What Chimpanzees Reveal About How We Connect and Divide with Aaron Sandel | The Curiosity Shop

1. 0:00 – 1:02

   Welcome to The Curiosity Shop

   1. BBBrené Brown0:00

      Meet Gus. He's awkward and having a really tough time finding his way with the guys in the group. And this is Christine with her baby Isabelle, and this is her older daughter, Nadine. Nadine is feeling a little left out with the new baby around. This guy is Jackson. He's the 31-year-old alpha of the group, and his status is being challenged by a new male. These are the members of one of the largest chimpanzee communities in the world, and on the Curiosity Shop this week, we're talking to anthropologist and primatologist Dr. Aaron Sandel about what he and his colleagues have learned about alliances, social structures, and the violence that can tear communities apart.

   2. AGAdam Grant0:39

      The story of the Ngogo chimps is the subject of the Netflix documentary Chimp Empire. Today, as humans navigate war, polarization, and growing distrust, we'll ask Aaron what we might be able to learn from the chimps in Ngogo about how social bonds are built, how they break, and why they're so critical to holding communities together.

   3. BBBrené Brown1:01

      [upbeat music]

2. 1:02 – 2:03

   Welcoming Dr. Aaron Sandell

   1. BBBrené Brown1:02

      So today, Adam and I are both excited. I'm losing my mind. We have Dr. Aaron Sandel. He's an associate professor in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project. He received his PhD in anthropology from, I'm gonna have to give this to Adam, the University of Michigan. There you go.

   2. AGAdam Grant1:25

      Go Blue.

   3. BBBrené Brown1:26

      I'm giving it to you. He studies our closest ape relatives to understand social bonds and the emotions that animate them. Since 2012, he has studied wild chimpanzees at Ngogo, um, in Uganda. Um, we're excited he's here. Let's bring him on. First of all, welcome, and I hope you've cleared your calendar because I am in, I am in full... Look, I can't even take it. I am in full-on five-year-old kindergartner mode. I have questions about questions.

   4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel2:00

      [laughs] Perfect.

3. 2:03 – 6:47

   The Science Of Social Bonds

   1. AGAdam Grant2:03

      You've been talking about chimps and wanting to do an episode on chimps since before we had a podcast together.

   2. BBBrené Brown2:07

      Okay, so let's start with what's on your website. I, I love this. So on your website, you write, "We are facing crises of loneliness, polarization, and conflict." Why? Part of the problem is that we don't fully understand the nature and importance of the social bonds that hold communities together. You write, "I study our closest ape relatives to understand social bonds and the emotions that animate them. I have studied chimpanzees in Uganda since 2012, including a rare violent conflict between chimpanzees. I am expanding my research now to mountain gorillas and humans." God, love this. You write, "I draw from evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology, and I use a range of tools, including network analyses, machine learning, and endocrinology to understand how social bonds are formed, maintained, and sometimes fall apart." Let me ask you this question. I have so many questions. Um, like I wanna know if Abram's still leading the pack over there or if he ever really fully took his role as the alpha. Can we just start there?

   3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel3:17

      Yeah. Um, Abram's in the central group. Uh, he should be still the alpha. Yeah, he took... He, he fully became the alpha, 'cause Chimp Empire was filmed mostly around 2021, and, um, that was right as he was sort of trying to establish himself. I don't wanna give spoilers. I mean, there, there's gonna be a lot of spoilers that we discuss today for those who haven't seen Chimp Empire. But, um, yeah, he became the alpha of the central group, and there's not a lot of competition there, so he's, he's, he's been able to hold that position.

   4. BBBrené Brown3:53

      I had an over under on Gus coming out and whooping some Abram's ass and taking over because, look, I, I had to call my husband like five times, and he's like, "Get off the Chimp Empire."

   5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel4:09

      No, I love that. Yeah, Gus, uh, great chimp. Didn't have a chance at alpha, though, [laughs] in my opinion. Great... He's, he's sensitive. Uh, he's good at grooming. He was a great older brother. He was a good younger brother, but, uh, yeah, doesn't have the, the same suite of traits, I think, that would lead someone to become alpha.

   6. AGAdam Grant4:37

      Okay, wait a minute.

   7. BBBrené Brown4:38

      [laughs]

   8. AGAdam Grant4:38

      Back up, Aaron, because I think I'm the stand-in for the audience today. I have not seen Chimp Empire.

   9. BBBrené Brown4:44

      [laughs]

   10. AGAdam Grant4:44

       Who are Abram and Gus? What am I missing?

   11. ASDr. Aaron Sandel4:47

       These are some of the, uh, young adult and adolescent male chimps in the, one of the chimpanzee groups at Ngogo, which is this population of chimpanzees in the middle of Kibale National Park in Western Uganda. This is a huge chunk of forest, especially for anywhere in Uganda or East Africa. It's this big chunk of forest. It's been really well protected. The Uganda Wildlife Authority has been protecting this chunk of forest, and it's been a national park for, um, over 30 years. And the Ngogo chimpanzees are in the middle of that park, so they're surrounded on all sides by other forest. They're surrounded by other chimpanzee groups. So we really get to see a lot of their natural behavior as they would interact with each other, but also with chimps from other outside groups. And then, um, we will discuss, I think this'll come up a lot, is the dynamics among these two groups at Ngogo, but Chimp Empire follows these two neighboring chimpanzee groups. Abrams was this young adult male who was rising in the dominance hierarchy in the central group. Gus was this adolescent male. Um, he was sort of living his best life in the, in the central group.

   12. BBBrené Brown6:06

       Um, I just feel like this, this-- I just feel like the documentary and what you're studying explains so much. I gotta ask you this. Um, when, when, when you think there are lessons about loneliness and polarization and conflict that we as humans can learn from primates, I, I think... Did you set out to study-- Did you set out to be a primatologist so you could learn about us from them? Or did you observe-- Was this a, a priori kind of thing, or did you, did you observe them and like, "Oh, man, we've got some lessons we can learn here?"

4. 6:47 – 11:04

   How He Became A Primatologist

   1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel6:47

      It's a good question. Uh, I'm a sort of, uh, on the one hand, a rare case, but sort of common, I think, in animal behavior and primatology, where this was a lifelong dream to study apes in the wild. Since I was five, I wanted to study gorillas. It was like childhood dream, age five-

   2. BBBrené Brown7:06

      Really?

   3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel7:06

      Got a stuffed animal gorilla, got hooked, completely hooked at age five. All my sort of, sort of creative energy since age five was going into thinking about wild apes.

   4. BBBrené Brown7:20

      Wow.

   5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel7:20

      And, uh, so then this and, I mean, my classmates in second grade, they called me Gorilla. Even my teacher let me like sign, uh, my name on my papers as Gorilla 'cause I was obsessed.

   6. BBBrené Brown7:34

      [laughs]

   7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel7:34

      And then, um, so like fast-forward, in college, I sort of got more interested in human evolution and, and ape evolution. But really at that point, I was interested in gorilla behavior just 'cause I had this lifelong passion for gorillas, and I'd spent time at the zoo throughout high school in Boston. So I developed this interest in gorillas just for their own sake, just the sort of beauty of the natural world, the complexity of their lives, even in their subtleties. And then, so I was really almost interested in humans insofar as they could help me understand gorillas. It was like a little flip from the-

   8. BBBrené Brown8:15

      Yeah

   9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel8:15

      ... typical biological anthropologist, evolutionary sort of framework where we're trying to understand humans. It was flipped for me. But then I got interested in humans, too. I thought, I mean, humans are fascinating, obviously. And I got really excited by thinking about humans and our closest relatives, chimps, gorillas, bonobos. And then, um, I really got interested in chimps. I think it was college where I shifted. I got interested in more of these questions of social bonds, cooperation, aggression to some extent, dominance relationships, and then I did that for my PhD, studying chimps at Ngogo. And I got on this sort of chimp track and started studying their social relationships, their-- Sort of asking the-- Initially, it was asking the question, do they have what we can really call friendship? That was the main motivation. And how did these relationships develop? And then in studying that, I, I became more interested in these broader themes of, uh, emotions, loneliness, and then, uh, and conflict. And I would say just the connection to emotions in particular was when thinking more deeply about friendship. Like, how do we define friendship in chimps? We have to figure out how we define it in humans. These are concepts that we, we borrow from understanding our own lives. And I came to realize, really, the way to understand a social bond or a friendship is about how we feel in those relationships. It's not necessarily just based on behavior alone. I don't think you could usu- usually figure out are two people friends based on that. It's about their emotions. So then I said, okay, this is sort of fast-forwarding to where I'm at now. I'm like, how do we study emotions then in chimps?

