When Human Evolution Collides With The Modern World | Prof. Adam Hart | Modern Wisdom Podcast 192

1. 0:00 – 0:58

   Intro

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      (wind blowing) Are you feeling fit for purpose this evening?

   2. AHAdam Hart0:07

      (laughs) To be honest, at the moment, I'm not sure I'm feeling fit for purpose at any given point, but I'll give it a go.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:13

      (laughs)

   4. AHAdam Hart0:15

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson0:15

      That's fantastic. So, uh, today we're talking about human evolution and what happens when it collides with the modern world, the imbalance between sort of who we are and where we exist, right?

   6. AHAdam Hart0:27

      Yeah, exactly. That, that, that's what the book is, is fundamentally about. Basically, we're, we're an evolved animal and we're pretty, we're pretty ge- decent, right? We're a pretty good evolved animal. We, we fit very well to the world and we've achieved global dominance as a consequence. But we have created now a modern world environment that, that seems to clash. And we've got lots of problems in the modern world that we can trace back to our evolutionary heritage to greater or lesser extents. Sometimes it's quite a playful thesis, sometimes it works quite nicely, but we can see those evolutionary echoes in the modern world. So that's the, that's the kind of overall idea.

2. 0:58 – 2:24

   Humans and the modern world

   1. AHAdam Hart0:58

   2. CWChris Williamson0:58

      How much of an imbalance is there between humans and the modern world? 'Cause sometimes I think that I'm doing pretty all right, and then sometimes I feel a bit like an alien.

   3. AHAdam Hart1:08

      Yeah, I think, I think we have to understand that we've changed the world in such a massive and dramatic way, in some cases over the last decade. I mean, if you think about it, we're having a conversation here over Skype. Um, I've got my Twitter feed open. We can talk about things going viral and social media stress and FOFO and all that sort of stuff. Th- this would have been meaningless t- ten- even 10 years ago, and tha- and that's just in one small aspect of our life. If, if we look across, across the piece, I mean, COVID-19 has exposed, of course, how globally, um, connected we all are. You know, we got used to the idea of going on flights and moving around. The world now is a very different place from what it was a generation before. And of course, if we look back over the last 100 years or so, it's, it's a very different place. So we've, we've always changed our environment, that's, that's almost a, a feature of humanity. But the changes that we produce now and the environment that many of us now live in and what we call the modern world is a very, very different world from, well, even a century ago, but actually the world in which we, we evolved. You know, if we look at our sort of post-agricultural revolution ancestors 10,000 years ago and we compare it to our lives now, it's a very, very different sort of setup. Although, of course, many aspects of it are also the same. So it's, it, it is a different world that we live in, and I think we have to accept that.

   4. CWChris Williamson2:21

      Yeah, I suppose the

3. 2:24 – 4:50

   How slow evolution works

   1. CWChris Williamson2:24

      first thing to realize here is how slow evolution works and how quick and effective we are at changing our environment.

   2. AHAdam Hart2:32

      Yeah, that's right. I mean, if, if you look back, so the biggest, probably the biggest thing that happened to us was that we worked out how to grow food. And obviously that's a pretty decent, um, thing to have worked out. Uh, it saves us a lot of time and allows us to, to expand our technology and innovation because we're no longer foraging for food and we have a different sort of societal setup. But that came with problems. So, actually when we developed agriculture, there were quite a lot of health problems. Um, uh, dentition, we suffered from dental caries for, for the first time extensively, for example, um, because of the, the way that our skulls were changing and our dentitions were changing. So, we did have evolutionary change and that slowly but surely helped us to accommodate the changes that were happening. But we're talking over thousands of years. It wasn't as if... it wasn't like the internet revolution where within five years everybody's online. Uh, you know, th- that's not wh- how the agricultural revolution worked. It was over a long period of time. Um, we also had an evolutionary change in, in order to, for example, digest milk. So, um, those of us that have lactase persistence and are able to drink raw milk, that is an evolutionary adaptation to, to dairying and to, and to farming. So we see that happening quite slowly. And, of course, that's, that's what environmental changes are, are often like. Um, they're, they're non-human induced. But, but recently we, we've seen environmental changes that are just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, you, you look across the world at the moment at, at mega-cities, for example, super cities. We have literally tens of millions of people living on top of each other in incredibly high density environments. The, the number of people on the planet is, is enormous compared to what it was. The technological shifts that have happened, you know, these, these are all environmental changes. You know, there are changes to our, our environment that affect how we behave and affect how we live. And really the change over the last, let's call it the last generation, you know, we, we, we can argue about whether it's 20 years or 30 years or 50 years. Actually it doesn't really matter-

   3. CWChris Williamson4:21

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAdam Hart4:21

      ... when we look at it in evolutionary terms because it, it, it's too slow for us to, to evolve to take account of it. We have to have social sort of accommodation for all these environmental changes and it's incredibly rapid and dramatic.

   5. CWChris Williamson4:32

      (laughs) It really is. I was in Dubai a couple of years ago with my dad and I couldn't believe just how recent that city was.

   6. AHAdam Hart4:40

      Yeah, I mean-

   7. CWChris Williamson4:40

      Like it's a-

   8. AHAdam Hart4:40

      ... that was, that was-

   9. CWChris Williamson4:41

      ... desert-

   10. AHAdam Hart4:42

       ... desert not that long ago. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson4:43

       Bro, a desert.

   12. AHAdam Hart4:43

       Really not that long ago. A small fishing village, I think, wasn't it originally?

   13. CWChris Williamson4:46

       Insane. Um, so obviously

4. 4:50 – 10:20

   Two schools of thought

   1. CWChris Williamson4:50

      there's kind of two, two schools of thought, I suppose, or, uh, broadly two schools that I see. One of them being the, um, s- left-leaning person who might look at the modern world and look at, uh, inequities and inequalities and stuff like that and talk about it being bad. But then someone like Steven Pinker who would look rationally at all of the ways with like life expectancy and modern medicine and things like that, that are effective. So there's kind of this balancing board in terms of how people see the world, but I guess evolution and humans and our ability to adapt is... that's not going to change at all.

   2. AHAdam Hart5:28

      No. Um, we're, we're not going to sort of evolve our way out of some of the problems-

   3. CWChris Williamson5:32

      (laughs)

   4. AHAdam Hart5:33

      ... that we, that, that, that we face right now. I mean, I, I was thinking about this actually earlier today, um, because social media was, was being discussed on the radio as I was driving and, and, and, you know, I talk about social media in, in the book. But the, the way that we have... we, we, we have evolved in amazing capacity for, for social behavior.... and that's almost a definitional part of our species. And the ability for us to communicate in language enhances that sociality, and you sort of get this runaway selection where one enhances the other, which increases the benefits of the other. Our intelligence, you know, we see this across the animal kingdom, more social animals tend to have larger brains. You know, all of these things are intermixed and interlinked, but, and we're incredibly good at it, right? We're incredibly good at living together, cooperating, working together, achieving incredible things face-to-face. And we know the rules and most of us are able to, you know, read the room and work out sort of emotional engagements with people. And we have an emotional intelligence that lets us navigate that environment. But now we go online and we sort of try to use those same rules, but it's a completely different environment that we have to operate in. And people can say, "Oh, well, that's kind of a trivial example." But, but, but people commit suicide as a consequence of interactions online. You know, that is the ultimate, um, you know, lack of fitness, right? You, to, to, to take your own life as a consequence of something, you know, that is really a very serious thing. It affects people's lives. It affects how people interact with, with each other and their, their mental health, and it's because we, we don't know the rules. Now, we've had thousands, tens of thousands of years of evolution to help us build up the cognitive processes that, that enable us to navigate our social world in, in, in the real world. We, we, we've had about 10 years to, to work out the rules.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:13

      (laughs)

   6. AHAdam Hart7:13

      And of course, and here's the thing, right? As so- as soon as we work out the rules, the social environment changes because suddenly-

   7. CWChris Williamson7:18

      (laughs) .

