Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger
show natural selection has been working to eliminate cancer ever since multicellular animals have originated and it's astounding that we don't all get lots more cancer. It's just incredible natural selection is done such a good job. And that's why elephants don't get very much cancer is because they've been shaped by natural selection to protect themselves against cancer.
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And it's of course not just natural selection, but it goes along the lines of why men do dangerous things. Why men come little bit too soon sometimes, you know, just speaking for a friend and why sometimes women don't come at all why natural selection does things that seem to make no sense at all. We'll also discuss why we age why are people that get old and can no longer reproduce or are a burden potentially on their tribe or Society? Why do they tend to reproduce? Why did those genes get put forward? Why did we evolve mental?
Illness, or did we and in the field of Psychiatry? We are at biology before Darwin astronomy before Copernicus. It's early. We really don't know a lot about what's going on in Randolph. Nessie is been teaching this for years his books or super interesting in this conversation is no exception. I really hope you enjoy it. And if you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits. Check out our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan harbinger.com.
Mom / course and by the way, most of the guests on the show, they actually subscribe to the course and the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. Where you belong now. Here's Randolph Nessie. Let's talk a little bit about anxiety right now is a great time to talk about anxiety. I think
because everybody in the world is anxious everybody in the world is anxious and many of us more. So right now everybody responsible. That's right and but you anxiety can be
useful right? It's that we just have more than we need right now because
Little can result in disaster according to your book. So take us through this a little bit because I can speak for everyone. I think when I say hey, I've had too much anxiety at one point in my life.
And you know, we all have too much anxiety and we all have too much pain and and if you do something to reduce it, it doesn't hurt you. So it just seems like hey who designed this system? Yeah, screw up your making life miserable for no reason right even other bad feelings like depression and anger. You know, what's the big deal why make life so miserable. I mean, I've been preoccupied by this my whole career Joy.
Didn't mean it just seems like if some malevolent deity decided to make everybody's life miserable. Even when life is going pretty well people are upset and uptight and wanting what they're really don't have you know, and that's really a lot of what got me into evolution of medicine. I started asking myself the larger question instead of just working out emotions. I started asking so why the hell isn't the body better and why do we have an appendix? Why do we have a narrow birth? Canal? Why do we have wisdom teeth? Why do we have an eye with a blind spot? Why do we get cancer?
That's really been the whole focus of my entire career is asking that question and it's been pretty thrilling that not a lot of other people are taking that question. Seriously. It's not just cocktail party conversation. It's like a really serious neglected scientific question. That's you know, Morse doctors are trying to figure out what's wrong with this person. Now, what's wrong in the mechanism and I'm trying to save a step back you guys let's take an engineer's point of view and ask how is this thing designed in a way that leaves it so vulnerable to these kind of things which brings us back to anxiety what you were asking about?
Yeah.
Yeah indeed in with anxiety, of course anxiety can be useful. Can you explain the situations in which anxiety is useful for us? Because I think a lot of people probably actually don't know
this really. Well, you know, it's not just us. It's any organism whose face was some kind of a danger had better get the hell out of there and it's not just us and chimpanzees a bacteria. Do you know bacteria can swim either towards something or away from
something? I did not know that but it makes sense, right? They got to go somewhere
when it gets too hot or too acid or too light. They
Woman away pretty fast that's not exactly like anxiety and a big thing about emotions a huge point is that there's a lot of emotions that has nothing to do with how you feel. It's only about what you do because the only point of emotions is to get you to do stuff differently that's good for your jeans basically and so we all have this capacity when we're faced with potential danger to first of all try to get out of there and second of all try to avoid it the next time and it works pretty well. In fact, the big question for most people is
What is it work too? Well, I don't know if you know but I spent you know, 30 years hoping to start one of the first anxiety disorders research clinics at the University of Michigan and oh my gosh it first. It was just a few phone calls and very soon. We realized that there was a whole ocean of anxiety out there that we could help people with the worst problems, but just like you were starting to say how come everybody has more anxiety than the name and there's an answer. The answer is a smoke detector principle.
