 And welcome to episode number five of what sex has got to do with it. I'm here with Heather Remoth, my favorite great grandmother in all of Massachusetts. Wow. As you can tell. Get more expensive. We have more expensive. We have another layer to go. A few more layers to go. You don't know that many great-grandmothers. Just so people don't think I'm your great-grandmother. I'd love to be adopted by you. So chapter four is female choice and the origin of man, and you're the reason for the title of that chapter. The reason for the title of that chapter is that I really believe that the way the female of the human species chose their partners is what has shaped us into the humans we are. And as one friend once said to me, well, Heather, how can you say we're a terrible species and also claim that women shaped us? I said, I'm not saying they did a great job of it, Cliff. But I think that women selected men who would make sure that the female herself, her children, had a good chance of surviving. And by that selection process, the species that we are today has really been shaped. Now as we mentioned in an earlier discussion, I'm convinced that the initial thing that started us down the road was an end-to-end chromosome fusion. But I think that fusion came with some drawbacks as so many of those chromosomal nondisjunctions and so forth sometimes do come with drawbacks. And then in order to overcome them, women selected for certain traits that would ensure their survival, like skill with building shelters, so technological skills, language ability, all of the things that make us human. And I think things that were very, very functional in the beginning, in the early stages, say 300,000 years ago, of our evolution may have become non-functional at this stage in that our control of resources is so excessive. We seem to be a species with insatiable desire, and we're operating with a finite planet. We have infinite desires, and we're working with a finite planet. So in terms of climate change, we have to learn to rise above some of our species-specific traits. As I said, it's a little bit of a mystery, but you're giving it away, but that's okay. You're handing it at it, you're giving it at it. I'm just getting teases. Yeah, just teases. Yeah. And so apparently you conducted a study, and you said the determination was a subjective one, largely based on a women's assessment of a man's intelligence relative to her own. That's your study, right? Yep. And so I'm curious, do women prefer the guys to be smarter than them, or-oh. So not just smart, but smarter than they were, that's interesting. Relative to their own intelligence. In fact, I didn't say in this book, but I've said elsewhere, particularly in discussions with my female friends, that in terms of mating, it's most-it pictured two different hierarchies. Hierarchy of the available men, and a hierarchy of the available females. The men at the bottom of the hierarchy have the most difficulty finding mates. And the women at the top of the female hierarchy have the most difficulty finding mates. Because they want men to be at least as smart as they are, at least as attractive as they are, all of those things. And that becomes more difficult for a woman at the top of the heap. And it's difficult for men at the bottom, because women are selecting up, women tend to select up. So they want men to be at least as smart as they are, even better if they're smarter. And all of those things. That's so interesting. I get that. It kind of fits anecdotally what I've heard mean, especially me, because I spent a fair amount of time in academic circles, and what you say about women who are at the top, they do have a hard time. It's interesting because I thought it might have been that the men were intimidated by them, but you're indicating that the women just aren't interested in someone that they consider less intelligent than they are. And I think your theory of intimidation, some of that may work too. It may be an operation. Yeah, it's a combination of things. Yeah, it's a combination of things, but women, and again, this is all relative to them, like a woman might decide a man was wealthy. That's compared to her own level of wealth. So the women's judgments of the men were subjective, and I took their way of valuing men to be what I was after. I was looking, and I think I say somewhere in the book, I don't remember if I say it in this chapter. We may talk about it later if not, that the evolutionary directive to women appears to be when you can find the perfect man and when you can't, invent him. And it's when women are busy inventing men that we get ourselves in trouble. When we ascribe traits to a man that he doesn't actually have because we want him to have those traits and we haven't found the perfect man. So you say smarter. Where does stronger, taller, and wealthier fit into your choices of men? I mean, smarter is like the top, I mean, how would the others rank? Did you consider that at all? And more so what I'm trying to get at to ask one long question. Does wealth ever substitute in nicely for intelligence? Yes. I don't know nicely. Not nicely, but wealth is a big attention getter. I mean, it's a big, I tend not to like wealthy men, I'm uncomfortable with them, but nonetheless, signs of wealth will catch my attention. I mean, and... Doesn't imply intelligence? Doesn't imply intelligence? I don't think so, although I did, I'm not as far as I'm concerned, but as I told you, I have a bias against extremely wealthy men. I have a personal bias against them, not at all related to evolution, I don't think. But I did hear what Bill Maher the other night and was stunned and shocked, actually driven to screaming at the TV when he and his three guests all agreed that Jeff Bezos was the smartest man in the world. And I'm going, no, no, no, he's the wealthiest man in the world. And don't confuse wealth with intelligence, very different things. At one point I point out that's a mistake that Darwin made. I said, I was one of my favorite lines and I can't remember it, that confusing wealth with genetic superiority is a mistake made most often by those with great fortunes, as Darwin had. And watching those folks on Bill Maher nominate Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. Oh, really? I was like, hey. No, no, no, no, no, sorry, I had that wrong. Take it back, take it back. It was Elon Musk they were talking about. And he is now the wealthiest man in the world, right? I think he's number one now. And they all declared that he was the smartest man in the world. They just outraged me. No, no, no, no, no, don't confuse the two. They're not the same. Yeah, I'm going to leave that one alone. I'm not going to. No, no, don't go there. I'm revealing my own biases here. No, no, no, I certainly have my feelings to me about the person that we've mentioned. And I'm just going to leave it there for now. But to answer your question, I don't consider wealth and intelligence to be a good. I don't think there's necessarily a strong correlation between the two. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. This is some kind of scrolling through my notes here. It's like, this is an interesting chapter. I'm going to keep this to the amount of time that we have. Because we do talk about inheritors of acquired characteristics. I want to come back to that very shortly. But you talked earlier about rational thinking is selected for only as long as it doesn't interfere with the push towards co-creation. Do you see when something to you is irrational, is it also illogical? I don't know how to answer that question. I don't think we're rational actors. I think language, which to me, that's the heart of human exceptionalism, is based in our language about me. And I don't think one thing that language enables us to do is to lie. And we're very good at lying to ourselves and convincing ourselves that what we believe is true. So we're much better at rationalizing than we are at rational thinking as a species. We're really good at rationalization. OK, so then when something is irrational to you, what does that mean? Me personally? Yeah, you personally. Or if, yeah, or you see, I'm trying to tease out what people really mean by irrational, you know? I think what people mean is that they're not thinking clearly. And what, to me, rationalization works better for me than to say someone's irrational. I know that we're just very, very good at justifying our own behavior at convincing ourselves that we're right, that we're doing something for the general good that really benefits us personally. To me, that's rationalization. So to go back to your original question, logic, I view as something a little bit different. You know, it's certain steps you take if A is true, then B is that kind of thing. That's logical thinking. And in a way, those systems of logic protect us from the kind of rationalization that we fall prey to. I often say that the scientific method was designed to keep us honest because we're so good at kidding ourselves. What I sometimes find, too, is that when people say something is rational, they then say it can't possibly be logical. And so they dismiss trying to figure out why it is irrational. Because I think for people, it's like, if you come to the wrong conclusion, then, of course, it could have been logical. And for me, it's like, no, you can come to the wrong conclusion. It's just you need to figure out where the failure, I mean, in the logic happened, I mean, and either it is in the wrong premises, which is essentially the conclusion about the premises, or it's in the conclusion that you make all the correct premises. And so I was just teasing out what you meant by irrational, just to try to maybe test what I feel about me. Rational still has a logic to it. You just need to figure out what that logic is. Are we referring to that irrational has a logic to it? You just need to figure out what that is. And it can have a reproductive logic to it to get back to evolution. We can be very irrational. And it can serve the purpose. As I've said, the human brain was shaped by evolution to be really good at two things, reproduction and survival. And it can be not so great at a whole bunch of other stuff. Here's an example of the interviewee keeping the interviewer on topic. So thanks for bringing me back to the whole reason that we're here. And I'm going to go back to the topic that I said I get back to that is inheritance of acquired characteristics. Yeah, that's an interesting one in epigenetics mean. I think you make a really good case for epigenetics mean and its role in almost be like a substitute for inheritance of acquired characteristics. Because as you point out, in order for people to consider a characteristic to stick, it would have to stick forward four generations. Because that would take care of all the effects of the reproductive elements during the exposure that has created the epigenetic response. And so to me, I almost see epigenetic responses as the inherited acquired characteristic or the characteristic mean that they're kind of freezes. Would inheritance of acquired characteristics, well, I was going to say, here's what you think. Oh, I didn't write your question down. All right, but I thought about, since I remember the conclusion I came to that, that the epigenetics or the ability to have an epigenetic response was itself the acquired characteristic that's inherited. So the fact that we have that mean and it can allow for me, essentially, the species to capture a trait that it wants if it may persist long enough. Because what you said is that, well, if it is beneficial for you to have this trait, the species to have this trait, you essentially have four generations in order to get it. All my, I'm really summarizing a really brilliant lecture I heard at the Radcliffe Institute. I forget her name. Karen Michaels, something of that nature. And she really explained in ways that were over the heads of, I think, most of us in the audience. But she explained it in such a way that we could know it, but not explain it to someone else. Sort of the molecular reactions that triggered the epigenetic changes. And she convinced me that they only last for three or four generations, depending on whether or not the woman. For