   10. BBBrené Brown9:59

       Yeah.

   11. ASDr. Aaron Sandel9:59

       And then I was like, oh, let me just go to the psychologists and, uh, figure out how we study humans. And then I realized that that's, uh, uh, maybe a complicated question even just for humans. So I've been excited by thinking how do we actually study emotions across species. But it's really this back and forth. I think I'm always still interested in what can I learn about humans from studying chimps? What can I learn about chimps from thinking more about humans?

   12. AGAdam Grant10:28

       How many questions do you have right now, Brené?

   13. BBBrené Brown10:30

       Oh my God. I want you to write an atlas of the heart for the chimpanzees. Um, is-- Th- I'm thinking-- Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Let me get focused. I'm so excited. Okay. You know why we had you on now? This is crazy. We had you on now because huge World Cup fans, we watched all of it, and then we interviewed a lot of people about the World Cup. And one of the things that happened with Raj Bennett, um, with Rebecca Lowe, with John Green, the author, is we got to this question with the World Cup every time:

5. 11:04 – 12:15

   Do We Need A "Them" For An "Us"?

   1. BBBrené Brown11:04

      Can there be a we without a them? And is the strength of the we and the bel- sense of belonging and community, does it require an enemy? And so, you know, like my enemy from this past weekend would be Newcastle, where I ended up with a draw as a Liverpool fan. Um, so this is why I wanted to talk to you. And what I'm really mad about, to be honest with you, is they have plenty of fruit, these chimpanzees, the Western and the Central, have plenty of fruit. This is like authoritarianism to me. Plenty of fruit, plenty of space. They do not need to go all alpha male all the time. It is an inherently broken part of human-- I mean, something is wrong.

   2. AGAdam Grant11:58

      Can I just build on that? So I, I, I have, I, I guess, the same puzzle, which is we normally think about conflict emerging from resource scarcity and two groups fighting over something that they both want. But to Brené's point, that, that's not the case here. Why are these chimps at war?

6. 12:15 – 16:05

   Why The Western And Central Groups Are Divided

   1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel12:15

      Right. These are great questions. The us versus them, and then why did these chimpanzee groups, why are they engaged in this lethal conflict that's been going on since, uh, 2018 essentially? I think, I mean, this is again where I think chimpanzees can inform some of these questions about human behavior. Great. And, uh, I would say, I mean, my sort of hot take based on analyzing data on chimpanzees, watching chimpanzees, and really studying this conflict, uh, which does- we should talk about because Chimp Empire is one... This amazing documentary is probably the most accurate, uh, wildlife documentary ever made that I've seen because it's just really just telling the true story. It's, it's... In, in some cases, they simplify things 'cause there's no way you could- Right ... tell in four episodes the complexities of the story. They make a few, you know, simplifications for the viewer, but it's just really following the lives of the chimps. And it's not a-- But in the documentary, one thing that's important to note, it's talking about the conflict between the Western group and the Central group. What it doesn't really emphasize is that this used to be one group. I mean, in the documentary, they don't feature that prominently, so it's an even more complex dynamic when we see that they're fighting and the Western chimps are attacking and killing chimps from the Central group. So there's an interesting thing there. My hot take is y- I don't think you need, uh, an enemy to build community. I don't think you need a them for an us, and this is something, this is sort of a hypothesis I have from watching the chimpanzees, and we can, I think, unpack that later. But the main thing, I mean, there's, there's the dominance dynamics. Those are all within a group. Right. So whether you like Abrams or Jackson, the dominance hierarchy, that's the within group dynamics, and then there are the between group dynamics, and it's not necessarily clear how these are directly related. 'Cause usually, despite competition within a group, they all come together. They sort of put aside their differences to patrol the borders of their territory, defend it against outsider chimp groups, and even to go on the offensive and go into the, the outsider group territory. But the, the main interesting dynamic for me is that the Western and Central groups used to be one community. They were one group for decades and decades, as long as they've been studied since 1995, '93. They were one group, and we only really saw signs of this polarization occurring around 2015. Why? And then they became two separate groups in 2018. Why? Yeah, what happened? Men. Yeah. [laughs] Boys. Male, males. Well, this is where, uh, this is where I think, on the one hand, there's definitely something about the dominance hierarchy that's relevant here. Just one thing important to note with chimps, the adult male chimps form a dominance hierarchy, and they tend to be higher ranking than all the adult females. This is something that sort of happens during adolescence, and it's not exactly clear what the point of being an alpha is for a chimp. I mean, in a small group, the alpha male gets sort of priority in mating. He can keep other males away when he wants to mate with a certain female. Female chimps certainly have some choice in who they mate with, but they also are sort of pressured by the adult males often to, to mate.

7. 16:05 – 19:21

   How Chimp Dominance Hierarchies Work

   1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel16:05

      But the main sort of... It seems the main reason a chimp would become the alpha is he doesn't have to defer to any other male chimp, and then if you're high ranking, you know, you have to defer to the alpha or, you know, the second ranking, but you don't have to defer to anyone else. And by defer, this really means if you see another chimp through the course of the day, you'll give a little grunt maybe to indicate your deference or your submission, the pant grunt. And there could be a little, you know, aggression that still occurs, slapping, chasing, but it's mostly these bluffs. And the, the one I, I would say the one, um, I'm sort of an advocate to some extent for the dominance hierarchy because it can potentially reduce aggression, 'cause you sort of know where you fall. It's, it's, it's not strictly sort of this negative thing on the one hand. But then the other important thing to note with chimps, it doesn't-- the alpha is not the leader. The alpha is not necessarily one who is, you know, rallying the group together or leading the hunts or leading territorial patrols. It's just the fact that in this one domain, he doesn't have to grunt in deference to other males. Wow. Okay. Oh my God, I have so many... Okay. Same. So, okay. So I really dislike this about humans. I, I, I have to say, I really dislike this about... as human, about humans and about the chimps. Um, because here's the story I was making up, and this is coming from someone who studies human emotions. I'm, I'm, I'm making up the story that everything's okay until Jackson is like, "We have to patrol the border." And then he's a shit starter, and, and he's like, everyone comes, everybody goes with him, and he's putting them at risk. It's like, it's like what I see in politics today. You're, you're putting, uh... You're, you're giving us an enemy and keeping us in fear to maintain your position.

   2. BBBrené Brown18:23

      Like, you're manufacturing conflict that doesn't exist. Like, ta- take Caroline. Caroline's got this new baby, right? And I thought, I was very-

   3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel18:32

      Uh, Christine, yeah

   4. BBBrené Brown18:32

      ... Christine, Christine

   5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel18:33

      Yeah, yeah, yeah

   6. BBBrené Brown18:33

      ... very offended that she wasn't named for a year, um, because they die so often, right? The babies. Well, Adam, guess, guess what puts the babies in peril often?

   7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel18:47

      The men-

   8. BBBrené Brown18:47

      It's gonna-

   9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel18:48

      ... going and fighting.

   10. BBBrené Brown18:50

       No. Just the men just, just, just the men swaggering around and doing these displays of, like, like, nobody's after them. They're just running through, knocking down limbs and shit, and looking tough, and then the baby gets caught in that. So, so think about this politically right now. A fragile ego leader goes around stomping on things to prove that he's tough, and there are innocent casualties. Now, is that true or not, Aaron?

8. 19:21 – 27:07

   Miles, Jackson, And The Community Split

   1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel19:21

      Um, I think the-

   2. BBBrené Brown19:22

      Am I signing too much? [laughs]

   3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel19:24

      No, I love the, these are great hypotheses. Maybe it's worth just trying to give you the sort of really brief overview of what happened. I sort of started talking about this, but then there's so much stuff that is exciting to talk about. So, the background, like, before Chimp Empire, um, you had this one group of chimps at Ngogo, and the alpha at the time was Miles. As long as I've worked, like, when I started working there in 2012, it was Miles was the alpha. He was the former alpha before Jackson.