Okay. Well take us through that so to sort of
Cap here people often have anxiety I can speak for myself on that one and it can be useful because what is this if I hear a rustle? What was the Michael Shermer thing? It was like if I hear a rustle in the bushes and I say and it's probably nothing I get eaten by the lion and those genes don't get preserved and evolve later on. But if I run away from it, which is like the base level of anxiety Then maybe I live to fight another day and reproduce more importantly, right, but now we have more than we need because of what you said, which is the smoke detector principle. So what is
is this
exactly I thought about this for a couple of years before I figured out a potential answer Jordan. I saw so many people with so much excess anxiety is just thought to myself what's wrong with the design is this machine that we all have too much and it's partly anxiety where we worry about stuff in the future. It's partly fear of stuff right here, but it's all too great. And then I discovered a technical thing called signal detection Theory and it's a bit of mathematics that tries to figure out. So how loud does the sound have to be behind that rock before it's worthwhile?
Running away and the math is pretty simple pretend that you're getting water for your family at a watering hole and the cost of running away is a hundred calories, but there's something behind that rock and it sounds like this grrrr. If it was then you'd run. If it was correct, then you wouldn't run right? It's just grrrr. So how about does it have to be well if the lion is there it's going to eat you and that's going to be hundred thousand calories. So the ratio is like a
a thousand to one and this means the ratio is no 1001. This means 999 times out of 1,000. You're going to run at some soft noise and that's going to be perfectly normal. Even though the lion wasn't there once I realized that Jordan I started treating my patients differently mean they go into a grocery store for the fourth time and say dr. Nancy. I'm still feeling fear in the grocery store. And I'd say how common you've been there four times. It's been safe until finally figured out that
That's how the system is designed it vastly over expresses anxiety. Just like our smoke detectors. They go off mostly for burnt toast. Yeah, and they'd better go off for burnt toast because we want them to go up every single time. There's a real fire.
Right? Right. So we don't we can't have something that decides erroneously even one in a thousand times that there's the fire because everyone dies, right? So we have two are in the other direction, which is 999 false alarms out of it.
Thousand because that one time is the make-or-break
scenario, right and with some podcasts people say dr. Nancy you think anxieties useful therefore it shouldn't be treated. I say no. That's the opposite of what I think you know what you actually think about how natural selection shape that system my take is that the vast majority of the time is excessive and not necessary except for that one time when it is necessary, right? I'd like everybody to be thinking that way, you know instead of just having a global too much or too little let's think about
The situation and covid gives us a great example.
Yeah. This makes sense of course pain can also be useful. It's just that too much is a problem. I mean if my tooth hurts I know hey, there's probably an in fact, there's an abscess something's wrong with my tooth. I better go to the dentist, but if it's hurting for 24 hours because I'm on a transatlantic flight. Well, I want some freaking Tylenol because I know my tooth hurts and I'm going to take care of it as soon as I can but I can't do anything about it right now. So I'd like it not to dictate my entire life for the next day.
That's exactly right. Yeah, but what?
You pointed out about paying the we can take that to the next place. There's another reason why evolve systems for pain and anxiety are vulnerable to overshooting and that's because they self adjust, you know, chronic pain is like the world's biggest problem except for anxiety and depression is just gigantic. So many people just are suffering every single day. How come the pain system is designed to give so many people's problems. It's because pain is supposed to stop you from doing stuff that hurt you before it actually hurts you much and if it
And he repeatedly get hurt that means the pain system is not doing its job and it should get more sensitive and paradoxically gets more sensitive than you have more pain and then it gets more sensitive. So it's a positive feedback thing same with anxiety. If you're not having enough anxiety keep you out of danger the anxiety becomes more sensitive and I tell my patients every time you avoid what you're anxious about your inner mind says just escaped that one. Yeah, and then it gets worse which is the whole
Whole key to most people's anxiety treatment is somehow convincing them to stay in the situation, even though it's so hard for them. It's so hard for people to do what it takes to get over anxiety, but that's what's
needed. So you're saying that's what's needed because we need to make it so that the anxiety system doesn't get rewarded based on a false alarm. Is that kind of what you're
saying? You know, it's self adjust itself downward if you continually expose yourself to something that is causing anxiety and don't leave the situation my
So tygra phobia often would run out of a grocery store after three or four minutes that makes it worse. But if you go in there and go ahead and have your panic attack and wait until it goes down the system seems to be designed in a way that that makes the anxiety better over the long run. It used to be without it was deconditioning, you know, it was undoing some conditioned response. Yeah turns out that's not how the brain works at all. It's creating new downward going signals from your brain to the lower parts of your brain that inhibit it but it works so well, it's been
so satisfying to treat people with anxiety disorders, although challenging sometimes but pretty reliably effective if you can get people to do what they need to do.
