and young adults in town really thinking about, I mean, how their government can work for them, getting them more involved in their local government. And so, I mean, a lot of them have ideas along these lines anyways. And I think it'd be great for them to be exposed to that more, if not through fiction, then through direct speech. Just the idea of following your passion. Yeah. You know, doing, we all have things that I think we all do. Dream something we believe in. An idea that gets us out of bed in the morning. I want to bring this to pass. I think I have an answer to something. I want to have my voice heard. And encouraging young people to believe in themselves. I think that's really important. Yeah, because they are the future and I certainly remember how. How much I valued having adults meet and just listen to me and interact with me. And I think that's what, you know, was his name, James? James Tyrone. Now he called, when he was little, I call him Rony. For Tyrone, he went by Tyrone when he was a little guy. And I asked him when we were talking on the phone the other day. I said, how would I even spell Rony? Because I am a bit dyslexic. He said, however you want to spell it after, I said, what do you mind if I, because when I'm feeling real affectionate, I'll spell Rony. Do you mind? Because my daughter will sometimes say to me, mommy goes by James. I said, yeah, but I knew him when he was Tyrone. Right. And funny when I was growing up too, I went by Tyrone too. Did you? Because my mom gave me that. That was her favorite name for me. My first name is Alana's in London. We are way out of time.