 And welcome to the sixth episode of What's Sex Got To Do With It? And I'm here again with Heather Remos, the author, the 84-year-old great-grandmother, my favorite great-grandmother in all of New England. You are, you're really getting excessive there, like we're going to drain you in a little bit. Oh, yeah. Good luck, Heather. You're going to make a lot of great-grandmothers unhappy. Be careful. Okay. Well, okay. Now you put it that way. All right. All right. Maybe I'll name it a little bit next time, you know, but so let's go into chapter five. And so chapter five is called The Differences That Make a Difference. And I've been doing for the last three or four episodes. You want to tell us why that title? Yeah, because I want to talk about, in that chapter, I think I talk about the things, you know, sometimes a very small difference makes a huge difference in outcome. And the differences that make a difference with humans are the way we are brain-evolved and our reproductive strategies evolved. They're very, very different. And I don't remember, we talked about before, and if it's in this chapter later, when I was in grad school, I'm talking about doing the research I wanted to do when I was trying to explain to one of the professors who happened to be a primatologist why I was interested in interviewing women. I thought it would give us a clue as to the evolutionary past of humans. I subscribed to Darwin's theory that female choice drove sexual selection. And he looked at me and he said, choice. He said, if you've ever seen a female chimp in heat, it's total pandemonium, a wild orgy. There's absolutely no choice at all. And then he went down the hall laughing and saying so much for your theory of female choice. And I thought, oh wow, that may be the difference that makes the difference between chimps and humans. That was my eureka moment that made me think concealed ovulation is something that sets humans apart from all mammals, but other primates in particular. So that's one of the differences that makes a difference, language is a difference that makes a difference. And the concealed ovulation is certainly going to come back to that towards the end of this discussion. I'm not sure how much time that's going to take, I just want to get a couple questions before then. And these are kind of technical. So you start off talking about the notch two gene and how it seems like it may have an effect on brain size because apparently humans have two copies of that, whereas great apes have just one copy of that. You remember that part? Yes, I remember. But I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory. I report on it. You report on it? Okay. Yes. And the reason I don't necessarily subscribe to it is the gentleman who talked about that. He mentions previously, I forget the number of thousands of years when the human brain first expanded. And yet that was before the notch two gene evolved. So I'm saying if it's the notch two gene that drove the evolution of a large human brain, how come our cranial capacity was already large before that gene evolved? But many people do feel that that's a place to look. I don't happen to be one of them. But I respect that theory. That gentleman has done a lot of research in genetics and is very skilled. Right, because my other question is going to be that's on chromosome one and then the fusion was on chromosome two, right? Chromosome two. Okay. Got it. So there's a story about this family, the Spanish family, meaning that had a fusion of chromosomes 13 and 14. So that's another case where you have a fusion that takes the number of chromosomes down, meaning from 46 to 44. Question, were their children able to reproduce? I never could find data on that. And there was no date on that. That was listed in the paper describing the end-to-end chromosome fusion of chromosome two and made the point that it's not fatal to have that happen and that those children were otherwise healthy. But they don't specify whether, you know, I never could find out. I tried to Google it and research it. I could never find anything further about that family. But the parents, I think, both, if I'm remembering correctly, both had the chromosome fusion. The parents of those kids also had that. And you remind me, Len, what chromosome was that? 13, 14. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's... So it can happen. It does happen. That's okay. All right. That makes sense. I was thinking that some... And then the whole basis of that was that they kind of identified each other, maybe subconsciously. Yeah. You know, because they had that difference. And then I guess that answers the question. Yeah. They are able to reproduce. The parents were. So at least the ones that... The parents that had it, and presumably, I mean, the kids would have that fusion. Yes. Yes, for that same fusion. And apparently it didn't impact very much, because from what little information there was in the paper that I read, no obvious difference in traits, whereas the difference between humans and chimps is pretty dramatically obvious. So I think it really depends which chromosome fuses, and it's relatively rare to have end-to-end chromosome fusions. Right. And it's just more as a commentary, you point out how, well, we all need pretty much notice the bad mutations, you know, the things that may have a positive effect. We don't really necessarily identify it as a mutation. We simply say, well, that's a variation in the species, you know. Or just, oh, my daughter's so beautiful, she has extra long legs. We never stop to think, wait, wait, you don't go to a doctor and say, do a genetic workup on this child to see why her legs are so incredibly long. We don't do that if it's a trait that's not causing a problem. And of course, I happen to believe that there are traits that get inherited that are not necessarily good or necessarily bad, they're just there. They don't necessarily carry an advantage. However, in