The Primate Myth

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Greetings to you listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant podcast, brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media. Well, um, we're recording this on Wednesday, May 13th, and the president has, I believe, just touched down in China for a major summit, and um the ceasefire in Iran is seems to be coming apart and the redistricting wars here at home are going a pace. And so we thought we would be uh try to get right on top of the news by talking about human evolution and our relationship or lack thereof to primates. And so I have Jonathan Leaf who's a novelist and a playwright who back in the early midsts of time used to uh um write for us at National Review before it was National Review Online.

[00:00:51]He's written for national review since, but uh he's moved on to much grander things. He's been nominated for the best play of the year um by the Innovative Theater Awards, was named as author of one of the best plays in 2018 by the Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Yale with a bachelor's of arts degree in history and as the author of the recent book, The Primate Myth: Why the Latest Science Leads Us to a New Theory of Human Nature. Jonathan, good to finally lay eyes on you after like 30 years and welcome to the remnant.

[00:01:27]>> Thank you so much. As we were saying when we were off camera just before we started. I'm a huge huge admirer of yours and I'm grateful to be we you don't remember it but we spoke on on the phone probably about 30 years ago and I'm very grateful to be on the show.

[00:01:40]>> In my defense, I don't remember people I spoke to on the phone three days ago.

[00:01:43]So, but uh um anyway uh this is great.

[00:01:47]Um very excited about this. Um, I should have warned you in advance. The first question I give for all authors is the question I like to get on my book tours and never do. Um, what's your book about?

[00:01:59]>> So, the primary myth is not people have misunderstood the title, which was suggested by my agent, but the the the book is not saying that humans aren't descended from apes. Um, you know, the evidence of that is is pretty overwhelming, but the book is saying we're really not much like chimps and gorillas. And there's a vast amount of research that's come out in the last 20 or 30 years that pretty much uh categorically proves it. Even turns out that we're not genetically that close to them. Um and our makeup or our our character basic morphology seems to be very different. And that's what the book is about. And book is also about what is what does this imply? What does this mean? Um and hopefully we'll get into that.

[00:02:35]>> Okay. So we should probably just do a little more level setting on this. Um, apes, we are related to apes. Apes are primates, >> right?

[00:02:45]>> But we are not necessarily as genetically or behaviorally linked to primates as sort of the popular spiel, uh, the popular the popular wisdom, conventional wisdom would have us believe, right? That's the basic thesis.

[00:03:05]>> Yeah, exactly. In fact, not not nowhere near as much. And I might make a point that you will not see in most anthropology texts, which is that we're literally not primates. The definition of a primate is an animal that has flat nails. I'm just going to show I do in fact have flat nails. Amazing. Uh and first and secondly, that has what are called prehensile feet. Those are feet that are used for climbing trees. Uh primates spend even gorillas as big as they are spend part of their time in trees and they eat tree leaves. So they have these feet that are basically hands and they climb trees and they spend large amounts of time in trees. Well, humans don't have prehensile feet. We don't spend time in trees and we don't eat tree leaves. So we're not primates.

[00:03:46]Um and actually um in my lifetime and I think yours as well. Um there used to be six families of primates. One was called that is no longer in in the order um was the tree shrews. and tree do have prehensile feet, but they have claws.

[00:04:04]And at some point, it was realized, well, you know, they're not really primates. So, they were pushed out of the order. A new order was created for them called Scandantia. Um, but we're still in the order even though we have even less uh alike with uh these 500 animals that live in trees uh and that eat tree leaves. So is it and I'm going to ask some questions just based on ignorance and stupidity and or at least ignorance um because I think sometimes that can be clarified. Um I mean Tom Hanks and big when he asks I don't get it. still one of the great uh anyway uh the is it possible that we were primates and we've we've we've sufficiently evolved to stop being primates or like or that the the the classification no longer works. I mean, at some point we could say, well, we were lizard creatures or mitochondria type creatures, but like that was so long ago that we've evolved. Our fork has gone so far.

[00:05:04]>> So maybe we were primates for a long time and then we took the exit route.

[00:05:08]>> I guess yes and no. I mean um if we're talking about homminins, there's now this distinction in primatology between hominins and homminids. But the family that uh we're part of uh not family in the technical sense but but um you know in the sense in which we most of us use the term um which include you know there were there were there's homo sapiens there's neanderthalss denispens and there was another uh early homminid that lived within just the last 50,000 years in Indonesia called homo florianis they're all very very different very very different from let's say chimps and gorillas um that's even true anatomically I I even I I barely got into that in the book, but computer tests have shown that humans are less like chimps anatomically than toads are like frogs. And you might think toads and frogs, oh, that's the same thing, but actually they're different orders and there are quite different. Um, and we're more different than chimps. So, uh, which makes sense because we we eat it, we have a totally different diet, we live a totally different lifestyle, we behave completely differently. Even very basic things like all primates are big sleepers. They live in trees. They sleep a lot. Uh, humans don't. Humans sleep uh you know so all the the range of sleep for primates is 10 and a half to 19 hours a day. Humans sleep about 7 hours a day which is typical of it's closer to herd animals.

[00:06:24]>> Um you know there a whole variety all primates have explosive strength.

[00:06:28]They're wild animals >> and you know a a chimp has three to five times your strength even though he's maybe even a little smaller. Um humans exact opposite. We don't have explosive strength. We're not wild animals. We have great endurance. We're one of the animals which has the best endurance.

[00:06:43]Again, that's typical of her or pack animals. It's not typical of primates.

[00:06:48]So these even these very basic physiological things, we don't seem to fall into the order. So what like again just for level setting purposes, what order, if any, would you put us in?

[00:07:01]>> Well, we're really we really seem to be this is a lot of what the book's about.

[00:07:03]We seem to be more like a herd or a pack animal. Um and the animals that and that makes sense. You know, one of the big questions is how did humans survive?

[00:07:13]That seems pretty simple and obvious, but you know, humans, we mentioned we don't have claws. We don't have great speed. We don't have great balance. We don't have alactory organs that are designed for tracking and hunting. And yet, uh through most of prehistory, people relied on meat as the basis of our diet. And we actually, in fact, were big game hunters. We we uh hunted woolly mans to extinction. These are animals that are much larger than any elephant that exists in the world today. They were 20,000 lb. 20,000 lb. Um, and we had very very simple tools which we were attacking them with like pikes and spears and so forth. Uh, but we know that we hunted them. In fact, it seems that we actually hunted them to extinction. Now, in the present day, you can't hunt an African elephant, which is much smaller, or an Indian elephant, which is even smaller still. It's about half the size of a woolly mammoth, uh, with a pistol. You can't do it with a gun.

[00:08:05]>> You need what's called a an elephant gun or a machine gun to hunt them because they're so strong and so powerful and of course they're they're they they you know they they they're her animals.

[00:08:17]They'll come after you and they'll kill you. Um so the question is you how are we able to do this? And the answer it seems is that we we developed spoken language. We uh became a domesticated animal so we can work together and we're highly cooperative. Well, these are all traits that are virtually unknown or unknown among primates. No primate is domesticated. They're mostly not cooperative. We could talk about that at great length. Uh and they certainly don't have spoken language and they're not particularly good at picking up spoken language. So, we're describing a completely different kind of animal. And the animals we know that have some of these traits, they're herd and pack animals. So for instance, dolphins, you know, are cooperative and they will hunt larger animals, you know, so like uh killer whales, which are actually species of dolphin, they will hunt humpback whales, which are bigger bigger uh citations. Um how do they do this?