example, they're talking about extreme hunger during the Holocaust, the standard example in which people say, oh, well, that demonstrates the inheritance of acquired characteristics. And she says not so fast. It really, this is epigenetic inheritance. It's a really permanently acquired characteristic. And she explained at the molecular level what's happening to cause those changes. And the examples that are most often cited are children of the Holocaust, where their parents were starving tend to gain weight very easily in subsequent generations. It's almost like they're pre-adapted to a scarcity of food. And then when they're in an environment where suddenly there's plenty of food, they gain weight. And people claim that as an example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. And this researcher said, no, this is limited over time. But that, if you really did need to have that characteristic. It would stay. If the conditions, if the scarcity, what I kind of pushed onto that is if the scarcity was permanent, then there'd be time to select for that trait in a way that would make it a permanent fixture. And given how fast we can evolve when we select for a trait, they'd be a way. And so I actually written the question later on. So I said, epigenetic change, is the acquired inherited characteristic made of? And I know that's more poetic than accurate. But it's almost like, well, yeah, we don't have the genetic mechanism to allow for inheritance of acquired characteristics. But the fact that we can experience epigenetic change is essentially the... A way to go. And of course, at one point Darwin was very, Darwin had everything in his theory. I mean, he can pick and choose. But he himself said, as with any theory, not everything is gonna be correct with further studies. Some of the points I'm making may be proven to be wrong. I give him a lot of credit for saying that. But he, the evolution of acquired characteristics was very much in his theory of human evolution, an evolution in general, that acquired characteristics would be inherited. Darwin, that's in his book. Yeah, it's kind of interesting that it's not there. I mean, it just makes me wonder what would be the genetic mechanism that would allow it to happen and why isn't that mechanism there, you know? Well, in a sense, as the researcher, the epigenetic researcher that I heard speak, in certain circumstances, it can happen. I mean, there can be epigenetic inheritance that causes changes that are adaptive for the species experiencing them and whether or not they become permanent really depends on whether the condition that inspired that initial epigenetic change becomes permanent, gives you time to do the other selecting. That's my take on it. Yeah, and I may be proven wrong tomorrow. Some people are listening to this right now. They say, uh-uh-uh, she's got that wrong. Right, right. Well, I mean, I understand part of the mechanism is just that depending on the species, the eggs being produced early on and they're kind of protected me from what's going on, I mean, the rest of the organism to a certain extent, I mean, stress, I mean, can have the epigenetic change, I mean, but if you, I was about to say if you become, if you become a really fast runner, I mean, that won't work either because I mean, a fast runner is genetically a fast runner. So I'm gonna need to get myself out of this and try to thought. It's something else because me, I can't. Oh, epigenetics is complicated and discussions of it are complicated and fun. I mean, because it's not fully understood and that to me is what I love things that are not fully understood because they're kind of a mystery that I wanna solve and get figured out and that's what we're working with here. Yeah, I guess I'll, and it depends on what we call a characteristic too. So I was getting caught up in things that are really genetic, but let's say you experience a traumatic episode that results in the loss of a limb or something. Well, that's not gonna be passed on, but nor should it, but then again, is that a characteristic? It's not really, it's just a description of something that's happened. I'll say it happened to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think I'm gonna leave it at that for this chapter. I mean, a lot of it had to do with epigenetics to me, but as I mentioned in other episodes, I mean, yeah, other episodes, other chapters, every chapter actually, you know, there's just lots of interesting stories, you know. One of the things I had fun with, I think in this chapter is Darwin's own courtship with the woman he married, his cousin, Emma Darwin. And he went through a list of traits, pros and cons of getting married. And one of his reasons for getting married, well, in terms, it's companionship and better than a dog anyhow. And I think it was in this chapter that I made the crack. If that had been Emma Darwin's criterion for choosing a partner, she would have gotten herself a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that women would select much more intensely than Darwin was doing. And of course, he didn't believe that civilized women were any longer intelligent enough to make choices. And I had a bit of fun with that. I said, his system of getting choices, making choices is an example of civilized made selection. I didn't think so, but because Darwin was such a misogynist, I, you know, I sometimes get impatient with his assumptions about female behavior. Yeah, well, it's what we should, huh? So, yeah, so, well, you know, it's perhaps not the happiest note to end the chapter on. But it's a note we can have fun with. I mean, people make, I mean, that's fun to tease about those things, right? Yeah, I hear it, you know, and I'm fine with that, you know, and sometimes my endings are gonna be smooth and sometimes they're not. Smooth enough. Yeah, smooth enough, Ian, and I'll just tease people with that next episode. It's gonna be chapter five, and it's the difference that makes a difference, Ian. I like this chapter. I do too, I do too, Ian, and so, yeah, I'm gonna have fun with that one, Ian. And so, so consider yourself teased, folks. Thanks.