the future they might, should there be some shift in the environment, they might prove to be advantageous. And I think that's one of the wonderful things about sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual is we carry a hidden store of genes, genes that are not necessarily expressed, but can be called on when times change. Right, right, right, right. So, I mean, we're going to go back to what you were talking about early about the female chimps, I mean, and the difference between one of your proposed hypotheses is that, I mean, because humans, women, you know, have the ability to conceal their ovulation and they have greater control over who. So, what about pheromones? Oh, I'm a big believer in pheromones. I think pheromones, you know, we're not necessarily aware of them. But I think they play a very large part. I don't, you know, I have done no research on the pheromonal associations of say ovulation, even concealed ovulation. But I think pheromones, in my chapter on language, I develop the theory that pheromones are inherently honest, whereas with language we can lie. But concealed ovulation just gives women a choice. I mean, my professor, the primatologist, it doesn't sound like that female chimp is make no apparent choices. Now, you don't know what choices are being imposed physiologically. You know, whether they're a certain sperm that she is way of blocking, et cetera, et cetera. But according to him, complete orgy, complete pandemonium, no evidence of choice at all. I would think that if you look a little deeper, you will find my suspicion would be you'd find some kind of choice. But with humans, no apparent estrus. That's absolutely unheard of in mammals. I, you know, that we all know the dog back in the days when I was a kid, nobody got their dogs neutered and spayed, and you'd see all the little male dogs marching down the highway very determinedly. They were on their way somewhere, they picked up the pheromonal cues that somewhere there was a female dog in heat and they were on their way. But with humans, that's the, you know, we don't announce when we're off, you know. So you don't think the pheromones announce? No, no, not in the same way. I know it's a matter of degree, you know, but I was just thinking about maybe it kind of attracts, you know. It's possible. I have great faith in the power of pheromones, but in humans, I think other things are great attraction, you know. And you know, the women I interviewed did not feel they were in control of courtship, none of them did. They felt they sat home and waited for a phone call from a man. But when I would ask them how they met the gentleman in question, oh, the detail they would go into, well, one time my car was in the shop and so I took the train and there was, oh, there was the cutest guy on the train. And so from then on, I started taking the train and I took the same, I got on at the same time he did and gradually got comfortable enough we'd say hi, then I'd sit next to him. A lot of signal exchange going on. I postulate that women are gathering a lot of information about a male in that time, helping them to make the choices they want to make. Someone asked me, I gave a talk earlier in the week at a Zoom conference of economics and in the question and answer period, someone asked me, have I interviewed young women today? And I admitted young women today and the sort of, I don't even like to use the word courtship, like this hookup culture totally, totally bewilders me. And I, in my book, I mentioned Caitlin Flanagan, a writer for The Atlantic and she described it in a way that's just perfect to me. She's a little younger than I am, but not a lot. And she said, when she hears young women today describe their encounters, their sexual encounters actually. She said, the language is all familiar. I know what the words mean. I understand what they're saying, but in terms of what's happening, what they're describing, she said I feel like I'm from another planet. And I sort of have that same reaction. I'd gone to a lecture at the Broad Institute and it had a reception afterwards and there were a couple of young women at my table and when they learned what I was working on, they said, well, it's so odd. One said, you know, my friend and I, we've both had this happen to us where we see a guy that we think is really cute and we ask him to have sex with us and nothing. And I thought, oh, oh my dear, you are going about it all wrong. You've put veto power into his hand. That's the last resort technique for women. First thing we do is get ourselves into the geographic area of the man that's called our eye. We move into his space so he can see us. Then we engage in signal exchange of all types, you know, looking at, looking away, indicating interest in each other. So before, you know, you just gradually, gradually work up to the point where you're either saying yes or no, where the young woman who spoke to me, you know, after the lecture at the Broad, she, they were skipping all those first steps and going right to the veto power, which to me is the least effective power. You're not exercising much choice at all if you're just saying yes or no. So I don't see that as a good strategy. I mean, it's, you know, if you've gone through the other steps, you reach a point where you may want to say no. But I think in my first book I mentioned it's a rare man who asks a woman out if she hasn't already signaled that she's going to say yes. So by the time he makes the phone call that the women I interviewed felt they were sitting around waiting for, they put a lot into it. You know, memorizing a man's schedule, waiting for him after a class, just free to, oh, I just happened to be walking by your classes, letting out meanwhile, she's asking all his friends what classes he takes, what hour he takes them, those kinds of things. A lot of behind the scenes strategizing goes on that's meant to look like it didn't, like it was not