So agoraphobia is the fear of going outside or is it the fear of leaving your house? What's the definition
here? The Agora was the Greek market place. So technically it's a going far from home, but I've seen people who haven't left their small trailer in three years. Oh man have to do a house call for somebody like that and they're not very healthy by the time they spent three years just in their trailer every time they put set foot on their the step to their
Other their heart starts pounding I get short of breath and they wonder what's going to say about feeling terrible something terrible is going to happen. So they go back indoors. So there's a big question about why it is that they're such a tight connection between panic attacks and that I've just described a panic attack. I think most people have had that at some time or another you just feel like a spins of Doom your hearts pounding you're sweating and breathing fast. And so how come that gets connected with not wanting to go out huh? Fred talked about that. He thought it was fear or sexual.
Opportunities on the street. Okay, maybe brain scientists talk about it that those places in the brain are connected. But an evolutionary approach is much simpler it is if you're having repeated panic attacks because of almost being attacked by something. You really should stay home. And if you don't stay home, you better go out with somebody a trust and if you do go out with somebody you trust you better be ready to run home as fast as you can if anything anything happens out there and I found that simple explanation for A lot of people helps them instead.
Thinking oh my god. I've got a brain disorder and that other letter they say, oh this is a useful kind of response. It's overshooting. I'm not just a crazy person. I'm a person who has advantages as well as disadvantages. So it's helpful
so trauma and bad experiences can bring anxiety, but then it becomes worse and worse because the anxiety system makes the response more acute if it senses that the individual isn't actually avoiding that danger. Is that what you're
saying? Exactly right mean here's a there was a young woman who came to us once in our Clinic
She had been working in a grocery store in Detroit and her second week on the job. Somebody points a gun at her and says give me all the cash in your cash register and she freaks out completely and it can hardly give them the cash and the sides with her mother's health. I'm not going to work down there anymore. So she moves her job to a Suburban grocery store. Can you guess what happens to her two weeks into that job now he gets held up some guy points a gun at her again. She was completely Iraq and she could not go back to work and a situation like that. You have to wonder so it
It's like really have normal anxiety. That
seems pretty useful. I mean she has the worst luck in the world isn't terrible. It's not completely irrational. I would say
we got her better but she did get a different job. Yeah. Yeah work at a bank. There's a piece of glass between you and the gun. Yeah, right, right.
So system senses danger anxiety gets triggered there's danger again, then there's anxiety again, but possibly more anxiety because it's almost like the first anxiety response didn't do the trick because you still get the stimulus that's right of well either having a gun pointed at you.
You or just going outside of your trailer for a step? You still get that danger
response and your a lot of these things were talking about Jordan. A lot of people would call them more like fear because the danger is like right there in front of you, right but a lot of the anxiety we experiences about so God that I screwed up the party last night or what about that test. I'm supposed to take or what about the podcast I'm going to do tomorrow. Is it going to go? Okay, we're always thinking ahead. And another thing that really preoccupied me for like years was trying to figure out why do
People just care so much about what other people think about them, you know back in the 70s. It was I'm okay and you're okay and let's quit worrying so much about what people think about us and a lot of people come to me saying dr. Nancy. Please help me care less about what other people think about me and I tried it didn't work all that well, but then I started thinking evolutionarily and I realized that what other people think about us just matters enormously to what friends we have and what jobs we get and who are lovers are and everything.
Okay, and I think we've been shaped by natural selection to do things that other people will appreciate we call it social selection and I think that accounts for why most people are very sensitive and generally good mean if you get a reputation for being a creep or dishonest or selfish, you know, you're not going to have very many friends and so natural selection is shaped us to cure a lot with other people think and it's basically a good thing but just like other anxiety it tends to overshoot. So most people
Will care more than would be good for them about what other people think about them. Now.