[00:09:07]Well, they they have some language. We don't know how developed it is, but we know they have some language. They communicate. They're cooperative.

[00:09:13]They're domesticated. They're reasonably tame. In fact, more tame probably than humans on average. So those would be animals that would be more useful to study if we wanted to understand human behavior, human thinking. And there's a lot of research now in the brain which suggests this is true. Um even things like about our neurotransmitters, but also how the brain actually functions.

[00:09:31]And that's a lot of what the book's about. Again, >> so um how does this analogy work? Um, domestic dogs are canines and so are wolves. But wool dogs have been >> evolutionary evolutionarily engineered partly self-engineered partly through human interaction, but they're still canines. It's just that they have they're sufficiently different from wolves and and coyotes and and whatnot that looking at wolf behavior tells us something but just not nearly as much as people like there like all the dog food commercials the wolf inside your your poodle um is kind of I mean it's it's ego stroking but it's BS right and so where have we gone wrong I I have some thoughts about this but I just want to flesh out the thesis a little bit more.

[00:10:28]What What has been the What problems do we get from what at least the publisher wanted you to call the primate myth?

[00:10:36]Like why is why does saying that we're so closely tied to chimps, bonobos, gorillas, why does that steer us in the wrong direction?

[00:10:44]>> Well, first I just wanted to I think dogs and wolves are are very significant. So, let me just go on a little bit of a tangent here. Dogs and wolves are very close. I mean, you could argue they're still the same species. um they only split about 20,000 years ago or less. Um we split from chimps 6, seven, eight million years ago. We're talking about 300 to 500,000 generations ago. That's an incredibly long time.

[00:11:07]That's as long as the period that dolphins split >> from hippos.

[00:11:12]>> Think about that for a second.

[00:11:14]>> Um you know, that's an incredibly long time in genetic terms. Um so, you know, dogs and wolves have a lot in common.

[00:11:21]And one of the points I make in the book is that there are behaviors that you can see in wolves that you actually see in humans. So for instance, they they do what's called co-breeding. That is um they will raise wolf puff the females will will raise the wolf pups together.

[00:11:36]And that's something humans do as well, but chimps don't do that.

[00:11:40]>> Um you know, they're cooperative hunters. They're reasonably tame.

[00:11:43]They're actually pretty tame. Uh you know, I don't suggest that you take wolf into your house, but they're reasonably tame. Um but let's get to the second point. Uh so there there may be ways in which studying wolves you might actually learn more about human interaction, human behavior than you would by studying chimps who are super violent.

[00:11:59]They never know paternity etc etc. Um but let's get to the second thing. So one of the things I I talk about in the book is I'm going to talk about just two right now because they're both very important. One is war. I think we've all heard of it. Uh I think many of us uh have probably seen it in the news. Um, so one of the interesting things about human wars is that primatologists have tried to explain war by saying that it's an example of primate aggressiveness.

[00:12:27]But this doesn't really make any sense for a number of reasons. One is that when you study uh these so-called chimp wars, which have been identified by primatologists, they don't seem much like human wars. We could talk about that at great length. But we also know that all the animals that we use in wars are domesticated animals. We use camels, we use horses, we use dogs, we use pigeons, we use dolphins, we use sea lions, uh, we use, you know, we go on and on. Elephants. Um, also the most warlike animal, and this is something that even France Deval, who really was probably did more to promote the idea that humans are like chimps than anyone else, even he acknowledged, the most warlike of all animals is the ant. Now, the ant is a super obedient animal. It seems that most wars are caused not by our aggressiveness, but by our obedience. And a point that I make in the book, which someone actually put on my Wikipedia profile now, so apparently it's attributed to me now, is a simple point that you'd think political scientists would have picked up on a long time ago. There are no cases, no cases ever of a democracy in which women vote going to war with any other such state. It's never happened. That's fascinating. It seems that most of the our propensity for war is a function of the fact that uh psychopathic leaders can take young men and they can persuade them you know through propaganda and various other things. Humans have like many herd impact animals we have issues of identity. We struggle to gain an identity and you can take young men who lack a sense of identity and you can persuade them to go out and fight and potentially kill not only themselves but other people. And this is this is the primary reason that wars take place. Not because of our aggressiveness, but because of our obedience. Because we're a domesticated animal. And you can easily manipulate domesticated animals.

[00:14:15]Okay. Second, suicide. There is no documented case ever of a primate, any primate, any of the 500 species committing suicide. Well, we know that many species other than humans do commit suicide. We also know that worldwide more people commit suicide than are murdered by far.

[00:14:35]So suicide is a huge problem and it's something that conflicts with standard Darwinian theory and I'm not an attacker of Darwin but you know Darwin never really addressed this question. You know Darwin said you know you you're trying to propagate you're trying to push your your genes forward. You're trying to succeed into another generation. But obviously if you commit suicide or you join a cult and commit suicide this doesn't happen. So this is a Darwinian puzzle. This is an evolutionary puzzle.

[00:15:00]And it seems that the answer for it and again we've seen it in other animals. We know it happens regularly for instance in dolphins and whales. They strand themselves both individually and collectively. It seems that it's it's a behavior of a highly obedient animal. We we also know that insects will do it in what's called altruistic suicide which is similar to like Japanese kamicazis or Romans falling out of boards. Um, it's the behavior of a highly obedient animal which will fall which you know when it when it when it struggles with identity or thinks it's lost its place or feels that is obligated to will kill itself.

[00:15:36]And that's completely different than a primate. Primates don't struggle with these kinds of existential questions at all. They don't worry about, you know, how do I fit in? You know, did so and so like me? They don't worry about these questions at all. They're highly, as a matter of fact, in the case of chimps, they're highly sociopathic, >> but they do have I mean, they do have alphas and status and some kinds of, don't they? And >> yeah, but they don't they don't care about other chimps very much. Uh, so let me just give an example. There was a famous experiment that was done uh by some researchers in Britain. And what they did was they created a contraption by which a chimp could pull a rope and get a meal for himself or he could pull a rope and get a meal for himself and another chimp. And they found the option of getting a rope for another chimp had no effect on chimp behavior whatever.

[00:16:26]Zero. By contrast, it's been found that small children, certainly by age three, even arguably some studies suggested by 19 months, they like sharing food. They will do it even when they're hungry. So, humans have these kind of altruistic and empathetic traits that you just don't see in chimps at all. Uh chimps, they just don't and girls, they don't worry about this whole thing of, you know, so and so doesn't like me. They want to be like, they want to manipulate each other to gain status and authority. Most of their status and authority is is is uh gained strict strictly by physical force and strength and violence. But the kind of complex human relations that we have, they don't really have these and they don't worry about their identity.

[00:17:08]They're not concerned with these kinds of questions. That's a totally different kind of animal. One that's more like a human or an elephant or a dolphin or even a wolf. So, one of the things I think is really interesting about this is I was recently rereading uh against the grain, the James just James C. Scott book. Um and one of the things he points out I mean demonstrates is that in early civilizations you know right at the at the transition with the agricultural revolution up and through like until almost the day before yesterday in in in historical terms a huge share of humanity um was he doesn't necessarily say slaves but he says under uh coerc vers of servitude or something like that because >> slavery is just one form of that, right?

[00:18:02]Indentured servitude is another cast, >> right?

[00:18:05]>> Um all these different sort of surfom, right? You know, and um it's more of a spectrum of servitude, but basically it was coerced labor of one form or another. And you don't get that without, you know, the agricultural revolution was great for humanity genetically, but it was probably worse for the median human. Um because what it allowed for was cultivation at scale which meant that you had the 1% at the top and then you had the you know specialization of labor. So you have a a military class or a police class that enforces the rules of the ruler and then you have this vast you know unwashed with a few specialists for you know machinery or whatever but this vast unwashed agricultural class and that's sort of the design of the Roman Empire. It's it's certainly the design of the pre- Roman empires. And what is that? That's 35 generations or or 50. I mean, I something like that.