planned. And I think women themselves cannot be aware that they're doing it. As I said, the women I interviewed just did not realize how much power they had in terms of determining their choices of male partners. Interesting. So this is kind of along the lines of concealed ovulation. I'm not challenging the hypothesis to me, but I'm going to ask you to make sure that my understanding is correct and it's based on something I saw on PBS a long time ago. It was to say that women meet in different parts of the cycle or attracted to different kinds of men. I would agree that that's probably true. Right. So as I recall, the part, the cycle where the woman is most likely to get pregnant, she is more attracted to a, I think the way they phrased it is like the bad boy, the one who may not be the most, the one who is staying in life the longest, and when she's not in a cycle, or she's in a part of a cycle where she's not most likely to get pregnant, she is attracted to the stable, the good, the good. I hypothesized just the opposite. Interesting. Very high self-esteem accompanies ovulation. Ovulation is accompanied by high self-esteem in women. And my hypothesis is, and the women I interviewed, and you know, I asked about control use when I interviewed them, my hypothesis is that when women have high self-esteem, they avoid men that I call jerks, but would be more drawn to men who would be good fathers, who are themselves worthy men when they're, but now women do also pick the men that's at the top of the hierarchy. So depending on the culture and the age, I mean, like in middle school and high school, young girls might think the jock is just the greatest guy, whereas later in life they might choose differently. So I think that varies with age and the cultural definitions of success. When I interviewed women, they defined what success was to them. And so that was my measure of a successful man, if it meant that woman's definition of a successful man, rather than having, you know, the... So, but I think when women are ovulating, they do have high self-esteem and that that probably in itself is a selection pressure. For picking men who'd be more likely to stick around, you know, hey, I'm worth more than this guy is willing to give me kind of thing. You know, my value is high enough that I don't need to settle for somebody who's just playing with me. Gotcha, okay, yeah. But I don't know, I'd be curious to see that the special that you saw, because a lot of these things have not been researched near enough, yeah. Right, right, right. This is a while ago, it was on PBS, so I put more and more stock in what they present me, less stock perhaps in my memory. Although I'm sure my memory in this case is correct in them associating the period at which they would be pregnant that they were more attracted to the bad boy. Well, ladies love outlaws, there is that expression. Yeah, ha, ha, ha, ha. And so I think maybe what would fit with that is that that person would have genes that are kind of more... I want to say, when I say dominant, that has the wrong impression with respect to the recessive... Like a rank in the hierarchy. Yeah, exactly. A rank in the hierarchy. As opposed to a recessive dominant, you know, and that would... No, a dominant hierarchy. A behavioral dominant hierarchy. Yeah, and women do select men at the top of the behavioral hierarchy. They do. And those hierarchies are based on what's important in whatever culture the woman is in. Right, right, right. So I think that supports what you're saying. So you're going to kind of start wrapping this one up a little early, you know, just because they all don't have to be 30 minutes to me. But hey, I'm going to back up a little bit and say that quote, one thing. That you say, I often toy with the idea that incidents of genetic non-disjunction could have accounted for sudden appearance of new species. And that certainly has an appeal to me. And you're probably going to say, well, you could... Probably in a better position to find this out. Was there any kind of... Did you look into that anymore to see if... Well, you know, it's interesting. Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldridge, I think his name is pronounced. You know, they wrote... They developed a theory of punctuated equilibria. And they... I always read their books looking for them to speculate on the sudden... You know, their punctuated equilibria was that species stay relatively constant and then all of a sudden there'll be an explosion of new species. And I thought, or dramatic change, you know, there'll be constant fears and then there's a dramatic change. And when reading it, I always was puzzled that neither one of them said nondisjunction might be the reason for that. So I was already open to the idea before I heard about chromosome fusion about just the ways chromosomes separate and recombine might contribute to sudden evolutionary change. I was already open to that because... And I forget when Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldridge came up with a theory of punctuated equilibria. You mean the late 70s? Yeah, maybe. Because actually, Gould used to come to the Lewinton Lab a lot for lectures there. And so punctuated equilibria was a part of the discussion. And I was in that lab when he started in the mid-80s. I mean, Gould was a very bright guy. And I'll tell you, a lot of times during the seminars, his questions would just go on. You just learned a lot. His questions were like chapters in a book. His brain fired like that. It's like fireworks going off. And he had a level of intelligence that very much reminds me of you. Oh, that's lovely. Thank you. It's such a pleasure listening to you. And that's why I asked you questions. I listened for a while because I just get so much out of it in all your books. So thank you for discussing chapter five and our next chapter is going to be chapter six, which is my What A Big Brain You Have. So thank you.