   8. AHAdam Hart7:18

      ... they're in a new form. So, you know, people... I think I, I sort of got the impression people were starting to get a handle on how to use Facebook, but then Twitter came up on the sort of back, back grapes, and suddenly everyone was getting quite involved with that. And that has a very different vibe to it. You know, pe- people say things to me on Twitter that they would never say to my face. (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson7:34

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AHAdam Hart7:34

       You know, you'd never get up in someone's face like that and, and say the sorts of things that, that people will say on there. You know, you just wouldn't do that. Um, we've had tens of thousands of years of social evolution that stop you from doing that because you're likely to get punched in the face. (laughs) But, but, but that doesn't happen online. So I think we start to learn the rules and then something new comes along. We get Instagram coming in when suddenly we, we get this highly filtered version of... You know, Instagram's kind of an interesting one, isn't it? It's quite a, a... It has a high potential for, for, um, mental health damage, I think, because of our tendency to sort of compare and, and contrast with other people's lives. Um, that, that is something that we are just coming to terms. But as soon as we do that, of course, well, TikTok's around now. So that's the new big thing, isn't it? And we'll get used to that and then the, the, the goalposts will move again. So e- even when we're able to get a handle on this new environment, we shift the environment and it's just happening all the time. And I think that, that is really the, the key point. We are, we are changing what we do and the way that we interact and, and the environment that we're in, in all kinds of axes, in ways that, that really are, are... Don't just outstrip evolution. I mean, they outstrip evolution because they're happening sub-generationally, but, but they outstrip even our ability to sit down and think about it. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson8:44

       Yeah.

   12. AHAdam Hart8:44

       Even our ability to just get a basic handle on it. And I think, I think we have to sit back sometimes and, and, and realize just how remarkable we are and that we can do these things. And, you know, you and I are having a conversation over the internet. This would have been a, a ridiculous thing to consider a generation ago. But at the same time, we, we, we aren't always up with the rules of engagement and I think that's, th- th- that's something that we really need to, to sort out.

   13. CWChris Williamson9:08

       Yeah. Uh, there's an arms race going on at the moment, and there's a number of different levels that it's operating on. So, technology and new modes of being will always lead, then probably a little bit after that, individuals might start to adapt, then some social norms might arise around how groups should adapt within that. Then lagging up behind that, the policymakers finally get their act together and catch on to the fact that we need GDPR, uh, online compliance or we need to police, um, what YouTube's policy is able to do or what Twitter's policy is able to do, whatever it might be. And then bringing up the rear, a couple of hundred, uh, generations after that, evolution is like the old slow decrepit dog-

   14. AHAdam Hart9:58

       (laughs) .

   15. CWChris Williamson9:59

       ... that's like at the end of the leash, like 50 yards behind you just slowly creeping up behind and we've got all of these... And you're totally right, like the arms race that's going on between the pace that we're able to move at as a society, as, as a world and everything else, you know, those layers and layers there,

5. 10:20 – 14:49

   Is evolution pointless

   1. CWChris Williamson10:20

      several different sort of filtering points at which we're not able to keep up. So I mean, is evolution right now, is human evolution kind of a little bit pointless? 'Cause by the time that you evolve, the environment that you've evolved to adapt to will have changed.

   2. AHAdam Hart10:39

      Yes. And of course many of the things we're talking about, um, you know, evolution can only happen if there's a genetic basis for the trait that you're referring to and if that genetic basis affects survival and ultimately reproduction, right? That's your fundamental aspects of it. And, and, you know, many of the features that, that plague us in, in modern life might have some echoes in evolution, but they're not necessarily affecting, they're, they're not necessarily, um, affecting our reproduction, if you like. So, so our inability to handle social media may well have an evolutionary sort of echo in terms of the types of social groups that we've evolved to handle, um, and the size of those social groups and those sorts of interactions, right? That, that may well be the mismatch that we see in the modern world, but our inability to handle that doesn't necessarily affect our, our ability to reproduce. It doesn't become a dominant feature. It's not, if you like, open to, to natural selection-

   3. CWChris Williamson11:30

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAdam Hart11:30

      ... um, in the modern world. So, so evolution isn't going to get us out of that problem, even though there may actually be, um, some genetic component to, to it, right? Our ability to handle larger groups could well be a, a genetic component. If we accept that there is some evolutionary echo to the way that we think about these things, then there's going to be some variation in population and some people, of course, can handle things better than others. And actually, you know, like I talk about in the book, um, for, for some people social media isn't a problem at all and for other people it's a very big problem and there's no reason to assume that there may not be some underlying genetic variants there. It's going to be very complex and it's going to be far from straightforward, but there could be something there. But is that ever going to translate into a sort of meaningful selection environment so that people that... You know, people that, that do well on Twitter suddenly have more children? Actually that's...

   5. CWChris Williamson12:17

      (laughs)

   6. AHAdam Hart12:17

      And they pass on that ability to do well on Twitter.

   7. CWChris Williamson12:20

      (laughs)

   8. AHAdam Hart12:20

      You know, that, that, that sort of evolutionary scenario seems a little unlikely, but the b- the biggest problem with it is that, is that, um, by... Even, even if that were the case, of course, by the time that's able to act in a generation or so, um, you know, the problem's, the problem's gone away because we've come up with a new way of interacting.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:37

      Yeah.

   10. AHAdam Hart12:37

       I've just, I've just been joined by um, by a almost two-year-old who, um, should be down... Hello darling. Who should be downstairs so if I can, if I can just pause very quickly.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:48

       That's absolutely fine.

   12. AHAdam Hart12:49

       I'll have him, I'll have him removed. Hang on a minute.

   13. CWChris Williamson12:51

       Absolutely fine. Yeah, we can-

   14. AHAdam Hart12:52

       You all right?

   15. CWChris Williamson12:53

       Send the child catchers in.That's it, the child catches are coming. The two-year-old's being

   16. AHAdam Hart12:58

       No, I've- I've- I've sent for the child catch. It's all right. (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson13:02

       That's totally fine. Two-year-old has arrived.

   18. AHAdam Hart13:05

       There we go. All right, fella. Yeah. (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson13:09

       See you later on. Just use your co-host for a brief-

   20. AHAdam Hart13:12

       There you go.

   21. CWChris Williamson13:12

       ... for a brief while there.

   22. AHAdam Hart13:13

       Yeah. Well, and- and he illustrates... Oh, could you close the door? Sorry. Yes, sorry about that. So yeah, um, you know, that- that's- that's the big problem with- with all of these things is even if there was enough variation and enough of it was genetic in the background, and it made some meaningful sense, and people that did well in certain things left more offspring than- than others, by the time, by the time that happens, the- the, you know, the environment's changed. We've changed the environment. Of course, you know, there may be more subtle effects with that. I mean, you know, we talked earlier about social media causing problems. One of those problems is things like stress. And, you know, we can see some genetic basis and differences in the way that people handle stress. But equally, that's a balance because some people handle it in different ways, this warrior-worrier kind of idea, which- which maybe have strength and weaknesses at different points. So all of it, all of it becomes quite difficult to see a way to evolve our way out of trouble. But certainly evolution has provided some of the- the background that sort of got us into trouble in the first place. (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson14:09

       Yeah, it's so weird the way that our evolutionary heritage rears its head when these new things happen, right? So you bring in a new technology and you're like, "Well, I wonder how the human makeup is going to respond to this, uh, surplus of food. I wonder how this human makeup is going to respond to this, that hypernormal stimuli, uh, coming from your mobile phone and dopamine hits throughout the day and all this sort of things." And it's like, it's- it's crazy, man. It's so, it's so fascinating. This is why I've been loving reading your book and, uh, some of Robert Wright's work and, uh, Rob Henderson, we recently had him on talking about, uh, evolution and dating. Uh, and it- it's really, really cool. So,

6. 14:49 – 23:33

   The Dunbar number

   1. CWChris Williamson14:49

      uh, you- you mentioned there about group size, actually. I wanted to ask, how does Dunbar's number relate to social media?