[00:19:12]But like this idea that we're heard animals, um I don't love it. It's an unloly thought.

[00:19:18]>> Um and it certainly runs counter to a lot of the stuff that we're taught about being an individual and all that kind of thing, but that doesn't mean it's not true. And um and I think the thinking of humans as herd animals um can arouse some really unloly thoughts in people who want to be the shepherd. But at the same time, it's a it's a it's a really interesting rabbit hole to go down once you start thinking about it.

[00:19:48]>> Yeah. I I I think that there's no question the invention of agriculture led to an incredible amount of increase in in inequality.

[00:19:56]Um and there were all sorts of other things that started to appear uh both in some of this existed in in uh pre-aggricultural societies but it definitely appeared in agricultural societies. One is all over the world people started engaging in child sacrifice and this was denied for a long time but we now have overwhelming evidence of it. In fact it seems to have taken place on every inhabited continent you know. So the Aztecs did it. Um they did it in the Phoenetians did it. Uh it took place in early China. Uh you know you can go it it it existed in in uh early among the Kelts. It was all over the world. And uh the question is you know why would you do this? This is another thing like suicide. It just doesn't make any sense or cast doesn't make any sense or cults. They don't make any sense. But if you start to think of a lot of people are naturally obedient.

[00:20:45]um then you can persuade people of very crazy ideas, very dangerous ideas, and we still see it today. I mean, you think about something like trans surgery for minors. Well, there's no empirical evidence that this is a good idea. Um not there's much empirical evidence is a bad idea, but there's just, you know, why would you do surgery on minors who haven't figured out who they are? It's an obviously insane idea. Um but many people just pick this idea up and they believe in it. And so we we obviously have some aspects of and you know why does stock markets go to extremes? Why do people desperately want to be in style with weird fashion trends? There's there is a large element of her behavior in humans. Uh it's not logical. It's not rational and it's very powerful. Uh and it's very dangerous. And you know we're talking about war. It's very dangerous because um it means we can be easily manipulated.

[00:21:37]>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean this ties into something that I'm kind of obsessed with these days, which is I find the um the cult of authenticity to be one of the most pernicious things in um call it modern culture, right? Because uh I'm not a huge Rene Gerard guy, but I think he's right about that, right? I I am in a big sort of like I have a lovehate relationship with Rouso and the idea that rebelling against what the crowd is doing makes you more authentic is actually just the tip of the spear of more herd mentality, right? I mean, it's like the the the the tech billionaire CEO who wears >> a $200 >> t-shirt and a hoodie to look like he's rebelling against the old guard IBM tie and dark suit guys. Um that becomes a uniform too, right? and the the mimemetic status class envy games that we have um in our culture. It's like every now and then you get people who you know like Graham Platner is very popular right now with Democrats and what we keep hearing about him is he's authentic. Well, no. I mean, like he's mapping the the style of authenticity that is considered authenticity right now really well, but it's still a status class kind of thing. And I mean, I'm Jewish, but you know, very bad Jew, but still Jewish. Um, you know, at least the Christian theology understood that like trying to be as aligned with your nature is the direction of sin, not liberation, right? You know, it's like, you know, look at the seven deadly sins. I don't know, five, seven of them are all about indulging your feelings and giving into temptation. Um, and now we have this culture that says, "No, the more you lean into your whether it's genetic or or some other sort of natural state, the more authentic, the more real, the more happy you'll be." And I just I don't know that there's any evidence for that.

[00:23:57]>> Well, I also think it gets back to this whole issue that, you know, people struggle with identity and they want to see something that they perceive as re quote unquote real identity. So I mean obviously the older people are and the more they have have really lived their lives the less these become questions but especially for young people like college students you know these are really really powerful issues and again this is totally unlike what chimps and gorillas are um you know they're wild animals they're extremely violent dangerous wild animals baby chimps you know like bubbles you know Michael Jackson chimp they're harmless they're charming by the time you get to an adult chimp they're very very dangerous um you know a thing I say in the book is that the a there was a study done they found the average person who observed chimps found that within three years of observing chimps and they mostly do with binoculars because they're very dangerous um that within three years of observing chimps you'll see a corpse of a chimp killed by another chimp and within eight years of observing chimps you'll see a chimp kill another chimp.

[00:24:53]So it happens very frequently. They're very very violent animals. Even bonobos they're so dangerous uh they don't kill each other the way chimps do with that kind of frequency. But um even bonobos, the European Zoo Association, the orders that they provide to their members are that if a bonobo escapes, you're to shoot to kill, which they don't do with big cats. They don't say about big cats, you know, go, you know, the tiger gets out, the l gets out immediately, shoot to kill.

[00:25:18]>> Uh but they do for bonobos because they're really dangerous. So these are very very different animals. But I I want getting back to this whole issue of identity. It's not that any none of us can escape it, but the idea that you're authentic, somehow that's a person who's escaped it. We should respect them. Um, you know, I I as you mentioned, I have this career as a playwright, uh, which doesn't always make me a lot of money. I have this career as a playwright. And, uh, at some point my friend said, "Oh, you know, you should get a job writing for TV. So, I got a television." I hadn't had a television for um, most of my adult life. And I got a TV. As soon as I got a TV, I became a rabid Jets fan. New York Jets fan. This is completely idiotic. I mean, first off, uh, you know, they're my team. How are they my team? Well, number one, I don't know any of the players. I don't own shares in the team. Uh, I think Woody Johnson, I think it's great that he's a conservative, but he seems to be a completely incompetent owner. Um, the players are mostly on steroids. Let's be honest about this. The game is extremely violent and they're hurting each other.

[00:26:16]But that that desire to be part of the group, it's very powerful within us. And none of us can escape it. I certainly haven't escaped because I wake up in the morning, I'm like, did they did they trade for so and so? Oh my goodness, you know, so it's it's there.

[00:26:31]>> So, did you read uh Steven Pinker's um Better Angels book, the history of violence book?

[00:26:37]>> I I I I read most of it. I didn't read the whole book.

[00:26:39]>> No, that's fine. I mean, I'm a big believer in in taking the the the what my wife and I call the halibet cheeks.

[00:26:46]It's like the best parts of a book. Um because if you didn't know this, uh the halibet cheeks are the best cuts of a halibit. Um uh things you learn being married to an Alaskan. Anyway, um so I want to push back a little bit on this.

[00:27:01]I mean, I I I get your point that we there's this idea that we have these evolutionary savages in our past and that we are descended from them and that therefore we do when we're violent is because we are giving into the the our inner chimp for want of a better term. Right. I I get >> question I'm saying that for the most part that is not who we are, >> right? No, I'm saying that that's the idea that people have, right? And so and that you're that's the one you're pushing back on.

[00:27:33]>> Y >> at the same time um when you look at uh the history of warfare and how you know the degree to which rape was a tool of was was both a tool and a spoil of war going back thousands and thousands of years. And there's lots of evidence and the absolute the high numbers of violence and cruelty. And it does make me wonder if you might be overegging slightly the idea that that if we just get the institutions right, human nature isn't violent at all. Because it seems to me like the veneer of civilization is pretty thin and people can get violent pretty quickly.