   4. BBBrené Brown19:54

      Miles-

   5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel19:55

      And Miles-

   6. BBBrené Brown19:55

      ... Jackson's si- sidekick Miles?

   7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel19:58

      Yeah, because Miles is this huge, really bulky, big adult male. And he sort of, it seems he became the alpha lu- because he was huge. He was just, like, not necessarily as political. Before Miles, the alpha was Bartok, who was this more smaller, average-sized male, but really had these t- social bonds, these long-term alliances. He was able to attain that status and maintain it because of those relationships. Miles came in, Miles was actually really good at grooming other chimps. He would groom kids, he'd groom adults. He was, um, he was, you know, a, I think, a good alpha in that regard. He wasn't necessarily the best, uh, leader, but this was a time in 2009, '10, '11, right before I started working there, the Ngogo chimps, this is when the central and western groups were still one community. It's a huge group. It's the biggest group of chimps known to scientists.

   8. BBBrené Brown20:54

      Wow.

   9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel20:54

      150 to 200 chimps. Because they had so many males, adult males especially, they were really successful in territorial interactions, these territorial patrols, attacking and killing chimps from other groups, infants and adults, and they expanded their territory. They expanded largely to the northeast, but they were really good at defending and even increasing the size of the territory. More females came in. You saw an increase in fertility. Females with the bigger group probably were able to have more kids. The group is growing largely with, because of females and kids. You have these sort of neighborhoods that, that always exist, the central, eastern, western neighborhoods, but they still are con- always intermingling, and you have Miles as the alpha over all of them, just like Bartok had been the alpha over all of them before. And then my first two summers there in 2012, 2013, I mean, if you want to talk about vuner- vulnerability-

   10. BBBrené Brown21:54

       Yes

   11. ASDr. Aaron Sandel21:55

       ... it was so hard learning 200 chimps. This was, like, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, learning 200 chimps, learning the forest, figuring out a research project, a childhood dream, like, confronting that, like, having to realize the childhood dream was the hardest thing that's ever happened to me. And, uh, there were plenty of times I was, I was thinking about quitting, and I could still be a primatologist, but I, I was like, "I can't study wild chimps. It's boring. It's hard. Um, how am I gonna learn 200 chimps?"

   12. BBBrené Brown22:25

       Were you scared?

   13. ASDr. Aaron Sandel22:25

       Those were my first-

   14. BBBrené Brown22:25

       Were you scared, too?

   15. ASDr. Aaron Sandel22:30

       Uh, not so scared. I probably should have been of, of... I mean, I was scared of this losing a part of my identity-

   16. BBBrené Brown22:35

       Yeah

   17. ASDr. Aaron Sandel22:35

       ... because I really thought of my... I was, I was gorilla boy. I was this person who'd blown out birthday candles for 20 years wishing to become a gorilla scientist. Now, here I am studying chimps, so it's like childhood dream already not quite there, but it's pretty close. You know, one gene is off, but it's hard and boring.

   18. BBBrené Brown22:55

       Wow, okay.

   19. ASDr. Aaron Sandel22:55

       And I, and a lot of that is because I just don't know all the individuals. I can't recognize them in an instant, 'cause to understand, you know, what makes ch- you know, uh, I think any life interesting, like, just what makes chimpanzee life interesting is you see the, you can recognize them. You can, um, tell what's happening. I mean, these documentaries that have these amazing footage, you know, zoomed in, they're still s- you know, synthesizing a lot of stuff with the, with the narrative. But when you're actually there with binoculars, and the chimp's in a tree, like 100 feet up in a big fig tree, it's hard to keep your neck craned and looking through the leaves and seeing who's doing what. I mean, it's, it's really demoralizing. So, while all this is happening, I'm learning, slowly learning the chimps, and Miles is the alpha of the entire community. He's from the Central Neighborhood. Jackson was born in the Western Neighborhood, and he, as a young adult, moved to the Central Neighborhood. 'Cause I, I noticed that there were sort of these, uh, distinct, I think, almost personalities in the three different neighborhoods.

   20. BBBrené Brown23:59

       Hm.

   21. ASDr. Aaron Sandel23:59

       The Central Neighborhood was your classic, like, chimpanzee group you would find in East Africa, like Uganda or Tanzania, where the highest ranking males are all sort of traveling together, following around whatever female is ovulating, trying to mate with her. The adolescent male is just sort of on the periphery, uh, tagging along. That's sort of the textbook chimp behavior. In the Western Neighborhood, it was more like chimps, um, actually in West Africa, where the males and females are actually more cohesive with each other.

   22. BBBrené Brown24:30

       Mm.

   23. ASDr. Aaron Sandel24:31

       So there's still like high-ranking males. There's still aggression, but males are grooming females a lot. A lot of times, um, you know, high rank, if you're high-ranking, you're more likely to have a kid. But also, males and females that spend more time together are more likely to have kids together. So it was like this slightly different, I don't know, dynamic. Maybe like the Central group was more like football players, and the Western group was more like soccer players or something. I'm just trying to think of like-

   24. BBBrené Brown25:00

       No, I'm totally getting it.

   25. ASDr. Aaron Sandel25:01

       Yeah.

   26. BBBrené Brown25:01

       Like total players in the Central, and couple-y relationships. So sweet.

   27. ASDr. Aaron Sandel25:06

       Yeah.

   28. BBBrené Brown25:06

       The one-- Boy, but I'm anti-Western, so I don't know how this is panning out for my narrative. But go ahead.

   29. ASDr. Aaron Sandel25:11

       Oh, yeah. [laughs] And then in the East, those were, um, those were more the freaks and the geeks. Those were, uh, males and females were sort of cohesive still.

   30. BBBrené Brown25:21

       Ah.
9. 27:07 – 29:03

   Mysterious Deaths Fracture The Group

   1. BBBrené Brown27:07

      Jesus.

   2. ASDr. Aaron Sandel27:07

      We get there that summer in twenty fourteen, and we realize after a few weeks that five of these older adult male chimps have died. They were in their, around age forty, which for a chimp is sort of old for a male. I think that they all died within around a month of each other, suggesting some of them at least died from a disease. And these were old males who were really well-connected, and I haven't run the social network analyses on this 'cause it's sort of a difficult question to answer. But they, they were certainly well-connected with a lot of the other chimps, some of them even seeming like bridges between the Eastern and Central neighborhood or bridges-

   3. BBBrené Brown27:45

      Oh my God

   4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel27:45

      ... between the Central and Western neighborhoods.

   5. BBBrené Brown27:47

      It's like the mafia.

   6. ASDr. Aaron Sandel27:48

      So they, they sort of disappear, and you don't know at first 'cause chimpanzees, like humans, they're never all together in the same place at the same time.

   7. BBBrené Brown27:55

      Right.

   8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel27:55

      It's like a village where you're mixing and part. Like yeah, you have friends and family spend more time together, but throughout the day, they're intermingling. They can go days or weeks without seeing each other. So a- as researchers, we're going weeks without seeing some of these chimps. We're like, "Where's Pincer? Where is Berg? Where is Dolfie? Where's Webster? Where's Mingus?" Um, and then after a couple months, we realize they're gone. They're gone forever. They died. And I don't think we realized at first that this likely had a big impact. I think the neighborhoods became now more distinct. There used to be three neighborhoods that were really well-connected by a handful of individual chimps. Those are now gone at the same time that Jackson is, is, is shooting up in the dominance hierarchy. And then I go there for, I'm there for a year, finally learn all the chimps, and I, I have this research project that's motivating me, and I've sort of learned the forest, become, um, really competent at, at recognizing the chimps and knowing what's going on. At the end of that year, Jackson finally takes his chance and gets, um, charges

10. 29:03 – 32:39

    Jackson Takes Over As Alpha

    1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel29:03

       Miles, and a month later, Miles pant grunts to him. And that was like the takeover.

    2. BBBrené Brown29:09

       Wow.

    3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel29:09

       And it was this day in June in twenty fifteen that that happened, and John Mitani, who's been studying these chimps for, uh, at that time, it would've been twenty years. He's-- That was twenty fifteen. He saw, he was the only one that saw Miles grunt in submission to Jackson. So now Jackson is essentially the alpha. He still has to sort of establish himself over the, you know, f- subsequent weeks, and Miles has to, you know, retain his high-ranking position if he, unless he want-- he's gonna fall.