   2. AHAdam Hart14:54

      Yeah. Well, this is a really interesting one, um, because it's... The odd thing I found when researching this idea was that you can find quite a lot of people who will say, "Oh, Dunbar's number is very controversial," and you'll kind of read around and people will come up with different numbers. So the idea of the Dunbar number is it's- it's the number of people that are in your social group that you can feel comfortable with. And- and Robin Dunbar, I think, defined it as this idea of- of who you could go up to in a bar and join for a drink without feeling embarrassed about it. And- and the idea is that that number maxes out at around 150, um, but that there are layers within that. So there tends to be smaller numbers, sort of around five or so that are, you know, your very intimate close friends, and then a slightly wider circle and then it expands out. And the idea is that when you go beyond the Dunbar number that- that you- you struggle with those social groups and that social groups tend to form naturally in human... both in human history, actually, if we look back and in modern sort of human relationships into these kind of groups of that number. And- and- and I saw lots of people going, "Well, that's not true, and you'll find this other number," and they say, "Well, no, it's 350." And- and there's someone else that- that came up with research says, "Well, no, it's 1200." And- and- and you've got all these sort of people arguing the details. But what I noticed never really came out was the- the idea that there was a limit, and in fact, the upper limit seems to be down to our ability to remember faces. We (laughs) ... At some point in our head, you know, we can't cope with anymore. And so when you follow all this through, this idea of the Dunbar number, however which way you dice it, you end up with people deciding that yeah, well, there is a limit, actually, we're just not totally sure. You know, maybe the number's this, maybe the number's that, but there is a limit. And that limit seems to always be in the order of hundreds or, you know, perhaps up to a thousand.

   3. CWChris Williamson16:29

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAdam Hart16:30

      Well, when you look at people's online social networks, they are much larger in many cases. Um, and in many cases, those online social networks can be quite active as well. So it's not just a case of you've got, say, 10,000 Twitter followers, but you only interact with two or three of them. Actually, you may have interactions with a large number of them in different shifting patterns. So you can end up actually with very large networks and then when you intercept that... I mean this is the other thing, right? That's our virtual world in one platform but of course people have lots of different platforms with different interactions on. And on top of all of that, and this is something that I wasn't able to really find that much research on, we have our real world networks as well. So we- we might be maxing out or getting close to the Dunbar number or s- whatever number we decide in the real world and then we lump on a whole load of different social media platforms with all of these things as well. And- and it seems that- that people, particularly people who are quite ruminative, um, and perhaps prone to, um, overthinking things maybe, uh, have a real issue when- when the social network of the online world, um, you know, mixes with their, with their real world and- and it can cause real problems. But equally for- for some people it can be a real big benefit and there is this slightly odd idea that, you know, we know friendships are good and healthy and we know that friendship networks and strong friendships are good for mental health, but having very, very large networks online for some people can be very bad. And yeah, I mean, my- my advice for that, I- I- I didn't write a self-help book, but if I was to (laughs) , my- my advice for these online social networks is- is learn how to mute and ignore and block and- and learn how to manage them to get what you want out of them. And I think that's- that's something I've learned, but I think it's also something that we don't tend to think of when we join a social network online and we expand beyond our Dunbar number range, if you like.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:18

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAdam Hart18:18

      We often then think, "Well, why- why am I doing this." Right? What- what is the point? You know, I see people on Twitter and Facebook going, "I'm taking a break from this now, it's all too much." And you think, well, what- what were you doing? You know, what- what was your reason for joining that network and what are you trying to get out of it? Um, we're not used to doing that because we don't think of friendship groups in that way in the real world, right? We don't- we don't always look at someone and go, "Right, what am I going to get out of you?" You know, what's my, what's my, what's my angle here in becoming-

   7. CWChris Williamson18:45

      It's usually...

   8. AHAdam Hart18:46

      ... a friend of yours, right?

   9. CWChris Williamson18:47

      Usually...

   10. AHAdam Hart18:47

       That's not really what we do.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:48

       Not that costly, you know? Like...

   12. AHAdam Hart18:51

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:51

       And also there's not a... if you stop, if you just stop speaking to someone-... that happen. You don't, you don't remove yourself entirely from the social environment. You don't go, "Right, that's it. I, I just fancy a little bit of time in monk mode for the next-"

   14. AHAdam Hart19:06

       Yes.

   15. CWChris Williamson19:06

       "... four months, all of you."

   16. AHAdam Hart19:08

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson19:08

       "My entire social circle, all of you are assholes and-"

   18. AHAdam Hart19:11

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson19:12

       "... I can't take you anymore." Yeah, that, that doesn't happen. It is interesting, I mean, there's a, I got a bunch of doorways open in my mind, one of them being play stupid games, win stupid prizes, which is a quote from Naval Ravikant, where he asks, "What is the prize for winning the game that you are playing at, at the moment?" And one of those for a lot of people will be checking their phone every 30 minutes. Like, what-

   20. AHAdam Hart19:31

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:31

       ... is the prize for winning that? And this is something I, I am the epitome of someone who spent too much time on their, on their phones. I'm a club promoter by trade. I've sent and received millions of messages on WhatsApp. Millions. So, I, I am very, very accustomed to what it feels like to have a tech addiction and-

   22. AHAdam Hart19:52

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:53

       ... I've had to set myself such hard and fast rules in a desperate attempt to try and wrangle a technology which is, uh, far, far, far outgunning me. This race to the bottom of the brain stem is, I am just a, a pawn, and there is billions of dollars and the smartest, uh, designers-

   24. AHAdam Hart20:10

       (laughs) .

   25. CWChris Williamson20:10

       ... on the planet behind every button press. You know, anyone that's spent a bit of time looking at Tristan Harris's stuff from the Center for Humane Research, and he's, we've spoken a lot on this show about tech addiction. I'm a big fan, big advocate of phone reduction on this show. Um, but yeah, having a separate device for social media has been a big help for me. Uh, not allowing my phone into certain rooms of the house, so if I want to use my phone-

   26. AHAdam Hart20:32

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson20:32

       ... I've gotta go into the kitchen. Not sleeping with my phone, my phone beside my bed has been a huge difference, having a hard digital sunset on a night. And it's like, even this, like think about what I'm saying.

   28. AHAdam Hart20:44

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson20:44

       I'm having to construct this bizarre world within the world with weird little fences and rules and stuff in a desperate attempt to stop using a device that I had to pay a grand and a half for.

   30. AHAdam Hart20:56

       Yeah, and this, this, none of that would've made sense to anyone 10 years ago. You know, none of what you've said. And yet every single thing that you've just said, I thought, "Yep, no, that's actually a good idea. Mm, yep, not a bad plan." Yeah, you're right and, and the devices that we hold in our hands now, they're, they're like... People that design fruit machines know this and, and one of the problems of gambling, um, addiction or trouble, problem gambling as it's sort of more broadly known is that particularly with slot machine gambling, it, it's the unexpected win associated with bright lights and noises that, that form this sort of perfect storm to reward those pathways in our brain, that, that make us associate this with a good thing, right? "This is excellent. We must carry on." Yeah. And that of course-
7. 23:33 – 25:38

   The hygiene hypothesis

   1. CWChris Williamson23:33

      um, can you tell us about the hygiene problem? I love this.

   2. AHAdam Hart23:37

      Yeah, so, um, I did, I mean, I guess one of the, one of the issues of the modern world, um, and we can certainly see it in, um, lots of aspects of the modern world is, is inflam- is inflammatory diseases. And actually, um, inflammation in general is now implicated in a whole load of different things. And this is when our immune system sort of overreacts to what's going on. It's actually one of the, um, the sort of cytokine storms that people are talking about, um, causing deaths in COVID-19 is in effect, it's an immune over-response, right? And we can see it in much less dramatic things, but nonetheless, very life-changing and life, um, reducing kind of things like asthma, for example, um, allergies, you know, um, not just sort of peanut allergies and the sort of potentially serious or fatal allergies, but, but, but sort of lesser allergies as well. And we can find all of these things. And, and one of the very seductive ideas about this is the, it was, became known as the hygiene hypothesis, which is effectively saying we are all living such clean lifestyles now, and we use so many domestic cleaning products and everything that, that our immune systems never get chance to learn friend from foe, right? We never get the chance to build up the idea in our bodies that, "Well, these bacteria are good, these bacteria are bad." And we end up with this immune system that, if you like, hasn't been to school properly and it's kind of, uh, not learned to respond properly. And that's a really interesting idea because it's very seductive. You see it absolutely everywhere. It's repeated in the popular media particularly, you know, jump on the hygiene hypothesis. But when you actually look back through the history of it as a scientific idea and the publishing of it, it was never about home hygiene in that sense. It was actually, the original idea was looking at, um, looking at the incidents of things like asthma, for example. It looked at household effects and the biggest household effect was actually the size of the family that you're in, um, because it gave you-

   3. CWChris Williamson25:21

      All right. How, how does that work?