[00:28:22]>> I'm not saying that. I mean, one of the interesting things uh um well, I guess there's several different answers to what you're saying. Um the first is, you know, a lot of the book is is based on recent scientific research and and as a number of people noted, the book has 50 pages of notes. U it doesn't I didn't use superscripts, you won't see, but if you go to the end, you'll see all these different studies from obscure neuroscience journals and things like that. Um but there are parts of our brain that are associated with empathy.

[00:28:50]Um there. These include the amydala, something called the superm marginal gyrus, and the anterior singulate gyrus.

[00:28:58]Um, and they're different in the way they function in humans as against chimps and certain other primates that we studied. Um, but they're actually more like other animals. Like for instance, it turns out that the area called the anterior singulate gyrus, which plays a big role in our capacity for empathy, it's bigger in women on average than men. And there it turns out also that if you look at people who have been incarcerated in prison, it's predictive of whether they'll engage in ricidivism whether they have a larger anterior singulate gyus. So if it's small, they're more likely to be psychopathic. They're obviously are psychopathic humans. Um and the amydala function differently in psychopathic humans. So there obviously are a certain percentage of humans who are psychopaths and we do have the capacity for psychopathy. That's there's no question about that. Well, um it seems that our anterior singulate gyus has been designed differently than that of a chimp because when the chimp one is bigger actually they're more violent where we know for instance with rats it follows the pattern that humans have. So um the basically our brain has been designed to be somewhat more empathetic but obviously you know humans can be incredibly selfish and violent and all these other things but we are a domesticated animal and that's really different and most people are not looking to you know commit horrible atrocities. But let's get to another point with regard to the subject of rape. Obviously many young men are capable of rape. Many people are capable of rape. Chimps are not capable of domesticated relationships, monogous relationships. In fact, they never know paternity. They don't know whose child is whose um other than the mother. They, you know, obviously you know who the you know mother the relationship between the mother chimp and the baby is very strong. Uh but they never know who the father is. Well, with humans, it actually turns out that we're a highly monogous species. In fact, when really good genetic tests were finally done all over the world, uh, looking at the question of false paternity or they called extra pair fertilization, it turned out that humans have the lowest rate of false paternity of any mammal ever studied. It's typically below 2% uh certainly below 3%.

[00:31:11]Um, that's fascinating. You know, why we have lower rates of false paternity than famously monogamous bird species. You know, you think like, oh, swans must be more monogous than humans. No, not based on rates of false paternity. So, that's a really interesting question and and the the uh primatologists have always been promoting this idea. Humans are naturally uh polygamous like chimps. Uh it turns out no, we're not naturally polygamist. We're naturally pretty reasonably reasonably monogamous. Um and we also know from study of human societies that polygamous societies don't really work. So just there's sort of a natural experiment I often point to which is there are two groups of Mormons. Most people don't know this because they mostly met um members of the Church of uh Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we meet them and we go ah these people they're very industrious. They're very polite.

[00:32:00]They're they're so impressive. But there's also another sect so-called traditional Mormons who still practice polygamy and they're totally messed up.

[00:32:09]They have incredibly high rates of criminal conviction. They're very poor.

[00:32:13]Um you know it's everything that they're very they rarely go past like the seventh or eighth grade in school. Um they're totally totally messed up. So um you know we actually can see the difference between polygamous and monogous societies and this is obviously very meaningful but the uh a certain group of primatologists uh there's a famous book sex of dawn kind of promotes this idea says you know polyamory is per perfectly normal for humans. No, it doesn't work. And it's something we're not really that in we can practice it. I mean, there are cult leaders who have lots and lots of wives. Uh there, you know, Genghask Khan had hundreds of of concubines, etc., etc., but it doesn't seem to produce productive societies.

[00:32:56]People seem to be naturally pretty monogous and our successful societies have almost all been monogous.

[00:33:03]>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean there are I mean this is one of the things I remember from reading um Robert Wright's book, the moral animal book um where like I've read a lot about it since, but like it was the first thing that ever pointed out to me that um uh polygamy is actually not good for the average male, right? It's good for elite males, right? But the supply of wives for the rest of the men goes way down obviously because in a society that has no stigma about polygamy, it's still better to be the fourth wife of the richest guy in town than the only wife of the, you know, the median guy in town, >> right? And I think that that it makes a lot of sense that I mean I guess the thing I'm getting at is um you know I had this I I I reviewed a Fran Dewal book for NR whenever 15 years ago um where it really bothered me the way he was framing I got a lot out of the book.

[00:34:09]I thought the book was interesting and you know he's an impressive guy but the way he was framing it was that he was making it sound as if conservatives would be the ones to object to the idea that um evolution and and innate senses of morality are not necessarily in conflict. And it seems to me that like that is a more um transgressive view for a certain kind of blank slate left than it is for conserv. Now, there are a lot of conservatives who say, well, like their argument about human nature is a theological one rather than an evolutionary one.

[00:34:52]>> But, you know, for the most part, most conservatives I've ever met believe in evolution. They just don't necessar And they can they can square the circle about the theological and the evolutionary stuff. But, it's central to conservatism that human nature is a thing.

[00:35:06]>> Right.

[00:35:07]>> Right. And then we can argue about how malleable it is. We can argue about, you know, one of the things that makes the founding so interesting is you have these enlightenment guys and yet you read the federalist papers and like James Madison is talking about how there's a certain irreducible amount of depravity in human nature. And so this >> are not angels.

[00:35:27]>> Yeah. There's not this huge we weren't angels and we weren't demons. We were in that weird middle place where we could institutions could shape us and nudge us one way or nudge us the other way. and DeWal kind of just turned the conservative position into this weird straw man. Um, and the point I'm guess I get him I'm getting at what I what I like about your thesis >> is that you know I I firmly and passionately believe that human nature exists and and uh I've long said that I think one of the best definitions of conservatism is just simply the idea that cons that human nature has no history. Um, which is not technically true, right? Because like yes, 10,000 generations ago, human nature was different than now. But like the idea that we're all flawed, that we're all um we all fall short, um the crooked timber of humanity will never be straight, like that part is eternal. And um that we're all prone to sin or temptation or whatever. Um, at the same time, what I like about the thesis is that I've come to the view that there's just a lot more give to human nature than a lot of people want to believe. That like it turns out if you can get the institutions right, you can really improve human nature in ways that people don't really understand. And if you get the institutions wrong, you can really screw up human nature. It's not that, you know, that's one of the things that we learned from the Soviet Union is that new Soviet man, they didn't get to new Soviet man, but they got close enough that they screwed up the heads of four generations of of human beings, you know, because you can mess up people's incentive structures and all these kinds of things. And and so I am sure there are scientists who are going to be like it really doesn't make sense to talk about humans as herd animals. But if you look at it figuratively or if you look at it sort of as analogistically I actually think it it's very useful way to think about things.

[00:37:32]>> Yeah, we're very malleable. I mean that's a characteristic of of herd and pack animals that they're very very malleable. We're very malleable and you know it's interesting I do in passing mention in the book and you know I'm very critical of Russo. I I hope most people are, but you know, you need to have uh established in if you're dealing with an animal that's very malleable.

[00:37:53]The last thing you want is to try and completely change everything overnight.

[00:37:58]That's extremely dangerous because people are naturally so capable of following these mouths, these Hitlers, these Stalins. So, you need to have you do need to have things like I didn't talk about medicine, but obviously checks and balances.