    4. BBBrené Brown29:39

       Right.

    5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel29:40

       And it was that afternoon, though, I was with chimps from the Western neighborhood. And it was the end of the day, and I was alone with them. We were in the middle of the territory, and they hear other chimps, and it must be chimps from the Central neighborhood, Miles, Jackson, those other chimps. They're just in earshot. And the chimps that I'm with, rather than sort of approaching them and reuniting in typical chimpanzee fashion, they become quiet. They become nervous. They start grimacing. They're embracing each other, touching each other in reassurance. They're acting like they're hearing outsiders. And then when they see the Central chimpanzees approach, rather than reunite, they run, and the Central chimpanzees then chase them. And this was the first time we'd really seen, like, avoidance among chimps from the same community, and then they avoided each other for six weeks, and nothing like that had ever been observed before. And I think, you know, s- knowing then, learning at the end of the day that, oh, Jackson had finally got Miles to pant grunt to him. I think the Western chimps must have heard in the vocalization some-

    6. BBBrené Brown30:51

       Mm

    7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel30:52

       ... you know, heightened tension. And it had been, there's a risk to every reunion, even on a normal day. And I think it was like the Western chimps were like, "There's too much tension. It's not worth the risk." They ran. And which I can sort of understand, 'cause Miles was sort of a hothead for a while. Afterwards, he was being more aggressive than normal. Jackson was being more aggressive establishing himself. So it makes sense. But I think they planted the seed of polarization. So I mean, that we can debate then to what extent the question about the us versus them. Do you need a them for an us? But the Western neighborhood had already sort of been a cohesive unit, I think. They were already pretty cohesive.

    8. BBBrené Brown31:35

       Whew.

    9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel31:35

       They had the six weeks of avoidance, after which they all came back together. Things seemed to return to normal. I finished my field work, uh, for my PhD. But then as I was gone writing up, other researchers were there, but they slowly became more and more polarized.

    10. BBBrené Brown31:51

        I wanna tell, 'cause so if you're listening and you're gonna watch Chimp Empire, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a spoiler here. I, one thing, I didn't want, on the initial border patrol thing, I didn't want Gus to go. I mean, I knew he had to go, but I didn't want him to go. Um, I wanted him to stay safe, and I definitely didn't want Pork Pie to go. And Pork Pie didn't ma- He got scared, and he went home, right? During this border, but, like, he left. But I gotta tell you about the bad guys in this show.

11. 32:39 – 37:35

    Territorial Patrols And Lethal Violence Explained

    1. BBBrené Brown32:39

       Adam, are you laughing at me? Like, I-

    2. ASDr. Aaron Sandel32:42

       Keep going.

    3. BBBrené Brown32:42

       I-

    4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel32:43

       Keep going.

    5. BBBrené Brown32:43

       I had-

    6. ASDr. Aaron Sandel32:43

       I'm ready.

    7. BBBrené Brown32:44

       I had to wait a long time between one and two, 'cause I was distraught. I called my husband crying, and he's like, "You can't watch animal documentaries." Um, for, for the Western chimpanzees to sneak into a territory and kill someone in, in their own territory, what-- That was brutal.

    8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel33:14

       It's brutal, but it, it is a s- typical part of chimpanzee behavior. It's not so common, but around... I mean, chimpanzees will do these territorial patrols. They'll get a large group of especially adult males, some adult females, and, um, usually a few adolescent females will go to the edge of their territory sometimes. But also often they'll then do these deeper incursions into the outsider's territory, and it's still unclear exactly what's, what sort of the chimps are thinking in, in-- when they're doing these. Some, I think, sometimes it is they're trying to find a fig tree or certain fruit trees that are near the border. And so to feel safe eating there, they need to go deeper, make sure there's no other chimps from the outsider group. 'Cause at the border, there may be some trees that are shared by two groups. Other times, I think certain individual chimps in particular are motivated to go on territorial patrols. Some are motivated to attack and kill chimps from other groups.

    9. BBBrené Brown34:16

       Got it.

    10. ASDr. Aaron Sandel34:17

        And they can even try to rally. And, and how they do this, we do not know, because chimps, they have vocalizations, they have gestures, but they have nothing like human language, spoken language. They're somehow coordinating, I think, all of this through non-verbal, really subtle, subtle bodily cues and context and things that, that, that are sort of the next big questions, I think, for chimpanzee research. But they will attack and kill. I think, I mean, for me, it feels almost like when chimpanzees are doing this, like, 'cause across chimpanzee sites, they attack and kill chimps from other groups. And, and we've learned this over the last, you know, fifty years of people studying chimps. But usually, they're killing a stranger, a stranger to them.

    11. BBBrené Brown35:06

        Yeah.

    12. ASDr. Aaron Sandel35:07

        It's adult males, 'cause adult males are born in the group. They stay in that group their whole lives. So any, any adult male chimp that they see that they don't know is from this other group. So it's a str- It's a stranger, and it seems like a- um, adult male chimps are sort of xenophobic. They have this fear of strangers. And then, so when they see one from another group, they'll, they'll run if they're outnumbered, or they'll go and try to attack and kill them. Yeah, it's brutal, but it's a familiar phenomenon, I mean, from the human perspective too. But with the Ngogo chimps, these are two groups that used to be one. They, they're not strangers to each other. They were one group that finally became two groups at the end of twenty seventeen. They had finally split. And then it was in twenty eighteen that we saw the first lethal attack by chimps from the Western group against a chimp from the Central group.

    13. BBBrené Brown36:03

        Wow.

    14. ASDr. Aaron Sandel36:04

        And that was-- I, I finished my PhD. I went back to Uganda for eight months to sort of especially track this polarization. And I got there, and I realized right away, it's like, s- whoa, this has really changed. They-- Not only are they socially distinct, they've really divided the territory. Now, the Western chimps stay in the west. Central chimps stay in the central. There was one old male, BF, who was sort of more a Westerner. He was with the Centralers. He was the last chimp that would go back and forth. I remember following him in this plateau in the middle of the forest, where there, there's a lot of different fruit trees, and he was just traveling there alone. It was the center of the territory. Now it was this borderland, and I was expecting, you know, when is he gonna go back? To join the Westerners. And then it was in January twentieth eighteen, we started seeing more and more territorial patrols against these former group members. The Central chimps would patrol to the West.

    15. AGAdam Grant37:00

        Mm.

    16. ASDr. Aaron Sandel37:00

        The Western chimps would patrol Central. And then it was, it was twenty eighteen when the Westerners killed this, um, young adult male, Errol. And that was like, for me, witnessing that, um, it really, like, sh- shifted my perspective. I was like, "Oh, wow, this split is real. They're treating these chimps as outsiders." And then I was sort of learning alongside the chimps these shifting dynamics. 'Cause I think Errol showed up to this part of the-- not realizing that the Western chimps would really see him as an outsider and that they would kill him.

12. 37:35 – 44:02

    A Devastating Loss: Errol

    1. AGAdam Grant37:35

       Aaron, the, the parallels to human conflict are... The, I mean, they're, they're sort of, they're smacking you right in the face, right?

    2. ASDr. Aaron Sandel37:41

       Yeah.

    3. AGAdam Grant37:41

       You have a, a perceived slight or insult or aggression on the part of, you know, a former friend or group member, and all of a sudden, now we're, we're locked in some kind of in-group/outg- out-group dynamic. And it almost doesn't matter where it started because, like, each side can point to the other and say, "They're dangerous. They're a threat. They did this to us, and therefore, we need to defend ourselves." And then the line starts to blur between, like, offense and defense. Like, you, you protect yourself by attacking. How, [chuckles] how do you make sense of that, and how do you think about getting out of it?