   4. AHAdam Hart25:21

      ... more... It gives you... Well, it gives you more interactions. So, if you have more children, basically those children have more interactions with children, more, um, very close interactions, more opportunities basically to inge- (laughs) ingest bacteria, uh, and so on.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:32

      Oh, because you're dirty and they're dirty.

   6. AHAdam Hart25:36

      ... and you've got-

   7. CWChris Williamson25:36

      ... and together everybody dirty.

8. 25:38 – 28:54

   The old friends hypothesis

   1. CWChris Williamson25:38

   2. AHAdam Hart25:38

      Yeah. A- and, and of course, um, if you look at our modern lifestyle, we tend to have much less exposure to, to outside. Um, we live more inside lives than, than we... certainly than we evolved to live. And so taken together, those ideas a- actually have some merit, and, and they went on to form what's become known as the old friends hypothesis, which is the idea that we co-evolved really with a whole suite of, of harmless organisms that... you know, microorganisms, bacteria, nematode worms, and all sorts of other things. And that by being exposed to these very young in, in, in life, you know, our adaptive immune system is able to go, "Okay, cool. You're a friend, you're a friend. Ah, you know, shit, we better sort you out, you know, you're different, right?" So, the... that's the idea of the, the sort of... the, the old friends hypothesis. The hygiene hypothesis, of course, then, you know, developed greatly because of this idea that we all clean our houses more than we do.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:27

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAdam Hart26:27

      And actually, I mean, looking back at... certainly at my grandmother's, um, I... and looking around my house right now, I can honestly say that there's absolutely no way that my house is cleaner than theirs. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson26:37

      (laughs)

   6. AHAdam Hart26:38

      Um, you know, and, and in fact people did lots of studies of this and they looked at the use of cleaning products and all this sort of stuff, a- and, and it really transpires that it's not, it's not this fact that we're all so damn clean these days and, you know, back in the day we all ate mud and, and, you know, Mars bars were the size of house bricks. It's not, it's not this sort of, uh, uh, kind of great, great change. It, it's actually down to the way we live a- and that the modern, you know, if you like the modern Western lifestyle, the idea that we are inside much more as children, we tend to have less interaction with other children. You know, we're a crashing species almost. You know, lots of children in, in sort of, um, ancestral societies, certainly children would have played together much more than they do now. Um, you would have had family groups mixing together much more than they often do. Family size would have tended to have been larger. There would have been, uh, potentially more contact with, with animals and livestock than we have now. And so all of these changes to our lifestyle can have an influence on, on the way our immune systems learn, um, and we can see similar sorts of effects, um, in, in lots of different places around the world. I mean, there was a really nice natural experiment where a group of, uh, an ethnic group in, in northern Finland... um, I say a nice natural experiment, nice in inverted commas from a scientific perspective. Um, a- an ethnic group got divided by border effectively between Finland and Russia, and very, very rapidly the, the, the Russian group were living a sort of more traditional lifestyle for them and a more, um, rustic lifestyle I guess you would call it, with association with animals and so on. And the group in Finland lived... were living a, a... what we would describe as a modern Western lifestyle. And, and very, very quickly they were able to see the differences in those two effectively genetically identical populations. They hadn't had time to diverge, but they were... the only difference between them now was the environment they were in, and they were able to follow through the, the sort of... the fact that the, the group that was in this modern Western sort of setting had more lifestyle-related kind of allergies and so on. So it's a, it's a really interesting idea. I- it is a tricky one, and it's a... it's the sort of thing that's very difficult to do the type of controlled experiments, you know, sort of-

   7. CWChris Williamson28:41

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAdam Hart28:41

      ... the, the, the, the gold standard kind of medical trial that you would like to do because of the ethical implications of it. But, but certainly the cumulative evidence is, is strongly points towards this lifestyle effect changing a- and resulting

9. 28:54 – 30:38

   Do I clean my house

   1. AHAdam Hart28:54

      in these allergies.

   2. CWChris Williamson28:54

      The question that we need to know, do I clean my house or not, Adam?

   3. AHAdam Hart28:58

      Well, absolutely, a- a- and yes you should, because th- this is the other thing that developed of course. I mean, I've heard people say, "Well, you know, I'm gonna take little Toby out or whatever and force feed him, you know, mud." (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson29:08

      If you push a... if you push a toddler into the ground, it's good for their health, right?

   5. AHAdam Hart29:13

      (laughs) It's good for their... th- this was the idea. Uh, people go, "Well, I won't clean my house." Well, well of course actually, you, you know, we, we should. Hygiene, and as we're seeing right now, hand hygiene particularly, is an incredibly important thing. The fact is that we... (laughs) yeah, being clean is good, right? We no longer suffer from many of the infectious diseases that we would. We can clean wounds, we... all of these things are wonderful if... and if you handle things like chicken, for example, you know, which can pilo back to being quite rife in some of these things. You know, God's sake, wash your hands, right? Wash your children's hands. Don't-

   6. CWChris Williamson29:43

      Adam, Adam, I've had-

   7. AHAdam Hart29:44

      Don't, don't, don't get into the idea that, that all these things are good, but-

   8. CWChris Williamson29:47

      I had salmonella 18 months ago.

   9. AHAdam Hart29:50

      Oof. Right. And that is-

   10. CWChris Williamson29:51

       Wouldn't advise it.

   11. AHAdam Hart29:52

       No. And, and actually it's something... I mean, I, I wrote a book about five years ago, um, which looked at us, the complex relationship with bacteria, and one of the great surprises with that was to... and I don't remember the figures offhand, but was to see how many people in this country die from food poisoning, from salmonella, listeriosis and so on. It was quite shocking. And in fact there was a s- um, there was a food poisoning, um, outbreak, if I remember rightly, up around the northeastern... n- you know, five or 10 years ago that, that... I mention it in that book. You know, these things happen and you're right, they're... they are not fun, right?

   12. CWChris Williamson30:23

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAdam Hart30:23

       So definitely, definitely have some basic hygiene, but-

   14. CWChris Williamson30:26

       Awful, awful way to spend half the month of October and most of the month of November.

   15. AHAdam Hart30:31

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson30:31

       Uh, it's a... it doesn't stop, man. It was, it was-

   17. AHAdam Hart30:34

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson30:34

       ... it was savage. Anyway, I won't, I won't go into too much graphic

10. 30:38 – 31:58

    What is stress

    1. CWChris Williamson30:38

       detail. And so you looked at stress too. What did you find out there?

    2. AHAdam Hart30:42

       Yeah, I think... well, stress is brilliant. Stress is actually what started, um, the book. Um, so I was, I was looking for, for another book to write, and, and one of the things that came out from the book on bacteria, which was talking about sort of allergies and so on, I got looking at inflammation and then started reading around and ended up finding that, that stress in the modern world is this big long... you know, chronic stress is this long-term killer, and that we don't... you know, we still don't understand that much about it. So I started thinking about stress as a topic and then realized that it could expand more. So, you know, the base- the basic story behind stress is that stress is an absolute lifesaver. Um, stress is fundamentally this fight or flight response, right? Something terrible happens, we need to fix it right now. We, we can't wait for a sort of homeostasis to take care of it. It's, it's not... you know, right now we need to do something, we need to jack ourselves up and get ready for it. And, and so we get this fabulous hormonal sort of ballet through our body that releases all these hormones that, that, that-... elevate our heartbeat, you know, all of that feeling that we're all familiar with. Elevate the heartbeat, elevate blood pressure, divert blood away from where it's needed to, to, or where it's not needed to where it's needed, all of these responses that we associate with that. And, and that's a lifesaver. It's, it, and it's certainly saved, and, and, and I'm guessing that nobody hasn't been saved at some point from serious injury and potentially actually death, um, as a consequence

11. 31:58 – 33:47

    Stress is a lifesaver

    1. AHAdam Hart31:58

       of that response. And I'm-

    2. CWChris Williamson31:59

       Oh, walking out into traffic, accidentally dropping something on your hand that's hot, you know.