[00:38:10]>> Uh you need to have some traditional sense of of authority. I mean, I I would even argue that doesn't come up in the book at all, but I would even argue that the idea of constitutional monarchy has a certain amount of argument for it and that it gives people some kind of waring uh for their beliefs. Obviously, not right for the United States, but um you know, people are naturally very malleable and that's that's a real that's we think of that as good, but it's very bad, too. I mean, it's very dangerous. It's one of the reasons we're so dangerous and that we can easily be organized towards collective violence. Um so the book has been getting mostly fantastic reviews um you know I won't quote them you know people can find them online um and very respectful particularly from scientists by the way but an interesting there were two reviews that were less auditory they both came from people who are very old which actually in the second chapter of the book I predicted uh because you know people part of identity is tied to ideology and these ideas that humans are primates are very old ideas and recent science is increasingly refuting them they're not comfortable It challenges their authority to say well you know you wrote about this 20 years ago and now your ideas are have been largely disproved >> right so the Thomas paradigm shift >> right uh Dval Dwal um I went and I interviewed a whole bunch of scientists working in the book obviously one of the people I interviewed this tremendous scientist at the Emory National Primary Research Center uh they met James worked for worked for him and he really liked him he really admired him um but he also said when he did he's a he's a neuroscientist He does research with functional magnetic resonance imaging tests, fMRI. Uh, and those tests are, you know, there's a whole chapter of the book that deals with some of the conclusions of these uh tests, which are fascinating. Um, but anyway, he told me, D said, anytime you get research that questions the similarity between human brains and chimp brains, be very, very careful before presenting it in that light. I was told this. So he was trying to uh deter anyone from questioning what he himself had written in his book chimpanzeee politics and what he had promoted which very influenced Robert Wright and various other people. Um and I have asked a whole series of eminent people who have uh are known for their antiquated views on the subject to debate. So through a mutual friend I got in touch with Jared Diamond who wrote the third chimpanzeee which basically argues humans are a subspecies of chimpanzeee.

[00:40:37]>> Mh. and I said, "I'll fly out to LA.

[00:40:39]He's he teaches at UCLA. I would love for you to debate." He's a very old man to be fair. He's in his 80s.

[00:40:45]>> He refused. He said, "I haven't written about that in 30 years." Of course, because now all the new genetic testing is questioning everything he said in his book. In fact, disproving it. I got in touch with uh Richard Dawkins people.

[00:40:56]They said he's too scheduled. He can't talk to you. Dawkins has argued that, you know, people are very much like chimps and chimps should be specially protected for various reasons. I reached I criticized uh Christopher Ryan who wrote Sex at Dawn uh in an article. It was a National Review cover story about polyamory. I reached out to Ryan. No response. I could go through a whole list of these people. Not a single one will agree to debate me. And I'm sure they have various elaborate rationalizations. They say, "Well, we can't we can't debate them. It will give credence to these ideas." It'll give credence to these ideas because they're valid ideas. And they will not I have yet to find any if there is if there's someone who hears this broadcast who really believes and has some influence in anthropology primatology and really believes that humans are very much like chimps and we can understand human behavior easily or well through study of chimps and they're willing to debate me.

[00:41:48]I will debate you. I'm eager to debate you. I'm anxious to debate you. Nobody has agreed to do it. So I have another theory challenge offered. Someone out there pick them up on it. But uh All right. So I agree with you. I mean I don't think it's a unique insight to you, but I you've made this argument and um lots of people made this argument that you know the thing that really puts us on a different path evolutionarily is language. And I think that's that's got to be >> whether it's all explanatory, probably not, but it it's substantively explanatory. Has to be.

[00:42:24]>> Yeah.

[00:42:25]>> Um, >> and we should probably say language broadly understood to include things like hand gestures and that kind of stuff. You know, there was that very speculative book that came out a while ago that basically argued that dogs helped us win the fight against the Neanderthalss um or Cro-Magnon, I can't remember which, because uh Homo sapiens have white around their eyeballs, you know, and so like that's that's characteristic of hunting species.

[00:42:54]>> Yeah.

[00:42:55]>> Yeah. They actually call it whale eyes because there are whales which are hunters who show it. Wolves show it, but it's characteristic of hunting species and and species that are cooperative and species that are cooperative, >> right? And that was the thesis is that dogs could work with homo sapiens and help hunt in ways that they couldn't because Chromagnon or Neander, whatever, apparently just had all dark eyes and were not were less readable. Um, pretty speculative, pretty interesting, too. I kind of like that stuff. But um anyway, the thing I was going to get get to is um there's this I can't remember the guy's name. Um he was on Econ Talk and a while back and he had this sort of really eyeopening thing about how weapons have changed human nature and evolution and culture in all sorts of ways or psychology. I don't want to ascribe to him. I I can't remember if he gets into evolution, but like his point is most animals, one of the things I think makes chimps, you would know this far far better than I do. One of the things that makes chimps distinctive is they actually kill each other, >> right?

[00:44:03]>> And most animals don't >> Yeah. Most animals don't kill each other, right? Dogs >> Well, a lot a lot do. I mean, I actually have a chart that goes through all the animals >> inside their own like pack. Like, do wolves kill each other?

[00:44:16]>> Uh, they they Yeah. I mean there are cases of wolves like killing older wolves who have kind of lost their place in the pack and there actually the most murderous of all animals mammals supposedly is the mircat of all things.

[00:44:28]Horses kill each other.

[00:44:30]>> No, a lot of animals kill them kill each other. Chimps do it at a fantastically high rate. I mean if you compare the rate the chimps do it to humans there's no comparison at all.

[00:44:39]>> But um no a lot of animals actually kill each other.

[00:44:42]>> Okay. So then I'm glad I brought it up.

[00:44:45]I was just going back with the way he explained it. I was thinking of like, you know, when rams fight, they they get up to a certain point and then they back down because it's for da dominance, >> right? So there there are animals that there are animals that don't. Yes, that's absolutely true. So there there there's a distinction.

[00:44:59]>> And his point was the thing is when you're when one dog is fighting another dog in a pack, they know exactly what quote unquote resources a dog can bring to bear pretty quickly, right? Um, and the thing with weapons is all of a sudden you don't know if the other human has a knife behind their back, right? Or a rock or something that can counter that can counter your opponent's greater strength or speed or skill, right? Like >> there are a lot of people I I can't beat in a fight, but if I have a gun, I will beat them in a most of them in a fight, right? And and so one of the things that that technological asymmetry that asymmetry causes is the concept of preeemption, which is that I I have the ability if I'm going to survive a confrontation, I got to kill this person before violence starts or I will lose.

[00:46:03]And that I think there's something there in the logic of that that I think gets at some of your points about war as well is that once you start down that kind of decision tree about thinking about I have to kill them before they kill us, you know, and you get into some of the tribal sociobiology stuff about, you know, attacks at night and all of these various things. Um, you can see how ev that this could be evolutionarily expeditious um or accelerating in terms of making human spec. Combine that with language and you can really see how the exit ramp takes us someplace very very different than a lot of the creatures that we're kind of genetically similar to.

[00:46:49]>> Well, sure. Especially because we're uh we can engage in collective violence, >> right? You know, so uh you know, they often say that chimps engage in collective violence, but when you actually look at these instances like something called the Gambi stream war, they occasionally one chimp that they they caught by itself was killed.

[00:47:06]There's a recent one that's been in the news. You know, there were some infants that were killed over a period of years.

[00:47:12]>> Uh but it's not like what happened, you know, what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. It's it's totally different. Um, but getting back to the importance of language, a point I often make which is so obvious that you say, you know, how come nobody ever talks about this, the first part everybody knows, we're born, we don't know how to walk, which is unusual, you know, like baby giraffes can walk and and baby horses can walk and baby chimps can walk, you know, or they crawl around. Um, and it takes us really a full year to learn how to walk.