    4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel38:18

       I think when the conflict started, I mean, a lot of these questions are hard to answer scientifically, but, I mean, what I'm really interested in is that shift. Like, when did the new group identities really emerge and then override-

    5. AGAdam Grant38:32

       Yeah

    6. ASDr. Aaron Sandel38:32

       ... prior relationships? And there was always this ambiguity there because the first chimp that we saw killed, Errol, he was sixteen. He was sort of a loner, even within the Central group. So when he met the Westerners, it made sense that they would sort of see him more as an outsider. Uh, and this was still a time when, you know, they were-- they accepted BF. They accepted this old male who they had a really close relationship to. [lip smack] And so there's, there's this emergence of in-group/out-group dynamic. Um, but there was still, like, plausible deniability. I think the, the senior professors didn't want to accept that the group was splitting. I mean, the reason-- It took us a long time. We wrote this paper that was just published in April in the Journal of Science just sort of describing what happened and using this long-term data to analyze it, but combined with the more qualitative accounts. It took us so long to write it, partly 'cause it's, uh, it's this huge team effort. We have, like, all these professors, graduate students, Ugandan staff, people who've been working there for decades and decades. And then wanting to do it in a really, um, clear way, but also scientifically, you know, statistically rigorous way. It was this huge effort, but I think it also took so long because it was really hard for, uh, the, the researchers to admit that the split was happening, and then even to think about it, even to analyze the data. I mean, you know, like, I now wanna write a book about this, but I think part of my writer's block is, like, this emotional toll of watching, um, chimps being killed and watching also the killers, which, uh, in that regard, I'm actually, um... I don't really hold it against them, which is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. Um-

    7. AGAdam Grant40:32

       You don't?

    8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel40:33

       But why not? I don't. I don't know. I think, I mean, 'cause I saw Errol killed. Errol was a, a sixteen-year-old. He'd been the subject of my dissertation. He was one of the eighteen young males that I focused on. So I s- I was looking at him, you know, for fifteen months. He was one of the main chimps that I was looking at, writing down who he was interacting with. He was an orphan. He had a close relationship to his much older brother, Dizzy, wh- And they were both the smallest chimps in the whole community. Uh, and I remember even him before my dissertation, my real dissertation research in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, watching him. He was a little shy. This little loner, adolescent orphan with these, uh, two older brothers. One brother died in twenty fourteen, and then his, uh, older brother died in twenty seventeen. There was a, a disease outbreak. So it was really sad to watch Errol be killed and die. I was-- In the moment, I still have this, which is almost troubling. Like, I look at the video footage that I took and can hear, you know, m- I'm narrating it with, um, just, like, this objective voice. Rewatching it, it's like s- it's sad to watch, and it's also almost troubling. Like, I'm curious about my own mental state at the time. I remember, though, that night, like, once the day was over, Errol had died. We got a, a vet in to sort of assess, uh, the body and the wounds, and then we buried his body so that we could collect the bones later because that's an important, rare scientific opportunity to have the skeleton of a wild chimp. And then that night, emailing the senior professors to tell them that this had happened, it was really, that was like, you know, I'm sitting on the porch in the dark in this cabin in the middle of the forest, and that's when, like, the emotions sort of come, and I cried and reflecting more on the emotion. Like, 'cause these are chimps that, um, it's weird. They're, like, we're sort of, we have a, this one-sided relationship with all of them. We're just following them around in the forest. They ignore us, but we learn about their lives, and Errol was certainly someone I knew really well. And yet- I don't hold it against the chimps who are attacking him and biting him. Watching that, I almost have grace for them because I'm motivated to understand what caused-- like, why did the group split? I'm motivated to understand even the sort of psychology underlying lethal aggression in chimps. And partly, I mean, they're chimps, so I don't have the same, you know, moral standard, of course, that I would have for a human. Um, but it just to me, it seems like this more, I want a systemic understanding of what's happening, and I don't know what it is, but I, I do seem to have this sort of grace for the individual chimps.

    9. AGAdam Grant43:33

       Wow. Aaron, it, it sounds like demonizing them would stand in the way of understanding them.

    10. ASDr. Aaron Sandel43:41

        I think it could, yeah. I think it could, uh, stand in the way of understanding them and understanding what's going on. And it's like, again, I'm a scientist watching-

    11. BBBrené Brown43:51

        Yeah

    12. ASDr. Aaron Sandel43:51

        ... this dynamic unfold. There's something to be said for, you know, objectivity and distance, but I'm also really wanting to understand the phenomenon.

13. 44:02 – 52:09

    Choosing Understanding Over Demonization

    1. ASDr. Aaron Sandel44:02

       And it's like, I, I can't stop it for many, many reasons. Like, I mean, it wouldn't be safe. These are chimps. Like, like, there's no way to intervene, really. But also, there's something to be said out of respect for the chimps to let this unfold.

    2. BBBrené Brown44:16

       Yeah.

    3. AGAdam Grant44:16

       Yeah.

    4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel44:16

       And then just to see how can we understand it. Um, yeah, I think, like, but with... A- and there, there may be a lesson here also for, for deepening our sort of understanding of, of conflict and aggression and, uh, violence and war in humans. I wonder to what extent we should focus our attention more on sort of the causes and the context and maybe less demonization of the individuals who are perpetrating these horrible things. Of course, with humans, you have to hold people accountable for what they do, but maybe the demonization, um, gets in the way.

    5. BBBrené Brown44:54

       I mean, I think that's, I think that's probably true. I, I just, one thing I've learned is in-- I, I probably knew it going into this conversation, and I definitely know it now. Um, I would be the absolute worst-

    6. AGAdam Grant45:09

       [chuckles]

    7. BBBrené Brown45:10

       ... I, I would be the worst at your job of anybody in the whole world. Um, 'cause I would be armed, and if you came against the people that I have named and that I love and that I have-- I know their story and their narrative. You know, and it's also, I think the thing that's hard is, like, I, I was with my family, um, and I was telling them about this, and they're like, "Stop talking about the chimps." We-- And it reminded me of when we would interview people asking them, [lips smack] "What is vulnerability?" How many hundreds, if not thousands, of people said to us in these interviews, "Any animal dying in a film is absolute vulnerability, and the people who do it should go straight to hell." Like, they-- Just, like, just the, the reaction that we have that I think if I were one of the senior research- researchers, it would take me a long time to write that paper too because I would want something different for them than we ha- what we have for us. I would s- want something pure and better and less susceptible to what makes humans so hard. Do you know what I mean?

    8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel46:30

       Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the one, the one thing to note is that in this case, the chimps who are doing the killing are also chimps that, you know, we've known, that, that researchers have named, and we know their stories too. So it, it does create the more-- It's, it's a bit more of a complex picture than typical intergroup aggression, where you don't know the chimps who might be attacking chimps from your group, and you find, you know, a dead body of a chimp, presumably killed by the outsider group. It's different, I think, um, from that.

    9. BBBrené Brown47:03

       But you don't immediately go, you don't immediately go like, "You know, here are these chimps that killed this person that I've been studying. And now in my scientific narrative, they are the bad guys moving forward." A, a crippling cruelty has taken over the western group. Like you, like... [chuckles]

    10. ASDr. Aaron Sandel47:23

        Yeah, I, it, I would, I empath- I empathize with the sentiment, and I think some of the, I, I would, I would bet that if, I bet, I think a lot of our team feels that way to some extent. I think some of them do. Yeah.

    11. BBBrené Brown47:36

        Really?

    12. ASDr. Aaron Sandel47:36

        I think some of the researchers do feel that way. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's like what we talk about at the dinner table. That's where we do more anthropomorphizing, which is still-

    13. BBBrené Brown47:46

        Yeah

    14. ASDr. Aaron Sandel47:46

        ... based in our, like-

    15. AGAdam Grant47:47

        Yeah

    16. ASDr. Aaron Sandel47:48

        ... observations. So it's like when professional primatologists are anthropomorphizing, it's grounded in, um, if not in, like, quantitative data, it's grounded in our experience of watching the chimps and knowing their relationships. And I mean, so much of animal behavior and anthropology is sort of having a vibe about what's happening, and then if you're a good scientist, articulating the vibe.

    17. BBBrené Brown48:13

        Yes.