What about natural selection? We you mentioned in your book that natural selection optimizes for Reproductive success that seems obvious and yet we also ask questions like oh why am I feeling anxiety for example, how does that contribute to reproductive success? And I think now that we give the lion metaphor or its kind of may be obvious to a lot of people but before we get into those specifics,
Generally middle-of-the-road traits Prevail. So like I think the example you gave him the book was rabbits that are too bold to get eaten and those that are too timid don't get enough to eat and they burn too much energy fleeing and running around running away from things that aren't going to actually harm them. Right? So natural selection isn't really dramatically changing things per se keeps things somewhere in the middle. Is
that accurate in general? Yeah, the textbooks always show things changing with natural selection, like moths and Ryan speaks and stuff like that, but the vast majority
At the time it's kind of settling things on a middle level. There's nobody who's eight foot tall and there's hardly anybody is four foot tall me some middle length of height is about right body weight to you know, almost everything about us how much anxiety too much bad to little bad. You know, this is something to Isaac March the famous anxiety researcher worked on with me. We realize there's a whole set of anxiety disorders that nobody is treating we decided to call them hypo phobia.
Not enough anxiety. Now these people don't come to us and anxiety Clank same please help me with my anxiety disorder because the problem is not enough anxiety where you see these people isn't unemployment lines and divorce court and the morgue because they do wild and crazy things, but you were just asking about reproduction and now we're right back there again Jordan. Yeah, because there's one group of people in our society who tends not to have enough anxiety sociopaths Psychopaths. Not exactly just us guys men got Skies may try to
Car insurance as a young man is going to cost you twice as much as it is for women and even that is not quite Fair because the guys have three times as many accidents. I started working on this with Dan Krueger years ago. I was trying to figure out for a talk. I was giving on Evolution and Medicine about so how young do men die compared with women. I mean you go to visit your grandparents in a nursing home or something. It's all women at lunch. There's not very many men left. How come what's wrong with the men but turns out that have increased mortality rate compared with
Women not just when they're doing wild and crazy things. But even in the first 10 years of life 19 out of 20 causes of death or greater for men than women. You got to wonder who designed this thing, you know, and the answer to this is that for males not just humans, but other species too, if you're doing stuff that mainly is increase in reproduction, like competing for mates and stuff. You're going to pass on more genes. Even if it shortens your life. So the study we did was using World Health Organization data, and here's a trick question for you.
Probably know from the book, but for every each one hundred women and United States who dies at age 20 about how many men are going to die
by age 20 or at age 20 it is 20. Yeah, I mean ratio from men to women. It's got to be at least two to one. I don't remember this from the book, but I would imagine many more men died at that age. Just judging by the stupid crap that I was doing at age 20.
So what I did when I went into this, I thought it was like, you know a hundred and twenty or something like that a few more men that died because more women die in childbirth, right?
It's oh, hey sure turns out it's 300 men died to one woman. Yeah, and it's not just the USA. It's every country in the
world. Wow, that sort of negates the whole third world country dying in birth statistics as
well. Well, actually that that is mostly from more modern countries and and this ratio doesn't show up until modern times, you know, okay, it wasn't that way in 1900. So many people were dying from influenza and pneumonia and stuff that these differences in show up, but it's so profound because of
You said Jordan you were saying we're shaped for reproduction not Health. What a great example natural selection when it comes to sex and reproduction gets us to do all kinds of stuff. That's bad for our Health and Longevity but good for our genes. Then their sex itself, right people. Do all kinds of things where they should have more anxiety, right? You would think. Yeah, right. I mean whether it's who you have sex with or what are yous proper control made people are really stupid about that half the time and it's just because that whole system is set to go off and it
doesn't seem like anything else matters at the moment. So is this one
reason why guys that age? Let's say 17 to 27 are doing ridiculous thrill-seeking stuff because it's like hey look at me. I mean is this all just a apply for attention so that they can reproduce and the their genes or their body or whatever it is. That's controlling things. Their brain says, I don't really care if this guy eventually dies from this. I just want to push these DNA in these jeans on as much as I can. I don't really care about this.