[00:47:40]Now, that's very counterintuitive because we have very large brains. uh we have what they call high insephilization quotient, you know, brain to body size.

[00:47:50]Um and the brain controls voluntary motion. So why can't we walk? Well, it seems that most of what your brain is doing in the first year of your life is it's learning to listen to words and to begin to speak, begin to master language. That's most of what your brain's doing the first year of your life. And the ability to walk is just much less important. Your survival is really going to depend on your ability to say, uh, you know, I I don't like eating that. Stop giving me chicken. You know, I don't like >> There's a lion behind that bush.

[00:48:22]>> There's a lion behind that bush. Yeah.

[00:48:24]Yeah. Yeah. You believe him? What? He's no Oh my god, that guy's such a liar.

[00:48:29]Who can you believe? You're going to marry him? You got to be kidding.

[00:48:33]>> Um, you know, that stuff is really important. And that's much more important than and in fact you know as I point out in the book if you go back to the second world war uh an event that I understand was important. Um who were the most powerful people in the second world war? Well there was this guy Stalin. He had this little guy with this withered arm right? You have Churchill.

[00:48:54]You have this bald little drunkard. You have Rose can't even walk right barely walk. I guess he walked with crutches.

[00:49:01]>> Um this wasn't that important. What was important was their pers and Hitler even more was their persuasive powers. And by the way, another aspect another thing you might note about that war there's this old evolutionary idea moral animal for instance promotes it that we try to acquire power so that we can have as many children as possible. Hitler didn't have any children >> you know uh I guess Roosevelt had sex.

[00:49:24]Um you know uh the Ayatollah Homini this is a guy who was you know gained enormous power uh and clearly was somewhat psychopathic but he spent he he seems to have been faithful to his wife.

[00:49:36]He spent most of his life living in this 100 and like 120 square foot room that he rented where he'd write his speeches and he could go over and deliver them all the time. You know, humans are really often not that motivated when they try to acquire power uh by the goal of propagating themselves. Often they're much more consumed with ideology, >> politics, >> status, right? I mean, a lot of that is boiled up in status.

[00:50:02]>> All sorts of things, you know. I mean, look at these tech techarons we have.

[00:50:06]>> Musk actually seems to believe in some kind of, you know, I've got to have 8,000 children and is actively doing it.

[00:50:13]But uh the others are not as far as I know. I mean uh so you know these kind of simplistic explanations of human nature they don't really make much sense. U you know we're better off looking at you know culture um institutions etc to religion things like that if we want to understand human behavior.

[00:50:30]>> Yeah. I mean like Jonathan height who I'm friendly with um you know he uh his his hatred which I somewhat share of smartphones notwithstanding uh one of the things he tries to push back on is this idea of hardwiring right there's there are some things that are hardwired into us but they're mostly the things that we don't consciously control for the most part breathing right like our eyeballs are hardwired to see 247 seven, the way you stop them isn't by turning them off, it's by covering them up, right? So, that's kind of like hardwired. Um, but um your heart heart is hardwired to beat.

[00:51:11]>> You can't just say, "I'm going to stop my heart right now without some tool, you know." Um, but um >> and instead he says, you know, behaviorally um we should think of our brains as um as basically the home screen on your iPhone. And there are a whole bunch of apps and some are running in the background because you left them on or you triggered them or whatever and some you haven't turned on. And so like yeah, it makes sense to me that there are some megalomania mega megalomaniacal people who think that the way they get status is by having a zillion kids. And then then there are others, you know, the way I get it is by being remembered in history as this great and powerful person, right? And and that person may not want to have a lot of kids, you know. Um um it's funny there's this recent Atlantic piece about Donald Trump where he was trying to about how he was trying to pick his running mate for 2024 and someone some aid said you know you should pick someone best equipped to carry on your legacy and Trump's response was what legacy what do I care about that I'll be dead >> and but then there are other people you know that like that logic means everything to them and this is not to say that we're blank slates It's to say that human nature is complex and that certain you can go down different paths uh that are all explainable by human nature. But you have to remember that human nature is a series of options and not a fixed set of everyone behaves this way. We're not monolith. We are not homogeneous in our wants and desires.

[00:52:48]They can be different things can be turned on and turned off.

[00:52:52]>> Yeah. And and it's also it's part of the reason ideology is so important to so many people because it you know it gives them an identity and uh you know there are weird ways in which you know your your ideological identification often has nothing to do with logic. I mean the example so many people pointed out was antivax was this left-wing thing. You know there was even a joke I remember uh except it wasn't a joke. Someone was asked who was an epidemiologist was asked where can I expect measles outbreaks? He said look for wherever there's a Whole Foods uh store cuz that's where that's where that's where they're all the people who you know believe don't get the measel shots. Uh and then you know during co suddenly it became this right-wing idea. Well you know how do you go from left to you know how did this happen? But it had more to do with identification than it had to do with scientific evidence. though I suppose you could actually at least point out in the second case that the um the value of co shots for young people seems to be pretty minimal or non-existent. Uh that was that seems to have been a real criticism where measel shots clearly are beneficial. I don't I don't think anybody anyone who's saying disputes that. All right. So, what is your view on um Jane Goodall cuz it it I kind of feel like from what I've seen of your take on this is that she's did some amazing things and weirdly I feel like you want to make her the Margaret me of primatologists, right? which is to say >> well no Margaret me Margaret me did some amazing things but she just misread her subjects in profound ways that had lasting impact that's all I >> well I think I think there's a lot of question about whether Margaret how much Margaret actually got right in terms of as a as a field researcher I mean people who later I actually had a whole chapter in the book which I took out that dealt with me and her critics and I decided you know this has nothing to do with the book I got rid of it you know of course when you're when you're rewriting a book I'm sure you've been through this you say like what can I get rid of so the book will be shorter and more readable etc etc. I probably I they told me to cut 5,000 words. I should have cut probably another 5,000. But um Jane Goodall is an amazing amazing person and this book could not have been written without her work and I quote her repeatedly in the book. Um I think the best comparison to me and it's going to seem very weird to a lot of people for Jane Goodall is Christopher Columbus.

[00:55:10]you know, Christopher Columbus has now become this uh, you know, satanic figure, you know, this horrible figure in most people's in most intellectual people's minds. But he was a very intelligent person. He was a very brave person. He was a very capable person.

[00:55:25]Um, and he changed the world. But you can read different statements he made at the end of his life and some of them he seemed to appreciate that he had not been to the East Indies. He had not been to India or anywhere near it or salon or whatever. He had actually been somewhere else. In other statements, he still seemed to think, you know, I found this path to the indies. Jane Goodall's a little like that. You know, you can read statements she makes where she says, you know, humans are a lot like chimps. And then you can read other statements she makes where she says humans, the longer she actually says directly in a number of occasions, the longer I studied chimps, the more I thought humans were were the important things are the differences. Um her research is incredibly important for understanding how profound these differences are. And she did amazing things. Let me just give you one example. She actually she got developed she developed such a rapport with some of the chimps she was studying that she fed them by hand. These are adult chimps, very dangerous chimps.

[00:56:19]Nobody who uh involved in her uh institution is allowed to do this anymore. It's just way too dangerous.

[00:56:25]You know, they'll they can rip your arm out of its socket. They can pull your nose off. They can eat they can bite your fingers off, etc. And they will do all these things. But she developed such a rapport with those animals uh greybeard etc that she named that she was able to do this. She also she and her aids learned incredible things about them. One of the things that they learned was that they engage in filial cannibalism. That is they will eat other chimps babies. They will eat chimps babies from other troops. They'll eat chimps babies from their own troop.