    18. ASDr. Aaron Sandel48:14

        And, like, with chimps, it took me so long to learn what are they gonna do next? Like, what are they possibly thinking and feeling? Um, most of that's still a vibe. I mean, it's based on context. Where am I in the forest? Oh, they're at this fig tree that they were at a couple years ago. They usually take this path. They go there. They'll likely patrol. Like, I'm, I-- It took me a decade to get to the point where I'm like, "Okay, I think this is what I'm noticing about them. These are the subtle movements. These are the subtle behaviors." Yeah, I mean, it's, uh... For me, though, I don't know. I, I don't know why. I just really don't- Um, I don't hold it against the ones who are doing the attacking, and part of it is so much of that dynamic, we see that dynamic unfolding. We see it emerging and then unfolding, and there's, there's sort of a, this positive side to a lot of those dynamics. On a territorial patrol, it's a, an amazing opportunity for bonding-

    19. BBBrené Brown49:14

        Mm-hmm. Yeah

    20. ASDr. Aaron Sandel49:15

        ... and mentorship. It's like two of the, the s- often the instigators of patrols in the West, Rollins and his younger brother, Damien. Damien was this adolescent male whose mother had died in this disease outbreak in 2017. And, um, he and his younger sister, this little juvenile, were sort of adopted by their much older brother, Rollins. And it was like they were on, um, patrols together. And Damien grew up, and he was, like, really motivated, I think, to go on territorial patrols himself, but he had his older brother, this sort of role model, this mentor. And in the West, because of the patrolling, I think there's a lot more, um, almost egalitarianism and, um, across age and dominance rank, and it, and it does lead to more cohesion. Uh, ag- that's again, where you definitely see.

    21. BBBrené Brown50:06

        Yeah, yeah.

    22. ASDr. Aaron Sandel50:06

        I get why so often we think you need a, a them for an us, because that happens for sure. But the West already had this sort of, um, cohesion beforehand, but I think it, it is bolstered by these territorial patrols. I mean, it's amazing. Sometimes, um, you, you also will see these long-term, uh, bonded individuals going on territorial patrols more often than, you know, with others. And I think it's like if you're with your friend, you're more, you're braver.

    23. BBBrené Brown50:37

        Sure.

    24. ASDr. Aaron Sandel50:37

        You're able to, like, go on the front lines. There was one time, there was one time this, the, the Western chimps were patrolling, and they were going, pushing in 2021, further and further east. They were, you know, had moved in. This was probably, um, you know, in the weeks before they killed Pork Pie. And I was with the Western chimps, and they get to this sort of, uh, further east than they typically went before. They start calling the Central chimps. We can hear them. They are calling. And the Western chimps I'm with, um, they decide to give up. They turn around, but they sort of scatter, and I wasn't sure if some had gone ahead, so I rushed ahead to other calls, these screams, and the chimps will bang on trees, the buttresses, the sort of roots of trees. And I get not very far away, and it's these two young adult males, Hayden and Booker, from the Central group. They are, like, on the front lines, calling, like, sort of defending their territory. Most of the Central chimps are hundreds of meter behind them, but I think they were like, "These are small, low-ranking chimps."

    25. BBBrené Brown51:41

        Oh, yeah.

    26. ASDr. Aaron Sandel51:42

        But they were, like, I think, emboldened by their, their, their bonds with each other. That Booker is, uh, Gus's, was Gus's older brother. So it was, like, this interesting little family there. But, um, yeah, there's, there's, there's beauty and sort of, um, there's cooperation, and there's empathy. There's so many of the positive dynamics that you see at play, even in, in the midst of this aggression and violence.

14. 52:09 – 59:16

    Chimps And The Meaning Of Friendship

    1. AGAdam Grant52:09

       Aaron, at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned you were curious about, do they have friendships, and how do they form them? Where are you on that? I, I, I hear you talking about, it sounds like chimps are bonding through grooming. It sounds like they're bonding through going on these, [chuckles] these sort of patrols. W- w- like, are they friends? How do they become friends? How do you know?

    2. BBBrené Brown52:34

       If they're, if you're gonna say they're not friends, I need, I need some kind of disclaimer. 'Cause you're gonna break my heart, Aaron.

    3. ASDr. Aaron Sandel52:44

       No, I think, um, I, I was ob- you know, there's the scientific caution about using terms that are so, you know, commonly used by us in everyday speech and, and that are so defined by, I think, the human experience. And I think friendship is one of them. Primatologists have been debating to what extent you can use that term to describe the relationships of, of other animals for years. I think that, uh, some chimps definitely are friends with each other. But I also, I mean, I think, I think it still deserves, uh, more, more sort of deeper understanding of what we mean by friendship. And, and for that, we have to think about what we mean by friendship in humans. I don't think we have the best understanding of this yet. Um, and I mean, until recently, and there's been, I think, a lot of good work, and Adam, I know you've been thinking about this a lot, but, um, what do we... I mean, there wasn't a great scientific understanding of friendship. Like, so often we would have to go back to Aristotle to sort of even get the framework. And I think, um, to some extent, I mean, there are two, there are two important points, I think, when I think about chimps. One is, there's an important distinction between a friend and an ally.

    4. BBBrené Brown54:07

       Oh, for sure.

    5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel54:08

       So often, like with Jackson, it was hard for me to know, are these his friends or are these his allies? Was Miles his friend or is his ally? Was Basie his friend or his ally? Like, I think a friend, there's like a real emotional connection. You want to spend time together. You sort of are calm when you're with them or excited when you see them. Whereas an ally, uh, is someone who will come to your aid, but it might be for more utilitarian purposes. So it might be that, you know, Miles was an ally to Jackson. I'm not sure. Um, but when circumstances change, maybe, uh, it would be easier to break that, that, that tie. Yeah. Brené?

    6. BBBrené Brown54:58

       [laughs] I mean class. Um, I can tell you for sure, for sure 100% that Miles was friends, um, with Jackson, and here's my, here's my empirical evidence. Because when Abrams was trying to fight his way up and was grooming Miles, and Jackson couldn't see, Miles would not groom Abrams back. He let him-

    7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel55:28

       Mm

    8. BBBrené Brown55:28

       ... he let him pick all the bugs off of him, and then he'd just kind of look, and you, he was like, "You're not my friend." And then, yeah, so [laughs] that would be-

    9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel55:38

       Well, I think even-

    10. BBBrené Brown55:39

        That would be my hypothesis

    11. ASDr. Aaron Sandel55:41

        ... I like, yeah, it's a good hypothesis, and I think those looks are actually what's key. Like, we can't, I don't, I mean, there's, from behavior alone, from the, these sort of broad measures of behavior, you cannot, I don't think, determine friendship from grooming alone or s- how much time they spend sitting-

    12. BBBrené Brown55:55

        Right

    13. ASDr. Aaron Sandel55:55

        ... near each other alone. I think it has to be partly a much more detailed, subtler depiction of how, like, of almost, like, facial expressions or these other patterns that are extremely difficult to determine in a chimp. And they're, I mean, I think they're dif- correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they're really difficult for humans. Like, we don't necessarily have-

    14. BBBrené Brown56:16

        Impossible

    15. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:16

        ... the systematic, yeah. They're like-

    16. BBBrené Brown56:18

        It's impossible

    17. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:18

        ... but we're, but, but we as people are so good at, at, at sort of almost unconsciously picking up on this with humans-

    18. BBBrené Brown56:27

        Yes

    19. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:27

        ... with each other.

    20. BBBrené Brown56:28

        Yes.

    21. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:28

        I mean, that's where the vibe, these gut feelings, vibes, and then if you're really good at it, you get, become a, a, a good therapist or a, a poker champion-

    22. BBBrené Brown56:37

        Yes

    23. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:37

        ... or a psychic or something.

    24. BBBrené Brown56:40

        [laughs]

    25. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:40

        [laughs] I hope not. No. And, and I, I don't mean-

    26. BBBrené Brown56:43

        You had me till psychic.

    27. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:44

        Yeah, you lost us there. But I'm not talk- I, I don't mean, like, East Village, like, little kiosk. I mean, like-

    28. BBBrené Brown56:49

        [laughs]

    29. ASDr. Aaron Sandel56:49

        ... really, like, I mean-

    30. BBBrené Brown56:50

        Oh, yeah, yeah.
15. 59:16 – 1:01:06

    Mother-Offspring And Male "Brotherhood"

    1. BBBrené Brown59:16

       Uh-huh.

    2. ASDr. Aaron Sandel59:16

       Like, sometimes we may not call that friendship, but it's this really important bond. So that's, uh, my other hesitance. Like, it was, like, this whole journey of what are these, a scientific study of friendship. I'm like, "Okay, maybe they do have them," but I'm like, "Wait, maybe that doesn't even begin, that doesn't fully capture the intensity and the emotional sort of power of some of these relationships." And I will say, like, for the relationships that last a decade, these are a- I mean, there's, the strongest bonds for chimps, number one, is mother and their kid. They stay with their mom for the first 10 years of their life through middle, early adolescence. They can maintain a relationship even though they spend less time with her for their entire life. Where these even adult males will, where they don't spend a lot of time together, when they are together, they'll groom each other.