    3. AHAdam Hart32:04

       All of those things, right? That is, that is a lifesaver. And every one of our ancestors would have enjoyed that, you know, this sort of stress thankful chain all the way back. And in fact, um, the biochemistry underlying this, this isn't a human thing, you can go back through the primates, through the mammals, reptiles, even some invertebrates have, have this sort of system in place. So this is a really deeply evolved thing, and it saves our lives. The problem is that if you release all of these hormones all the time, they, they have a, a harmful effect. It's called an allostatic load. They have, they have this harmful effect on our body's system, right? Um, it's a great thing because you need it right now, but you can't be living with this all the time. And what we find in the modern world for some people and potentially actually I think for, I think for many of us, um, you know, some people deal with it better than others, but many of us are, are subject to an almost constant drip feed of stress. Instead of having these major stressful events that save your life 'cause a bear's just jumped out from behind a bush, you know, we have, uh, a groaning email inbox, three phone calls to take care of, um, we mentioned it earlier, there's social media alerts and notifications and, you know, 35 different WhatsApp threads, half of which y- you're unsure why you're even on anymore. All of these things go on, you know, missed buses, and then of course we've got financial woes. We're able to read the news and, and take on the woes of everyone else. Uh, you know, some earthquake at 2,000 miles away in a place you'd never heard of has suddenly become something to do with you, you know? And, and, and all of these things build up and th- the really sort of bad thing about it is we get this sort of drip, drip of stress, but then that has immediate effects. Um, it can cause headaches and pain, which of course can cause you more worry and concern. Um, it can cause sleeplessness, which is a major source of additional stress because,

12. 33:47 – 35:35

    The modern day problem

    1. AHAdam Hart33:47

       because then suddenly you're an insomniac and we end up with this almost maelstrom of very, what, what we would think of I think as a very modern day woe, a very modern day problem. And it's coming at us from all sides. And, and of course, we haven't lived this life for long enough for us to really have a very solid handle on what it might... and how that might affect us. Um, 70 and 80-year-olds right now did not grow up in the same world that teenagers are growing up in with the same stresses. They had their own stresses and different things as well, um, some of which would have been greater individually, but did they have such a large stress landscape as, as we live now? That, that is something which we are discovering all the time. But, but what we do know is that, that, uh, uh, more and more evidence is gathering up that this constant chronic stress, micro-stress that we're under i- is having an effect on our, on our health and wellbeing. And it's something that evolution isn't going to help us with. Evolution has given us this wonderful tool (laughs) and it's allowed some people to deal with it in different ways and it's allowed some people to, to, to have a variation in how they do it, but it's given us this wonderful mechanism for keeping us alive. But, but it's up to us I think to, to regulate our lives in the modern environment and perhaps change our environment so that we change that stress landscape because, you know, we, we can't live like this. And what's interesting is if you look at, you know, you look at, well, actually NHS advice and things, it sounds more kind of Glastonbury than Harley Street half the time now.

    2. CWChris Williamson35:13

       (laughs)

    3. AHAdam Hart35:13

       Um, most of the advice I have to say is, is quite unhelpful. It's things, I mean, effectively it sort of says pull yourself together, calm down and, you know, go, go for a walk or something. And actually that, you know, that might be very good advice, but it's not necessarily the advice that someone who's deeply stressed needs to hear (laughs) . Um, so we still need to work out the best language for that. But what's interesting is you look at kind of retreats, for example, or sp- spas,

13. 35:35 – 38:10

    Retreats

    1. AHAdam Hart35:35

       and it almost feels like the more they strip out of the modern world, the more you pay, (laughs) you know, the more spa-ed on your existence is.

    2. CWChris Williamson35:43

       (laughs)

    3. AHAdam Hart35:43

       The, the, the more, the more it's gonna-

    4. CWChris Williamson35:45

       (laughs)

    5. AHAdam Hart35:45

       ... the more, the more it's gonna cost you, right?

    6. CWChris Williamson35:47

       (laughs)

    7. AHAdam Hart35:47

       And I, and I, I stayed in a hotel, uh, in Africa actually a while ago that had this spa and they had a big sign, you know, "Leave your mobile phone here," they had a locker for it and everything. It was very much stripping away aspects of our modern life which we would consider to be luxurious, and they are, and safe, and they are. Right? We live a very safe, luxurious life really, but stripping those aspects away and giving us some refuge from them is how we're now trying to de-stress our lives. And that's, I, I guess over the last couple of months, um, you know, with, with sort of lockdown one of the, the narratives that I've seen coming out, and this is probably down to the sort of echo chamber that I'm in in social media, but, but I've seen people very much say how important the natural world has been to them. How important it is for them to now go out for a walk every day, for them to go and sit in their garden and just watch the bees or, you know, get their binoculars out and, and have a bird list. And to... And they're, they're saying that that is how they're dealing with it and in effect, well, they're, they're de-stressing by removing the modern world, slowing down, taking it easy. And I think that is something that we definitely need to do because the lives that we're living now are luxurious, safe, privileged, and yet (laughs) cause us all kinds of, of stressful woes. And it feels like something that we sh- I think we can get on top of that, you know? I think we just need to identify what those stresses are, understand that we've got this evolutionary background that isn't helping us and work out how to get those things to, to, to operate together. And I think that's something that, that possibly actually the last few months might have helped some people to come to terms with. I know it's helped me actually because the whole work/life balance is put into stark relief when you're, you know, working at home constantly and you've got kids around.

    8. CWChris Williamson37:32

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAdam Hart37:32

       You, you have to manage those things and, and, you know, now I f- I, I find myself going, as I mentioned earlier, I find myself going outside a lot more. You know, I'm a, I'm a biologist by profession, I'm a, I'm a keen naturalist, I'm a... and I'm a natural historian by sort of persuasion, but I don't get that much chance to do that. This year is the first year that I've seen skylarks flying for years, um, that I've been out hearing cuckoos. Because normally, you know, I would be at work and then at home and then sort, you know, probably on social media.

    10. CWChris Williamson38:01

        Dizzying around and stuff like that.

    11. AHAdam Hart38:02

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson38:03

        It's-

    13. AHAdam Hart38:03

        So being forced to balance those things has actually helped me immensely, but of course for, for some people it's also been, you know, another stress.

14. 38:10 – 40:21

    Simple pleasures

    1. AHAdam Hart38:10

       (laughs)

    2. CWChris Williamson38:10

       Well, I, I, I understand and I appreciate the people that have had stresses and stuff during lockdown, but the...... reduction of stimulation, the reduction of novelty, the reduction of opportunity for experience, as far as I'm concerned, has re-centered many people, including myself, attention onto simpler pleasures. So, I was mentioning this on our podcast the other week that over the last two and a half months, three months, or whatever it's been since I've been in lockdown, I have been able to do my morning walk and watch the trees go from bare branches to getting ready to leaf, to buds, to flowers. And I know the s- I know which trees went first. I have, like, the shape of them. Like, some of them I've given, like, weird pet names to. And obviously this is just all part of the odd psychosis that's going on inside of my mind. But, like, and I- I- I- I took notice of my flower, the clematis I've got in my garden. I'm like, I've never... I've lived in this house for five years, like, I've never taken notice of stuff like that. So, I- I do agree that, um, hopefully we've been able to reset, dial back that hypernormal stimuli-

    3. AHAdam Hart39:15

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson39:15

       ... dial back the- the, um, constant, "It's Joanne's barbecue this weekend and we've got to hurry off because we've got to go to our parents down in- in- in Surrey on Saturday," and blah, blah, blah. Um, I- I really do hope that that is something that people take away, the fact that they can have more simple, more easy and enjoyable experiences, uh, and- and hopefully kind of reconnect themselves with that grander vastness that nature does 'cause it makes you feel small, right? It reminds you that your problems aren't that big. So, the- the two key takeaways we've got so far that I've- I've got from this... there are three key takeaways. Uh, number one, sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom. Number two, if you've got a child you worry about getting ill, uh, shove its face in some mud.