Host though. He can eventually crash this motorcycle. Right? It's not going to be it's all the same to
me. I find this whole idea that natural selection shaped us to do what's good for our genes and that good form us. I find that a very distressing idea. Yeah. I mean, it's not just doing wild and crazy things as a guy but I think all of us are, you know, we're designed so we're constantly preoccupied by our status and by achieving things and what we're not achieving and by other people, I think this makes us miserable. We're edging our way towards talking about
Oppression as well anxiety because people are always trying to do things and and most of the time most of the stuff we try to do doesn't work out and the question is then what do you do? Hmm. Yeah. Well then what right so I remember trying to dreams of becoming a baseball player as a kid, you have to get chosen eight out of nine people enough times on the pickup Squad any kind of realized then here in right field over and over again and you realize I don't think baseball is exactly where I'm
Make my mark and so we go through all these things in life will keep trying things. Then you go to Nashville and you talk with people who are waiting tables or on New York waiting to break into the big-time whether it's Nashville or Metropolitan Opera or Broadway or something. It's A Hard Road, you know, mmm and you got to admire people for trying because that's what it takes is gumption and grit and continuing to try but there comes a point where it just isn't working again. I've tried to figure out for all of these problems not just why some people
people get them, but why is it that we all have this capacity for low mood and feeling bad and the answer is because there's sometimes when it's best to quit and even if you're not doing something as Grand as trying to get into the Grand Ole Opry what if you just try to go out looking for nuts, how long should you wander looking for nuts if there aren't any nuts on the trees this month after certain while you're just wasting your energy, right? So it's best just to quit and go home and the people who are really enthusiastic and just kept going and going and going
They didn't pass on their genes. They wasted their calories. They wasted away the best thing to do when there's no food around is just to go home and await. The question for me
is why is it that women who have such a high cost of pregnancy? Right? They have to raise the child. There's all kinds of costs associated with being pregnant in the first place. Why would they be attracted more to somebody who does things that are so dangerous that they might not be around to provide for The Offspring later wouldn't they have evolved to actually
Lee go for the safe guy that still has good enough jeans but isn't trying to do strap Rockets to the car or balance on a bridge. I mean, it seems like that's kind of a little bit of a failure here in a way and instead of a failure that sense it's evolutionary pressure there has to be another
function. So we have to back up a little bit here Jordan. I'm trying to figure out so why do men stick around with women and kids at all many don't
but yeah why
but think about other species though. I mean humans are really distinct.
Whether it's chimps and gorillas or other kinds of Apes, there's no mail stand around in providing much of help at all. Sometimes a male will provide some protection but humans have done something really special in humans male stick around for quite a while and they don't necessarily go messing around with everybody else Under the Sun. They often stick with one person for quite a while. They love each other and to take care of the kids. Wow. I mean, that's so unusual from an evolutionary point of view. You got to wonder how
it happened at all. And this is a big somewhat continued controversy in behavioral ecology and the law but the big picture is that it really takes two people to raise a kid from the really helpless version that comes is born and teach him all the stuff that they need to be taught plus if you're carrying a baby around which you have to do for a long time. You can't run very fast. You can't gather all the food you need to it's really better for not just to be one person but to be to trying to take care of that, baby.
And in fact, it's better than that usually in smaller groups like that. It's not just a mother and a father. It's other relatives helping out to Sarah hrdy is talk a lot about this and how the very origins of human cooperation and morality might have come from that kind of cooperation. So before we even talk about the other stuff, it's it's a marvelous thing. We should just appreciate that natural selection has made us to connect with each other and stick with each other and take your kids. It does
seem almost irrational in some way.
Given that it's been a really designed to just keep reproducing rather than working on one offspring are two or three. It seems like you should theoretically just keep rolling the dice as it were so many times because a few of them will be successful, but that's not how we
evolved. Well, there are some guys who are more like that aren't
there. Yeah, there's plenty. Yeah, there are
plenty and women try to weed them out except for one occasion, but in general it looks like the best strategy has been to stick with one person and collaborate with her.
On the project of trying to raise kids and this makes life so much different for us than for other kinds of primates. It's just amazing.
You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Randolph Nessie. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by expressvpn. A lot of people don't know what these vpns are cell have you do? You know what a VPN
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So natural selection doesn't really want to dramatically change things so that we don't want blood pressure too high. We don't want it too low. We don't want babies to be too big. We don't want them to be too small. What about some of these folks that don't seem to fit is it that they don't feel as much fear or is that they get a kick out of here? I'm sort of confused. What is it? You know, you see these guys climbing rock walls with no ropes and you think well, what the hell is wrong with that guy? That's
weird. Yeah. There's one Professor type who didn't seem much like a professor. He could only sleep comfortably.