    3. BBBrené Brown1:00:06

       Okay, I'm gonna-

    4. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:00:06

       Sometimes female, yeah, yeah.

    5. BBBrené Brown1:00:07

       Can I just ask this last question? It'll be my last question about my friends, and then, and go, "Shut up, Adam."

    6. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:00:13

       [laughs]

    7. BBBrené Brown1:00:13

       Um, how is that true for two reasons? I feel like Christine did Nadine dirty.

    8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:00:20

       [laughs]

    9. BBBrené Brown1:00:22

       Like, so listen. Christine has this-

    10. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:00:25

        You're watching Real Housewives: Chimp Edition.

    11. BBBrené Brown1:00:27

        No.

    12. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:00:27

        I love it.

    13. BBBrené Brown1:00:28

        Listen. [laughs] No. Christine is the mom. Um, and then she has the baby that they don't name in the beginning of the show, but later you find out it's Isabelle. So, so cute and mischievous. A little too mischievous for my taste, 'cause it was a dangerous situation because of the men. Eye roll. Um, but Nadine was Isabelle's older sister, and the narrator, who I'm sure had to get past the scientists Said that Nadine was ignored because now there's a baby in the family, and seven-year-old Nadine is being ignored.

16. 1:01:06 – 1:08:27

    Why Adolescent Females Leave The Group

    1. BBBrené Brown1:01:06

       And then my other question, and I know this has to be the last one, but I cannot believe that they send unprotected female adolescents out of their community on their own. Like, do you-- Adam, they are shoved out, teenage girls shoved onto the streets.

    2. AGAdam Grant1:01:30

       Not okay with that.

    3. BBBrené Brown1:01:31

       [laughs]

    4. AGAdam Grant1:01:32

       [laughs]

    5. BBBrené Brown1:01:33

       So explain to me how the motherhood bond must end-

    6. AGAdam Grant1:01:37

       Yeah

    7. BBBrené Brown1:01:37

       ... because Nadine was ignored. I felt so bad for her. She's, like, in human fifth grade.

    8. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:01:44

       Yeah. It's a great point. I mean, the one thing is, um, when there's a new baby, when there's a new infant, this is true across, I think, mammals, that there's more attention on this new infant, less attention on the juvenile. But-- And it-- I think it's hard for Nadine. It probably was hard, but she still maintained a close relationship. She's still traveling constantly with Christine. She-- But it is a, it's a rough transition. She's not the sole focus of Christine's attention, and I think we see this again probably with humans and with chimps. It's interesting because, like humans, they s- it's not just where most mammals, soon after weaning, the kid becomes completely independent.

    9. BBBrené Brown1:02:30

       Right.

    10. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:02:31

        In group, in group living animals, including many primates, the-- it's actually usually the females that stay, so they can have an opportunity. The relationship shifts, and actually surprisingly, we know less about the development of these relationships. This is something I'm working on with one of my PhD students in gorillas and also another PhD student with chimps. How do these relationships sort of shift during this juvenile period after weaning, before puberty? It's a really interesting dynamic into what is the mother-offspring relationship like. The thing with chimps is, first of all, it's important to note that, yeah, at adolescence, in chimps and bonobos, the females typically leave the group. They leave the area that they've known. They leave the chimps that they've known. But it's not-- It's unlikely. It doesn't seem that they're kicked out, which is interesting. They seem to go on their own accord. So at, in, at, around adolescence, late adolescence, maybe around eleven, twelve, thirteen, female chimps become more independent of their mother. They spend more time in the entire group.

    11. BBBrené Brown1:03:38

        Got it.

    12. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:03:39

        And often they'll join the, uh, adult males and a few other adult females on these territorial patrols. Part of it is 'cause they're socializing with the adults in the group.

    13. BBBrené Brown1:03:48

        Yeah.

    14. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:03:48

        And so the males will go off on a patrol. They're like, "All right, let's go." But part of me wonders if they're almost using that opportunity to survey the other groups and the other territories. And to me, it-- I feel like there's a lot of agency in what's going on for these young females. They-- And they are, um, they are brave. I mean, talk about vulnerability. They're going out into the unknown.

    15. BBBrené Brown1:04:11

        I couldn't believe it.

    16. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:04:12

        They're alone walking out, and I think part of it might be because at adolescence, you know, fear can become thrill.

    17. BBBrené Brown1:04:21

        That's true.

    18. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:04:21

        So I think for some of these females, it's like they're going out into the unknown, and sometimes they stay. Sometimes they stay but go into a different neighborhood, especially at Ngogo, where there's a big-

    19. BBBrené Brown1:04:33

        Got it

    20. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:04:33

        ... this huge chunk of forest. Sometimes they can go, and that's an easier transition. Other times it's like, wow, and we don't know what's go- what goes on 'cause it's hard to follow them. Uh, and it can be rough transitioning into a new group. Um, so it's, it's not that it's, like, an easy life, but it's, like, a very interesting and impressive thing that happens for these chimps, these female chimps. But if, on occasion, uh, an adolescent female stays in her community and she stays in the neighborhood with her mom, then those are the strongest bonds in the world. They can, they can just stay with their mom. Sometimes they, like, stay in the group but don't have a relationship with her, but sometimes they stay, and it's like this lifelong bond.

    21. BBBrené Brown1:05:13

        That's what I would pick.

    22. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:05:13

        It's the family unit. Yeah.

    23. BBBrené Brown1:05:15

        That's what I would pick.

    24. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:05:15

        And that's beautiful. But then the other-- And that's the strongest bond that exists for chimps.

    25. BBBrené Brown1:05:21

        Oh, beautiful.

    26. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:05:22

        But then one of the other strongest bonds, um, is between adult males, these ones that can last five, ten, twelve years. And for me, those relationships, which they'll be with maternal brothers, will form these strong bonds. But some of the most enduring are just between unrelated adult males. This is why-- And the-- And these, these are the males who are hunting together and sharing meat and going on border patrols. To me, I think friendship might not even fully capture the nature of these relationships.

    27. BBBrené Brown1:05:53

        Like brotherhood.

    28. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:05:54

        Yeah. It's like brotherhood, or it's almost like the closest thing I've seen in the animal kingdom to romantic love.

    29. AGAdam Grant1:06:02

        Wow.

    30. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:06:03

        It's like, um, a pair bond. Like, we often think about-
17. 1:08:27 – 1:14:34

    Lightning Round

    1. BBBrené Brown1:08:27

       One thing that you are deeply curious about right now?

    2. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:08:33

       What are emotions, and, and can we really scientifically study this, uh, across animals?

    3. AGAdam Grant1:08:41

       Wow.

    4. BBBrené Brown1:08:42

       Speaking my love language. Okay. You get to design the weirdest and wildest thing, just single item, to put inside of a curiosity shop. What would it be?

    5. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:08:55

       My God.

    6. BBBrené Brown1:08:56

       Yeah.

    7. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:08:56

       Um, I would want to, uh, it would-

    8. AGAdam Grant1:09:02

       Yeah

    9. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:09:02

       ... be a, um, a wearable device that would, um, like a snare, a wire snare that you would catch an animal with, but that has a safety device on it so it turns into a bracelet, and then it has, like, a GPS and Bluetooth and stuff, so you could just put it out and cap- you know, get it on wild animals. And then, um, it would track them and, and maybe, um, noninvasively monitor their behavior. I don't know if that, we could put that in the Curiosity Shop.

    10. BBBrené Brown1:09:34

        We could.

    11. AGAdam Grant1:09:34

        That's a primatology-

    12. BBBrené Brown1:09:36

        For sure

    13. AGAdam Grant1:09:36

        ... Curiosity Shop, for sure.

    14. BBBrené Brown1:09:37

        Yeah.

    15. AGAdam Grant1:09:38

        I, I have to-

    16. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:09:39

        Or I don't know if that's a thing. It could also be, like, a, you know, a, a chimp testicle in, uh, pickling and formaldehyde that I, that I collected in 2015.

    17. BBBrené Brown1:09:49

        I'm for that.