    5. AHAdam Hart39:55

       (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson39:55

       Number three, um, if you want to really enjoy your life, then, uh, loin cloth, mud hut, uh, out in the middle of somewhere completely barren and stark, um, and- and just live- live out there for, like, a week and you'll come back and you're just gonna be fully actualized and- and full of zen. So those- those are the three takeaways I've got so far.

    7. AHAdam Hart40:18

       Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson40:18

       Uh, up next, are we evolved to be violent?

15. 40:21 – 44:32

    Humans kill each other

    1. CWChris Williamson40:21

    2. AHAdam Hart40:22

       Yes. Now this was, this was a chapter which I found particularly interesting, um, to- to come at from- from a zoological perspective, um, because I think you can find lots of people that will suggest that- that humans are the only people, they're the only species, uh, that will... that- that kills its own kind. And- and as a biologist, I- I know that that's... I mean, that's twaddle, right?

    3. CWChris Williamson40:42

       (laughs)

    4. AHAdam Hart40:43

       It- it- it, yeah, it- it's absolutely incorrect. Uh, uh, I've studied, um, leaf-cutting ants and honeybees, for example, in some depth, and both of those, highly social species, right, that we look at in terms of harmony. I mean, but bees are virtually... honeybees are virtually synonymous with harmonious living. Well, actually, um, you know, the- the queen when she emerges will kill her sister queens. Um, they- they- they will eat each other's eggs.

    5. CWChris Williamson41:04

       What a bitch.

    6. AHAdam Hart41:05

       Yeah. I- I used to study these ants called Deinoponera quadriceps. Huge things. They're actually the biggest ants in the world. They live in Brazil, they live in relatively small colonies. About 10 or 15% of the ants in a colony are involved in all these antagonist interactions between each other. They're sisters, but it doesn't make any difference to them because they might get the chance to, sort of, become the breeder in a colony and they're- they're- they're trying to kill each other. Um, and in fact, what- what someone did fairly recently was to do what's called a phylogenetic analysis. So they looked across the broad sweep of mammals and they looked at their relationships between the different groups, the evolutionary relationships between the different groups and the incidence of inter-, um, individual death. But- but basically members of the same species, conspecifics, killing each other. Um, fatal conflicts, if you like. And what they found was that 40% of mammal species had solid evidence of that happening. 40% of them. Um, and their suggestion was that actually they would have found it in more, except, you know, we haven't studied most of these things. Basically, the rule seems to be that if they've been studied for any length of time, it turns out that they probably are killing each other at one point or another.

    7. CWChris Williamson42:09

       Kicks seven shades of shit out of each other at one point, yeah.

    8. AHAdam Hart42:11

       Yeah. And- and here's the brilliant thing. You look at it, they- they Illustrated this beautiful, sort of, circle of all the species going around so you can sort of see them all in one place, and- and there's a really massive kind of lump of violent interactions. And you look at it, it's the primates. The group that we come from are unusually violent for mammals, even though you can find this violence throughout. And then you sort of look further in and, you know, the apes are kind of a bit more violent still. And- and so we have come from a- a violent lineage, actually.

    9. CWChris Williamson42:38

       We've got a perfect heritage. Yeah, they're

    10. AHAdam Hart43:56

        ... were not badly put together. There was, I, I came across this fabulous, um, uh, sort of argument by, by a biologist who, who sort of, uh, tried to put forward the argument that the fist and the way that the fist is, is, is made and, and buttressed and sort of the, the architecture of the human hand and everything, was, was to do with, with a fist that, that we were sort of pre-adapted. Um, you know, the fist, well not pre-adapted, the fist was actually an adaptation for fighting. And he'd also put forward the idea that the, the human male face and differences in bone structure between males and females, it was basically a sort of punch-proof face that was his kind of, um, overall view.

    11. CWChris Williamson44:27

        To disperse the way that the impact comes in and a thicker neck-

    12. AHAdam Hart44:30

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson44:30

        ... that will be able to withstand-

16. 44:32 – 47:16

    Evolution and violence

    1. CWChris Williamson44:32

    2. AHAdam Hart44:32

       E- exactly that. So, so those ideas, it must be said, were, were met with some fairly robust, um, criticism in, in the literature.

    3. CWChris Williamson44:40

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AHAdam Hart44:40

       But nonetheless, actually some people also said, "Well, you know, maybe there's something in it." Um, so there's, there's sort of an idea that, that we might have, there, there might be adaptations. I'm not really sure I buy into that, but certainly as a, as a physical specimen, we, we, you know, we have, we have some fairly useful attributes for violence. Of course, we've then also got a pretty decent brain that's both innovative, so we're pretty good at using weapons and tools and, and can plan ahead. So we can really start to, start to bring all these things together. So it doesn't seem necessarily surprising that we are, are violent. I guess one of the surprises is that we're not more violent and of course then we see evolution coming in as well and there's lots of, um, evidence and ideas about sort of how, uh, we have evolved mental mechanisms and, and neural mechanisms for, for reining ourselves back. Um, emotions, for example, things like shame and, um, some of the emotional sort of side of things are hypothesized by, by some to be, to be ways to reduce our violent tendencies.

    5. CWChris Williamson45:33

       Oh.

    6. AHAdam Hart45:33

       So it was quite in- interesting in and out for me, this sort of thing. Be- and, and what's really interesting as well is that you can find perfectly good, well put forward theses by people that say we are, you know, more violent now than we were, very, very learned theses that say no, we're actually much less violent than we were, learned theses that say no, we're no more violent than we were before. (laughs) Um, it- it's, it's almost as though we, we have not really got a firm grip on it. But what I did find was that there is evidence for genetic components to violence and when people have looked at, at violence and tried to... It's always very tricky, of course, to separate nature from nurture in human-

    7. CWChris Williamson46:10

       Mm.

    8. AHAdam Hart46:10

       ... um, studies, but, but it does seem that, that violence in the broader sense of the term and what we might, you know, subsume within that, there, there may be some genetic component to it as well. And what that suggests is that it, of course, has been under the, the influence of evolution. So evolution has certainly had a role to play, of course, in the modern world and in our, our modern way of thinking, you know, we have a very different view on that. And just because evolution, you know, just because we've come from an unusually violent sort of phylogenetic origin and just because we have all this ability to be able to do this, and just because at some point in the past there may have been selection for it, you know, that is not an excuse for violence because equally we've had selection and mechanisms that prevent us from acting through on that. And of course, what our, our secret is, you know, our secret, I guess our ultimate goal is to work out why it is and, and what triggers there are in, in some people that make some people much more violent th- than others. And, and that's, that's really, I hope, I think of lots of people looking at the evolutionary history of, of this sort of thing is to try and get some sort of handle on, on how we might, if you like, cure or treat, um, violence. But,

17. 47:16 – 48:44

    We need an Overton Window

    1. AHAdam Hart47:16

       but equally-

    2. CWChris Williamson47:16

       I think so, th- there's a, there's an argument there. There'll be a number of people that would hear you say, or hear, uh, researchers say that we're looking at ways to cure violence and they would think, "They're trying to neuter the population. They're trying to make us helpless and weak and un-independent and they w-, they want this sort of, uh, utopia." And again, what w- we're talking about the misalignment between human makeup and current environment. The fact that, the fact that we have this flinch response now where the vast, vast, vast majority of things don't-

    3. AHAdam Hart47:51

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson47:51

       ... require a flin-... We don't need to be scared of a cold shower and yet every morning when I go and have a cold shower, I shit myself just before I go in-

    5. AHAdam Hart47:58

       (laughs)

    6. CWChris Williamson47:58

       ... because I know what it's gonna be like and I know that I'm fine. Or for instance, when I'm doing breath work, let's say that I'm doing some quite challenging, uh, holotrophic breath work and uh, I, I'm scared that I'm choking and I can feel the gasp response coming. It's like I know I'm not choking. I'm in complete control. It's me that's holding my breath and yet we have all of these misaligned concerns and warning signs that go off around us and, um, there's gonna have to be a line where we begin to align the way that we are, the way that we operate, uh, to the environment more effectively. But there must be an Overton window to that where you actually push it so far that you essentially no longer become human.