If he was pinioned in on a rock wall where he was climbing, you know you okay. I've had a hammock on a rock wall. I said, geez, I like sleeping in my bed. I'm not that comfortable in a rock wall in Sakai a few. Sometimes we talk about reaction formation where people deal with anxiety by doing the exact opposite over and over again, and that's kind of a good idea then that builds Mastery. I remember one of my kids when she was young crawling out the edge of the couch and falling off the end. What did she do she cried for a minute and she went ahead and did it again.
And again and again and again, you know, and so I think there's something useful about that.
What about aging right? What about aging because things you mentioned this in the book things that look like aging will spread across the population if they give benefits early in life. So things that look like aging will spread across the population if they give benefits early in life and the example you gave is a hardening of the heart muscle which can obviously kill you when you're older will spread throughout populations that the genetic traits that causes will spread throughout popular.
Relations if that same genetic structure also helps bones heal faster or grow stronger in childhood. So which I think is fascinating and totally makes sense. Right? We evolved this thing that helps us stay robust and resilient as kids and then we get older and it's like oh crap. I've still got this genetic trait that's hardening my aorta or or something and now I got heart disease. Why isn't there pressure to evolve something that slows down heart hardening, right? I've already reproduced.
If I'm old now, I'm 60 70 whatever age, you know is too old to reproduce. I don't really know why wouldn't we have evolved to turn that sucker off? I don't need to heal faster.
I'm done. You know, I like this whole idea whole lot better when I was 20 then I bet I do now, so I started working in undergraduate try to figure so why the hell does aging exist? Yeah. There's genetic variation. Why doesn't natural selection get rid of those jeans and I came up with what I think.
It was a great idea. I thought you know, it'd be good for the species. If some of the visuals died every year so two species could evolve faster. As long as
those aren't me? Right? Yeah that I tried that idea
out some biologists. I met at the University of Michigan out of the museum. They were studying animal behavior and they all kind of looked at me and I looked at each other and then they were quiet. I mean, it was almost like I had furniture or something it was and then one person just starts laughing and she says you don't know anything about biology.
Ology do you say hey, how about dr. Rylander? Yeah, and they pointed out that George Williams in 1957 rotor wonderful article talking about how the same gene that you know makes you vigorous and youth might actually calcify your coronary arteries like you were talking about Jordan and kill you later, but that jeans going to be selected for because the advantages earlier so much greater than the disadvantages later, right? And you're right. That's the section does just what you say. It has postponed all kinds.
Like to meet chimps last only about half as long as we do and it's a miracle and amazing that we last so long even after most reproduction has stopped. That's a really big mystery. I mean most of us aren't having kids anymore at age 60 or 70. How come we're still alive. How come natural selection doesn't just give up on us, but the answer seems to be that in the process of making everything work really really well during the most vigorous parts of life. It makes things work well enough that they keep going and
Going and going but pause for a moment with me the fuel pump on your car. How long is that going to last 5 years 10 years, maybe 15 years.
I got a Tesla. I have no idea. I drive an electric car that I have. No clue.
Well, how long your battery's Gonna Last? So let's not talk about that. Yeah might be a bad thing someday, but any case I mean the fuel pump is not going to last that long. Our hearts are still pumping like 70 80 90 Hot how is that possible and natural selection?
It's just so miraculous and creating so many things that worked so well and that just physical things like that but mental things too when you can remember stuff that happened to you at age 5, you can rekindle a relationship you had in college you can have conversations across the internet with people and have interesting things come up. It's fabulous. The whole thing is done. So well, so
this Gene is selected for because natural selection just doesn't care in air quotes. It doesn't have feelings but doesn't care.
If we die at 60 from a hardened a order because we've already passed those genes On to the Next Generation and whatever Gene hardened that aorta also helped us heal faster from injuries or whatever. Thus those genes were able to be reproduced more often and their DNA and genes just don't care if we like enjoy our golden years. That was not what was being selected
for that's exactly right and I don't know if you remember the chapter in the book about sex, but there's another aspect of this that natural.