[00:56:52]They'll even occasionally eat their own babies. They will both males do this.

[00:56:57]Females do it as well. This is totally unlike humans. I've never heard of any group of humans. We we mentioned child sacrifice, but I've never heard of any group of humans were like, "Why don't we eat some babies? Babies would be great."

[00:57:09]And you know, Jonathan Swift made a joke of this, but it doesn't happen. They're very very unlike humans. And it's her research that really proved this. So, I think she's an amazing person, but I don't think she clearly understood entirely her her work.

[00:57:24]>> Yeah. What's what's kind what's really remarkable about the baby eating other than being terrible um is one of the things I always sort of felt like we shared with chimps was the difference towards cuteness right uh and cuteness like I remember James Q Wilson wrote a wonderful book 2530 years ago called the moral sense and where he tried to like I don't want to say split the baby in this context um but um where he tried to sort of lay through what what academics knew about human nature, what we didn't, what we knew about all of these sorts of things because James Gillson was arguably one of the greatest social scientists of the last 50 years. And he has a great footnote somewhere in there about one of the most underststudied um topics in this entire field is cuteness.

[00:58:22]And one of the reason I liked it is it jived with something my dad had always said, which was that if babies weren't cute, human species would have disappeared a long time ago because babies are an enormous pain in the ass, right? I mean, this they they they take an incred, as you say, it takes a year for them to even walk. So, you're carrying them everywhere. They're making a huge amount of noise.

[00:58:44]>> Um, they make a giant mess. They tell predators where you are, >> right? And the cuteness thing, the fact that you just look at their face and you're you you melt, um, is huge. And I always assumed that chimps, that was one of these things that we kind of shared.

[00:59:00]And so, like, you would just think as a matter of evolutionary evolutionary revulsion. The idea of eating a baby would just be a non-starter. And that's just super creepy that it's not.

[00:59:12]>> Yeah. It's again very different. Um, no, but by the way, again, it's the cutest thing. Why do we love pandas?

[00:59:18]>> Right.

[00:59:19]>> You know, if you've ever seen actually pandas, you know, in the zoo, they poop all day long. They poop all day long.

[00:59:25]>> Yeah. But they poop triscuits, so it's kind of adorable. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[00:59:28]>> No, they Why do we love cats, you know?

[00:59:30]Why do we It's It's because, you know, the big eyes, the little >> They trick our cuteness thing. Yeah.

[00:59:35]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They >> And this is like u my colleague, friend, colleague, uh Scott Linskum and I, we are sort of obsessed about Actually, we should have you write about this for us sometime. Uh Few years ago, we got into this big thing about what animals have the best PR agents in so far as like which animals do people love but are actually kind of dicks, right? And blue jays are definitely one.

[01:00:01]>> Oh, is uh dolphins are way up there.

[01:00:04]Dolphins are rapists and do all sorts of terrible things. Um >> Yeah. Yeah. But let me interrupt you there. Have you ever been in a dolphinarium? That is a place where you go and you just hang out with >> I've swam with dolphins here.

[01:00:14]>> Yeah. They're super nice. They're super nice to humans. Yeah, they're their their mating patterns are quite brutal and horrible, but mostly they're actually even more a sweet domesticated animal than humans are. They're they're they're generally pretty lovely, but like humans, they're cooperative hunters, so they also they go out and they kill. And as you say, the manning patterns are pretty brutal. And uh you know, so u koalas I hear are really nasty animals.

[01:00:37]>> They spit. They're nasty. Yeah. Um and um otter.

[01:00:41]>> Yeah. Sea otterters in terms of the cuteness to nastiness in real life factor, they may be the top of the list. I mean, chimps close, but actually adult chimps aren't that close. It's the baby chimp. And this is this is what got me on this was, you know, you make this point about how a lot of people get seduced by baby chimpanzees and then they extrapolate their affection for them into adulthood.

[01:01:08]you know, Tarzan movies, he had a baby chimpanzee, but >> you know, Johnny W Weiss Muller would have been uh just a pile of viscera if they had had a full-grown chimpanzeee on set, >> right? Well, potentially it could have.

[01:01:22]Yes.

[01:01:22]>> Yeah. I mean, it just could have gone south really, really badly. Yes. Um um and you've been economical in your descriptions of what chimpanzees can do to humans, but like >> that horrible story about the people bringing the birthday cake to their old chimp and it mauling the former owner.

[01:01:41]Um >> yeah, >> it's worse than just having fingers bitten off sometime.

[01:01:44]>> Yeah. You can have your face ripped off and Yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:47]>> All right. So, what has been the criticism or response to the book that has either annoyed you the most because you think it's unfair or that has caused you to do a sort of I I need to think about that more.

[01:02:04]>> H um well, one that annoyed me was there's a guy named Larry Arhard is one of two people wrote a not he actually wrote four reviews of the book. Uh, so he wrote a review in a magazine that would it wasn't actually a terrible review, but it was a critical review.

[01:02:18]Uh, by he's one of the people asked to debate me. I've never heard from him since. Um, but he said that I had made a straw man and that I had suggested that the primatologists thought humans were really like chimps.

[01:02:31]That's not a straw man. That's what they've said. I mean, I, you know, you can quote directly from Dval and other people where they said, you know, we can learn the vocabulary of human interaction, things like that. Uh, so no, there's no straw man. That's I and I you know you can quote them directly.

[01:02:45]They do say we can learn a lot about humans by study of chimps and I'm saying no you really can't.

[01:02:50]>> The other criticism I've heard which I think is very fair is maybe fair is people said you've overstated some of your arguments and I think that actually I'll make two and um you know that may be but compared to the people who said well we can learn lots about humans by studying chimps. I think I've you know the criticism is trivial. Another criticism I heard, one part of the book deals with another thing that is very unusual in humans that's never seen in primates, which is preferential homosexuality.

[01:03:18]>> There's never been chimps in particular are pansexual. They they engage in sexual acts of all kinds, uh, including homosexual acts. But preferential homosexuality, that is a chimp who's only interested in its own sex, never been observed, never been observed in any primate.

[01:03:34]>> But we have observed it in some other species, particularly sheep. L >> and uh I speculate a little about that.

[01:03:41]Interestingly, again, there are herd animals that we observe this in.

[01:03:45]>> Um one theory that I put forward in the book and I said in the book that it was speculative. Some people said I don't find this persuasive. Uh and that's I think that's perfectly legitimate. Uh yeah, maybe it is totally wrong. Um I connected it to this issue of language.

[01:03:59]We know that um male homosexuality is a good deal more common uh than female than lesbianism. Um and we also know that uh and we even have done some anatom there's some anatomical research on things like the hypothalamus which have suggested that some male homosexuals have have brains and and nervous systems that have characteristics that we typically associate with women rather than men. Um and it's also known that Asperger syndrome is kind of like most people with Asperers are male. it's like 80% male or more. And uh there's even a theory which was developed by uh Sasha Baron Cohen's cousin who's a professor in England, an influential psych psych professor, neurosychology professor um that asperers is basically just a very extreme form of male brain development.