18. 48:44 – 50:50

    We need to be careful

    1. CWChris Williamson48:45

    2. AHAdam Hart48:45

       Yes. And, and I think, yeah, we, we need to be, we need to be careful, um, when we develop these sorts of theses too far, um, because actually of course things are always a bit more comple-... You know, we're, we're not gonna find a gene for example, you know, there's not a gene for violence, right? And there's not gonna be a simplistic way of curing it. But I think we can get some insights into what are clear problems in the world today and, and violence can be in, in, in the broad, um, is, is clearly a problem. Um, domestic violence is a huge issue and a huge problem. Violence towards, um, uh, children is clearly a problem. Violence towards, towards everyone. You know, un- unjustified violence. Let, let, and let's put that inverted commas and sort of, and, and sort of park it, but just, just let, let, let's assume that in some cases violent responses are justified or desirable-

    3. CWChris Williamson49:36

       Yeah.

    4. AHAdam Hart49:36

       ... um, to defend yourself for example. Most, most of the violence in the world is, is not defensive. It is not in that sense and we see the escalation of violence across the world, you know, resulting in thi- in, in, in manifest atrocities up to the level of, of genocide. Um, clearly there is a problem and-

    5. CWChris Williamson49:56

       I mean ev- even a much-

    6. AHAdam Hart49:57

       ... understanding it's gonna help us in some way.

    7. CWChris Williamson49:59

       ... at a much more personal level...... um, because people, it, when we get to these big abstractions and we start to actually talk about the w- genocides and everyone can go, "Well, I'm not a part of a genocide." It's like, okay, everyone's been on a night out. I've stood on the front door of over a thousand nightclubs, right? And I-

    8. AHAdam Hart50:17

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson50:17

       ... have seen hundreds and hundreds of fights.

    10. AHAdam Hart50:22

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson50:23

        So many guys that are posturing, that are looking to not lose face in a group of drunk people who don't even know who they are and won't remember-

    12. AHAdam Hart50:35

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson50:35

        ... what happened the next day. And you think this is... I'm watching it thinking this is, uh, an evolutionary adaptation to not wanting-

    14. AHAdam Hart50:43

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson50:43

        ... to drop down the pecking order within your tribe, gone so haywire that it is unbelievable.

19. 50:50 – 53:32

    Drunken nightclub brawl

    1. CWChris Williamson50:50

    2. AHAdam Hart50:50

       It's a pure evolutionary... I- i- if, if we were (laughs) if we were sort of alien biologists dropping onto Earth and we saw that classic drunken nightclub brawl. We, we-

    3. CWChris Williamson51:01

       Oh, come on then, mate. Come on, then.

    4. AHAdam Hart51:02

       Yeah. Well, first of all, it's posturing, right? So, so you get display. So in our case, it's often vocal display. So people will start adopting a way of speaking which they wouldn't normally adopt.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:11

       (laughs)

    6. AHAdam Hart51:11

       They're shouting, they're, they're swearing at each other and they're, they're name-calling, right? That is no different from red deer bellowing at each other, right? It's trying to work out who's the biggest. And people might back down at that point, and if they don't, they start displaying. And you see it in deer, right? They'll start walking parallel to each other. They're sizing each other up basically-

    7. CWChris Williamson51:26

       (laughs)

    8. AHAdam Hart51:26

       ... to work out if it's worth it. You see that in men, right? They'll start putting their arms out, "Come on then. Come on then." They're trying to make themselves look bigger. It is pure, pure animal behavior at that point and that is, that is fr- has an evolutionary origin, it's display. First of all, the threat displays, then we get physical displays, and then if it escalates, of course, it goes into, into a fight. And you're right, it's to do with status, it's to do with, um, access to females, it's to do with access to resources. Of course, in the modern world, those things are slightly subverted and become somewhat bent and twisted. But the basic essence of it is the same and then of course people will start fighting and what they're generally doing, I mean, if you watch, if, if you watch people having... You know, as, as you've done much more than I have I'm sure. Um, the sort of fighting they're doing is either a fairly weird imitation of the type of fighting that they see on television and films, which we are immersed in constantly.

    9. CWChris Williamson52:14

       Yeah.

    10. AHAdam Hart52:14

        Which of course doesn't, doesn't really work because it's there to look good or it is, it is brutal. You know, all the fancy kicks in the world aren't gonna be as good as stomping on someone's head.

    11. CWChris Williamson52:24

        Yeah.

    12. AHAdam Hart52:24

        And that's what you actually see in the real world and that, that is where, that, you know, that is where people get killed in these ridiculous threat displays.

    13. CWChris Williamson52:32

        S- s-

    14. AHAdam Hart52:32

        We have a problem when that's happening, right?

    15. CWChris Williamson52:33

        For th- for the most part what I see, and that's a really interesting insight I've never thought of before, for the most part I see fights which are grander and less effective than they need to be. I've never-

    16. AHAdam Hart52:48

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson52:48

        ... in all the fights I've watched, seen someone bite another person.

    18. AHAdam Hart52:52

        Right.

    19. CWChris Williamson52:52

        And yet if you were trying to pull a murderer off your child-

    20. AHAdam Hart52:57

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson52:57

        ... you would be d- it would be, you'd be in the eyes, you'd be in the throat, but it's not.

    22. AHAdam Hart53:02

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson53:02

        That sort of fighting is this almost like, uh, baroque-

    24. AHAdam Hart53:06

        It's slightly ritualized. Isn't it?

    25. CWChris Williamson53:07

        ... style. Yeah, this kind of weird dramatized, like, uh, kayfabe WWE bullshit. Um, so look, I've got a couple more questions but I wanna do a quickfire round for you now, Adam.

    26. AHAdam Hart53:19

        Go on then.

    27. CWChris Williamson53:19

        I'm gonna... Quick fire round, quick fire round is going to be try and give us a brief evolutionary explanation for different emotions.

    28. AHAdam Hart53:27

        (laughs) I'll try.

    29. CWChris Williamson53:29

        See what you can do. Okay, so first up, pride.

20. 53:32 – 56:44

    Pride Envy loneliness

    1. CWChris Williamson53:32

    2. AHAdam Hart53:32

       Pride. Well, that's an interesting one, isn't it? Pride. Um, I suppose... I mean this is pure, this is the worst type of-

    3. CWChris Williamson53:39

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AHAdam Hart53:40

       ... armchair adaptionism, but I guess, um, pride is almost a sort of self-rewarding thing, isn't it? It's sort of a affirmatory kind of self-rewarding... I, I wouldn't be at all surprised if feelings of pride, if you were to MRI someone that's done something that's prideful, um, that it, that it doesn't affect that reward pathway in some way. Because if you've done something that makes you feel proud, you maybe... You might wanna end up doing it again or, or seek that emotion all out again.

    5. CWChris Williamson54:05

       Ah. Yeah.

    6. AHAdam Hart54:05

       I wonder if that's...

    7. CWChris Williamson54:05

       I like it. Okay.

    8. AHAdam Hart54:06

       I don't know.

    9. CWChris Williamson54:07

       Next, next one. Envy.

    10. AHAdam Hart54:09

        Well, I suppose envy basically comes down to resource, uh, r- resource management and territory and so on, isn't it? Um, you're envious of things which will give you more status and more reproductive power ultimately. Um, I can imagine, I, I've, I've got two blackbirds that, that live... And, and the males are constantly barracking each other.

    11. CWChris Williamson54:28

        (laughs)

    12. AHAdam Hart54:28

        One, one is on the street opposite and one's on my roof, and they've both got pretty decent territories but you can see each of them eyeing up the other one. I'm guessing that envy in humans is probably, um, a more sophisticated and more intellectualized version of that. Um, we see something we want that will give us some status, some resource that we need and, and envy eats away at people. It, it, it motivates. So it's probably linked in some way to those motivational pathways that gets us to, you know, get something that we perceive to be of value to us.