    18. AGAdam Grant1:09:51

        That was, that was not on my bingo card for today. [laughs] I, I have to ask, Aaron, one, one of the things I'm so curious about that I think could be done lightning style is what's the most surprising way that chimps are similar to humans?

    19. BBBrené Brown1:10:04

        Mm, I'd love that.

    20. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:10:06

        I think it's in the, I mean, there's these big conceptual things like these relationships that seem to hint at things like love and war, but it's also, for me, the subtlest things, the gestures. One thing that, um, really stuck with me is, um, the way they, uh, will just swipe at their nose. Sometimes it seems to be when they're a little more activated they'll swipe at their nose, and this is something humans do all the time. It's like, you know, when someone's a little anxious, nervous, or really thinking-

    21. BBBrené Brown1:10:42

        Oh, yeah

    22. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:10:43

        ... about something, they swipe at their nose. We don't notice it, though. No one notices. So I'm like, "This is where I can become sort of the psychic." I'm like, "Chimps are doing it. I, I see it across primates. Humans are doing it, too." I, it's like the same thing or even just little gestural things, the way you rest your ankle on your knee when you're l- you know, sitting down. Chimps do this. So much of what we think of as human is not because we're human. Yes, it's important part of, of being human, but it's because we're apes.

    23. BBBrené Brown1:11:12

        Damn.

    24. AGAdam Grant1:11:13

        [laughs]

    25. BBBrené Brown1:11:15

        Okay, and I'm gonna leave with this question, because I just have to... This is, I am so anti-meta glasses, but would it be cool for primatologists that if you looked and you got the read on, let's say, Gus, my guy Gus, and you were like, "Do, do, la, do, do, do, do, do," in your meta glass, and then when you were wearing them, you would be like, "Caroline, Isabelle, Sam, Gus"? Would that be helpful or not helpful?

    26. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:11:45

        So helpful, especially for training new researchers.

    27. BBBrené Brown1:11:48

        Yes.

    28. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:11:48

        So helpful, and that's sort of what we are now, the, like, experienced researchers. The one problem, I mean, this is an easy solution, but the one problem is we're staying always, like, 25, 30 feet away from the chimps to make sure just for our safety, their safety, especially their safety. We can give them the common cold, and they would die from that. So that's the biggest priority is, like, we're wearing face masks. We have hand sanitizer. We're keeping a distance. Um, so we need binoculars. Even, like, when they're on the ground, sometimes you'll wanna see binoc- use binoculars. So if we could have, like, super magnification, um, video recording glasses, that would be really nice, that sort of had this automatic recognition of individuals and behavior.

    29. BBBrené Brown1:12:30

        Yes.

    30. ASDr. Aaron Sandel1:12:31

        For the last few years, I was doing a lot more, like, camcorder footage, or I even just would wear, like, a lapel mic and dictate everything I'm seeing. 'Cause historically with animal behavior, it's like you're writing down in a notebook. I've, I've been looking at my old, like, rain in the rain notebooks from, uh, 2012, where I'm, like, writing down these little notes of what they're doing. But then I, I switched to an app on my phone where I'm, like, entering really quickly what's happening. It automatically records the date and the time, GPS location, stuff like that. But yeah, that would be, like, the, the meta glass style thing would be so good, but the problem is, um-
18. 1:14:34 – 1:25:22

    Brené & Adam's Takeaways

    1. AGAdam Grant1:14:34

       Was this everything you dreamed of?

    2. BBBrené Brown1:14:37

       Yes. I don't think he softened me on the Western group at all, just to be honest with you. Like, I am... But maybe I am the problem. Maybe, like, maybe I am promoting the us and them-ness of it. But I didn't get to know them. I mean, I just didn't have a soft spot. Well, there was a, there's a tough killing in the first s- in the first episode.

    3. AGAdam Grant1:14:58

       Yeah.

    4. BBBrené Brown1:14:58

       And I just never got past it.

    5. AGAdam Grant1:15:01

       I, I don't think I would get over that either. It is striking to me how strong your parasocial relationships are with these chimps.

    6. BBBrené Brown1:15:07

       Me?

    7. AGAdam Grant1:15:09

       Yours. Yeah. I mean, his too, but yours just from watching the doc.

    8. BBBrené Brown1:15:13

       Well, you know documentaries are, you know, nature documentaries especially, I mean, like, I, had, uh, we not been doing this podcast, I would never have watched one 'cause I'm, they're, I, I, I find that kind of stuff really tough to see, um, and really tough to watch, and the vulnerability of animals, I think, is really hard.

    9. AGAdam Grant1:15:31

       Yeah.

    10. BBBrené Brown1:15:31

        But I, I kept saying, "I can't watch it. I'm gonna watch it. I can't watch it. I'm gonna watch it for the prep." But then I just got bought in and it, there were some very serious... [clears throat] It's really hard when you see them and their little ears and their eyes and-

    11. AGAdam Grant1:15:46

        Yeah

    12. BBBrené Brown1:15:46

        ... it, it's, they look like us, and so y- I just knew them. And they have such fun personalities and, not, not all of them, but... I don't know. I, I left... I would be so bad at this job. Could you imagine anyone worse at this job than me? [laughs]

    13. AGAdam Grant1:16:05

        I could. Yes, I could.

    14. BBBrené Brown1:16:07

        No. I, 'cause I'm just such about the story and the emotional narrative, and he, he seems... Like, it's so funny, he goes right to the edge of that, and then science pulls him back. Did you notice that?

    15. AGAdam Grant1:16:21

        Consistently, yeah. Like, ev- every time he got attached, he would s- he would kinda pull back and say, "Well, that's an interesting hypothesis."

    16. BBBrené Brown1:16:30

        Right. I'm like, no, I'm not hypothesizing. This is exactly what happened between these two chimps. I can tell you right now that Miles-

    17. AGAdam Grant1:16:39

        [laughs]

    18. BBBrené Brown1:16:39

        ... looked at the sky and said, "Try again." I'm not, you know, like... So I think I was really grateful, too, about the honesty of the struggle, that you can start dreaming of doing that kind of research, but that kind of research is tough and isolating and scary.

    19. AGAdam Grant1:17:00

        Yeah. Yeah. It, you know, it captured for me what is a challenge for a lot of people of pursuing what they think is a calling career-wise. Like, you have this image, especially if you, if you fall for it when you're young, and it seems like it's gonna be nirvana, and then you get there, and it's a job, and you have all these, to your point, isolating tasks, menial tasks, the boredom just to, to observe and, and try to figure out what's going on. And I think a lot of people experience a honeymoon hangover effect there, where-

    20. BBBrené Brown1:17:32

        I, I, 100%

    21. AGAdam Grant1:17:32

        ... they're like, "Oh, no, this is my life now?"

    22. BBBrené Brown1:17:35

        Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause I don't think anyone dreams about the preparation, uh, I, the, the part of the career that makes it that thing. Like, you know, the hundreds of hours of, you know, mosquito bites, and every chimp looks the same, and you can't see them because they're in the canopy, and, you know, I just, I don't think that's what we... And certainly if you grow up on media that's promoting some career, that's not what they're showing in the documentary. They probably have a gajillion hours, and we see four 40 minutes series, you know.

    23. AGAdam Grant1:18:13

        It, I think it's so easy to, uh, this is true for any job.

    24. BBBrené Brown1:18:16

        Yes.

    25. AGAdam Grant1:18:16

        It's so easy to fall in love with the purpose of it and have no idea whether the process is a good fit for you or not, which is why it's, it m- it boggles my mind that people don't shadow jobs before they take them.

    26. BBBrené Brown1:18:27

        Yes.

    27. AGAdam Grant1:18:28

        Like, [laughs] that people commit to careers without actually knowing what they're gonna be doing day in and day out. I think i- in our world, I, I, I'm so curious about how you do this. When we have people who th- who are thinking about doing a PhD, my first advice to them is, "Go read four articles in our academic journals. And if you're still awake on number four, you have found your calling."

    28. BBBrené Brown1:18:50

        Yeah. No. I think it's, I think it's three things. I think it's purpose versus process versus romanticized understanding.

    29. AGAdam Grant1:19:04

        Yeah.

    30. BBBrené Brown1:19:04

        So, you know, a lot of people want to be... It, it was like if you track some of the research around how many people got interested in medicine because of Grey's Anatomy

Episode duration: 1:25:22