[01:04:53]So you have a real emphasis on logic on but there's a lack of things that we associate with female brain development like the ability to read faces and emotions um and uh and difficulty with with spoken language. So I said, you know, it may be that some male homosexuals, let's stereotypically say, let's say Oscar Wild, >> um, who was, by the way, married and had had kids, but uh, that, you know, who were very good at language that they've they picked up some traits that we would associate with, uh, more female brain development is that's more characteristically female being good at languages, learning languages, uh, learning foreign languages, reading faces, reading emotion, etc. And some people criticized us and said, you know, it's kind of dubious and in this case your the neuroscience you provide is not that persuasive. Okay? You know, I said it was speculative. I mean I I I I having not read that part of the book, I will just simply say one could simply say it was ill- advised in so far as um for fairly obvious reasons, the subject of evolution and homosexuality is people flip the safeties on their rifles pretty quickly when that topic comes up. I will say though on the on the broader point um I'm very sympathetic to the argument that there's more variation in male nature than female nature because men are more disposable, right? So like men are the are the are the worker bees in effect. And um and so my understanding I mean Charles Murray is a friend of mine and he did this book on human differences that uh you know I think he wanted it to cause more controversy but it was too scrupulous and it just sort of vanished. But you know there are more male geniuses than female geniuses, >> right? And more low low IQ.

[01:06:57]>> And there also more male morons than there are female morons. And >> yeah, it's not something in the book, but it's an old finding in psychology that average IQ of males and females is basically the same, but right, we get a completely different distribution. Um, one theory about that, again, this has nothing to do with the the book. Can I hold up the book to try and pers shamelessly persuade people to buy it?

[01:07:14]>> Sure.

[01:07:15]>> Okay, I'm going to shamelessly go buy the book. People really like it. Go buy the book. Um but uh yeah, an old theory about that is that uh you know the the Y chromosome uh which determines maleness has many fewer genes on it.

[01:07:31]>> Uh it's missing a lot of genes and uh that's why there's this whole thing of sex linked uh diseases like hemophilia and uh color blindness because if you have an if you have a bad copy on the X chromosome in your male then there's no there's no uh other copy that's good that can balance it out.

[01:07:49]>> Yeah. Yeah, >> but the flip side might be, you know, uh, if you got a good copy, you know, for something intellectual or your brain, you know, maybe there's nothing bad to balance it out. That's an old theory.

[01:08:01]>> I mean, the the point about what ties it to homosexuality that it would be more prevalent among men than among women.

[01:08:10]It's just that there's more variability and therefore the, >> you know, and then there are these arguments about uh birth order having to do with like what hormones you get.

[01:08:20]That's is which is a serious theory, you know.

[01:08:23]>> Yeah. Yeah. It seems that um the the uh I'm actually a later child. Uh it seems that uh but only if I'm heterosexual.

[01:08:30]How did this work out? Uh it turns out that if you have a number of older male siblings, you're more likely to be both left-handed and homosexual. And they think that this may have to do with um as a mother has more children uh she has greater problems with uh seeing the fetus as uh non-self >> and there may be some immunological response or or or you're exposing in uterero the baby to hormones which have all sorts of odd effects on brain development. Uh not bad effects but but different effects.

[01:09:03]>> I I have no investment in any of the theories. I just think that the theories are interesting in their own right and it is you know one of the rules on this podcast is we're against monocausal explanations for things >> right >> and so it could be a little of all the above and it could be you know something else entirely. I mean, one of the things that's very frustrating is having having evolved a lot on on some of these questions or changed a lot, you know, depending how you the naturalistic fallacy of of evolved, but um I'm old enough to remember where I was morally lectured to by people saying it's not a choice, it's how you are. Right? That was that was part of the morally compelling argument about um Andrew Sullivan's stuff and and Jonathan Rous's stuff about gay marriage was that it's it's like this is how you're born. And then in the last 10 years there's been a lot of this stuff. No, it's actually a choice. And there's this sort of ideological argument that has crept in that says that human agency is much more involved in in sexual preference or sexual orientation than it was. And I I think that's a dangerous route for gay people to to go down rhetorically. Um but it's also just a huge reversal from the more morally compelling argument that they had made for for decades. Um but that's probably a subject for another podcast.

[01:10:21]>> Well, I would just say I mean, you know, I assume this is the case for you. I mean, I've been in theaters, so I I can definitely say it's true. Sweeping generalization. Shameless sweeping sweeping generalization. Um, you know, there are a lot of people who are gay and uh, you know, this is not this was not a choice. They're gay and uh, you know, I I I think to make their lives miserable is not a good thing.

[01:10:44]>> Yeah. No, look, and I I think the one of the things I think is interesting about the birth order explanation, I mean, the hormone bath in uterero, and it's congenital, but it's not genetic, >> you know, >> is that it's this weird middle position between >> nature and nurture as the way it was framed for most of my life where, no, everyone was saying it's it's about social influences, and if we could just get >> kids to watch more manly TV shows, no one would be gay, which is of course nonsense. And and then there's other argument that it's purely genetic, which also is kind of nonsense when you think about the Darwinian logic of of of propagating your species.

[01:11:20]>> But if it's this middle thing that it has to do with the context and the contingency of birth order and all that kind of stuff, it kind of it it's a little from column A and a little from column B. And I kind of like it like that, but it's >> I'm not I'm not >> doing this for normative moral purposes.

[01:11:36]is I just think intellectually it's an interesting sort of compromise in some ways.

[01:11:41]>> All right. Well, this, you know, I did not plan on getting into preferential homosexuality, which was the name of my band in college. Uh, but um this was really interesting and a lot of fun and and thank you a bunch for doing this and um it's great to lock eyes on you after having sort of been crossing paths at so many ways for so long.

[01:12:00]>> Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I I'm I'm again telling people if they're interested in reading an interesting science book, please read the book. Uh that also say I hope and I I said this before we got on the air. Uh if the book is 1% as good as liberal fascism, I'm very proud.

[01:12:15]>> All right, so Jonathan Leaf, thank you so much for being here and um this is a real pleasure. And again, the book is the primate myth. Why the latest science leads to leads us to a new theory of human nature. We'll put a link to it um in the show notes as well as links to the various reviews. And um thanks again for being here.

[01:12:33]>> Thank you.

[01:12:36]>> All right, Jonathan Leaf has left the uh studio and I I I I feel really really really put thrown a few more reallyies bad about this. Um and we we talked about it before we started recording. So when we alluded to it, I don't know whether people really um understood what was going on. So when I started at National Review, I want to say somewhere in 1990, early '9 wasn't 97, so early '9 some somewhere in '98.

[01:13:08]Um, they already had a website, but there was not a lot on it. And um, I originally didn't come on board to do anything about NRO. NRO didn't exist.

[01:13:20]Um, there was like this Washington bulletin thing that Romesh Puru and Jonathan and John Miller wrote and there was a few other like word puzzle things on the site. Um, but there was also a few column kind of things and one of the things that was on there was uh I think it was called Loose Leaf and it was by Jonathan Leaf. this Jonathan Lee. I did not know that this was the same guy. And um when I got picked up to be when I got I got anointed to be the founding editor of National Review Online, he stuck around. He wrote for us occasionally. I just assumed because it was not in his bio. It was like my RA who will be flogged did not know this for whatever reason. And so like we just started talking and he starts talking to me about this stuff and how he's a fan and like we talked 30 years ago and blah blah. I had no idea that it was the same guy. Um, and um, I felt very I feel very sheepish about it. Felt very guilty about it. But he's a great guy. It's a very interesting argument. Um, I'm uh um I think it's very compelling if you if you don't grip it too tightly. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it. There's a lot of really interesting observations. Um, I just don't know enough about evolution and taxonomy and all of these kinds of things to have a final opinion on the the big picture takeaway about whether or not humans are primates or whether it's useful to call talk about a primate myth or anything like that. But his sort of is is closer to the ground observations about how humans really are different than primates is really really super interesting to me. Um, and I hope people do pick up the book or interested in this stuff. And, um, other than that, uh, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.