    13. CWChris Williamson54:56

        Got you. Uh-

    14. AHAdam Hart54:56

        So that... That's my armchair adaptionism for that.

    15. CWChris Williamson54:59

        I, I like it. Uh, two more. So loneliness.

    16. AHAdam Hart55:02

        Well, loneliness is, um, is, is an interesting one, isn't it? That, that's something that ironically perhaps in the modern world of interconnectedness we, we find ourselves less connected and we see loneliness. Um, loneliness is an extremely unpleasant thing to experience, um, whether that's a pathological reaction to the situation. So if you like outside of the realm of, of... It, it's not an evolved response, it's simply a, uh, a symptom, a disease response or whether there is some evolved response to it because it's such an unpleasant way of feeling it stimulates us. I, I don't know, but I, I guess one of the things that we see with people that are chronically lonely is it doesn't necessarily drive people towards seeking out humans. In fact, if anything, it tends to lead to further isolation and further loneliness.

    17. CWChris Williamson55:49

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AHAdam Hart55:49

        So I wonder whether lo- loneliness might actually be, be a sort of...... um, uh, a s- a symptom, almost a disease if you like, a symptom of, of something rather than a- an evolved-

    19. CWChris Williamson56:00

        Ah.

    20. AHAdam Hart56:00

        ... emotional response.

    21. CWChris Williamson56:01

        Yeah. I, I-

    22. AHAdam Hart56:02

        But, but, but yeah, I, uh, I'm g- I'm guessing there'll be, there'll be people listening to this that know a lot more about the evolution of emotion than me going-

    23. CWChris Williamson56:08

        Does, they can comment-

    24. AHAdam Hart56:09

        ... shouting at the screen.

    25. CWChris Williamson56:10

        Fuck, Adam-

    26. AHAdam Hart56:10

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson56:10

        ... they can comment in, in-

    28. AHAdam Hart56:11

        Please, please do.

    29. CWChris Williamson56:11

        ... the comments below and correct us throughout this whole thing. I've told you-

    30. AHAdam Hart56:15

        Yeah. Please, please, I've got it.
21. 56:44 – 1:07:21

    Grief

    1. CWChris Williamson56:44

    2. AHAdam Hart56:45

       So, grief.

    3. CWChris Williamson56:46

       Yeah.

    4. AHAdam Hart56:46

       I suppose. Well it's, it's different from grief, isn't it? Grief is, is almost that separation, uh, sort of thing. Um, the pursual- uh, the continuation of love of people that have died. Well-

    5. CWChris Williamson56:57

       How is that fitness enhancing, you know?

    6. AHAdam Hart56:59

       I guess, I guess in a sense, uh, ooh, maybe we want, we want that to be us in some sense. Perhaps that's one of those things that's gone beyond simple fitness enhancement and is a product of... This, this is, this is such a, a squirrelly-

    7. CWChris Williamson57:15

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AHAdam Hart57:16

       ... and, and, and, uh, uh, a weaselly response, but perhaps that's one of the products of the complexity of our brain that simply emerged from the, the background of all those neurological connections.

    9. CWChris Williamson57:26

       Yeah, yeah.

    10. AHAdam Hart57:27

        May- may- maybe the, maybe that's just a, um, uh, a spandrel if you like, an evolutionary kind of, loads of other things that evolve for different reasons and as a consequence of them, we get these interconnections that lead to something-

    11. CWChris Williamson57:37

        Ah.

    12. AHAdam Hart57:37

        ... that we can't explain. That, that is, that is a, a, a-

    13. CWChris Williamson57:40

        Yeah. No, that, I th- I like that.

    14. AHAdam Hart57:41

        ... there, there you go. There's my idea. (laughs)

    15. CWChris Williamson57:42

        I like, I like the fact that you've got this kind of like haywire, um, add-on, the, the kind of like a bug in the system, uh, so you could think, uh, that again it's a... I've thought about that question loads and this is the first time. You're eliciting a lot of new thoughts here, Adam, which is great. Um, uh, what you could have is your brain is unable to work out the fact that your feelings for someone, the love that you had for someone, that they're no longer there. Then th- uh, it's actual, uh, a, um, denial of death almost, somewhere back-

    16. AHAdam Hart58:16

        Which...

    17. CWChris Williamson58:16

        ... back, back inside of you.

    18. AHAdam Hart58:17

        Mm.

    19. CWChris Williamson58:17

        I don't know why that would be evolutionary fitness on us.

    20. AHAdam Hart58:19

        But that could... Well, um, I guess, I guess, uh, a denial of death is probably a very good thing, right? If, if, if you refuse to believe that death is there and you... Well, no, actually accepting that death is there is much better, isn't it? Because you know how bad death would be for your fitness (laughs) so you ruthlessly try to avoid it. So, actually kind of, uh, ig- ignoring death, I'm not sure. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna weasel out, out of that one. (laughs)

    21. CWChris Williamson58:38

        It's... Hey, let yourself ponder. Have a, have a little ponder on that one.

    22. AHAdam Hart58:41

        Well, yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson58:42

        And when you watch-

    24. AHAdam Hart58:42

        It's an i- it's an interesting one.

    25. CWChris Williamson58:43

        When you watch Interstellar you'll know the exact bit that I was talking about. So, um, m- my final question, what's, what, what happens next? We said at the very beginning of this conversation that human evolution is kind of a bit moot now, or at least for the time being. For as l- as long as the environment changes fast as hell, evolution I- is kind of just spinning its wheels. Is, what, what's that mean as we go forward?

    26. AHAdam Hart59:09

        I, I think, I think what it means is, is that we... It's kinda like we n- we need to sort of grow up a little bit, don't we? We've, we've reached this point now in, in, in our civilization and particularly over the last few, few decades, in the last generation or two. We've, we've really reached a very critical point and, and, and p- and perhaps even a tipping point in the way that we, that we view the world and, and, and see the world. And I think, I think we need to embrace the fact that we are incredible creatures, right? We are amazing. We can control our environment to a ridiculous degree. We can explore space, we can smash atoms, we can do all of those things. And too often I think we, we sit back and say, "Oh, but you know, we're, we're rubbish and we blah, blah, blah," and like, "Aren't we awful and we, uh, we can't run as fast as a cheetah," or whatever. No, we're, we're incredible. We're the fastest, strongest, most intelligent creature on this planet. We should embrace that and we should use that in a much more effective fashion. And I think to do that, we're gonna have to accept the fact that we are animals, that we have these kind of evolutionary echoes that influence things both consciously, subconsciously, and also within our bodies and the way we respond to things. We almost have to embrace all of that. And, and much d- m- understand ourselves in a much better way I think if we're gonna move forward. Because you're right, e- evolution is not gonna get us out of this. Um, we're gonna get us out of this. But for us to do that, we have to really deeply take on what we are.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:00:35

        Mm.

    28. AHAdam Hart1:00:35

        And we are flesh and blood animals that have been subject to evolution but we're also something incredible because we've got in our heads the most complex structure that we know of in the universe that's capable of innovation that, that we can't yet imagine, (laughs) and imagination that we, we can't quite fathom. So, I think we just need to bring all these components together. But underpinning all that, and this was really the big surprise to me, is, is the fact that we're not very good at thinking about the future, (laughs) um, evolution hasn't equipped us for that. Evolution doesn't care what's gonna happen in three generations time, it cares what happens now, right? We have evolved and our heuristics and our brain have evolved as kind of here and now things, and we devalue us actually. We think of ourselves as different people in the future. Future us is, is sort of treated as the same as everyone else but we can stop that. We can actually do experiments that show that if you just tweak people a little bit and prepare them-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:01:25

        Mm.

    30. AHAdam Hart1:01:25

        ... and say, "Listen, you're gonna need to make a decision for future you, but future you is gonna be you, yeah? It's gonna have the same hopes and fears and emotions and everything." If you prime people in that way, they treat future them better than they treat a future them without that priming, and I think we need to learn those little lessons that, that let us take our evolutionary heritage and sort of turn it on its head and make it into a strength. You know, the sort of judo approach-

Episode duration: 1:07:22