Actually has really screwed us up and made sex life just not as nice as it could be. It was like a love this coordination there when you open up a book on sex therapy and there's a whole chapter about why some men tend to come too soon and another chapter about why some women come later or not at all. None of them ever asked to be questioned about. So, how come why is it that way and the simple answer is that natural selection doesn't give a fig about our happiness or coordination.
Action or romantic mutuality and all he cares about is making absolutely sure that nobody stops doing anything sexy until those sperm get on their way to the right place. It's kind of a explicit thing if we talk about it anymore, but it's amazing that the ideas that come up. Once you start thinking about aspects of the body and the mind and the whole system that don't seem so good and sensible and often. There's a reason for him.
What about diseases, right? This is kind of your other work, but I want to dip into this a little bit dizzy.
Is are not adaptations that I think during our sound check you corrected me on I said hey is there may be a reason we evolve this are they just adaptations gone wrong, and I think a lot of people probably wonder this a lot of us nerds. Anyway Wonder our diseases just adaptations gone wrong. And you said nope. Let me stop you right there. That is absolutely wrong and we know that much tell
me about why so glad you're bringing this up because like I teach courses on evolutionary medicine most of my career has been trying to bring evolutionary biologists to medicine and and asking
this question about why our bodies better every year even after the end of the term some student turns in a paper saying I think schizophrenia is actually useful for some people because or I think that autism is used for I think that breast cancer used for the color blindness is useful and I said no stop those are rare things that have to a few people we're talking about characteristics of all of us. Those are screw-ups. We do have to ask the question about why didn't natural selection make the body more robust. That's a good question.
Trying to figure out how diseases are useful at just a stupid mistake. And I'm so glad you brought it up. Yeah, what
about something like cancer? For example, I mean we talked about a lot of diseases but the most common one I think is going to be the group of diseases or maladaptive. I
don't even I don't even know how crazy. Yeah, right. Yeah. So why didn't the actual section do a better job of protecting its commit half of us are going to get cancer and a lot of it can die
from it. Is it because we're too old by that time generally the so we've already reproduce and natural selection just doesn't
care. That's a lot of it. But why do we die something else?
Instead, you know for heart disease and heart disease is really a disease of modern environments. That's not very common. Yeah, but cancer is everywhere not just in us but another species and here's the miracle. I
didn't realize that other animals get cancer. Well, I guess dogs and cats hear about that.
Sometimes they all do but here's a question for you who's going to get more cancer and elephant or a mouse minute elephant has 10,000 times more cells and if cancer is one so going bad. Hey, you'd expect an elephant. We get a lot more cancer. I would guess it's the same. I don't know turns out.
That mice get a whole lot more cancer, even though they have like way fewer cells now look at their
diet, right? I don't know.
So this is called pedos Paradox actually though because it used to be we thought hey one cell goes bad it goes Rogue. It turns into cancer, but that doesn't explain why elephants get a lot less Cancer and a fellow who worked with me years ago. Joshua schiffman decided to ask the question of I bet there's something elephants to protect them and there's a gene called p53 which basically is there too.
To kill off cells that become cancerous and he said well, maybe the elephants have extra copies and he went looking in elephants at the zoo near where he lived and guess what he found he found that they do have extra copies and he's even started a company to try to get extra copies of that Gene into cancer cells to kill him off. What a great example of something that's potentially really useful. But I've kind of taken us away from the big Point here me cancer is inevitable for any animal and the Miracle is that
Ring off with a tencel Danimal going under 100 cell Adams natural selection has been working to eliminate cancer ever since multicellular animals have originated and it's astounding that we don't all get lots more cancer. It's just incredible natural selection is done such a good job. And that's why I love Vince don't get very much cancer is because they've been shaped by natural selection to protect themselves against cancer.
Well good for them. Yeah be nice if we could take a page out of that book, I
think.
I hope Drescher shipments company thrives. Yeah, and he finds a way to get extra p53 genes and they're actually there is new research also from the phone need Robert gaytan be in Florida and he's come up with a different idea about how to do cancer chemotherapy from evolutionary thinking and talk about a profound implication. Now the old idea is all those cells in the cancer of the same. We got to kill them. All. The new idea is wait a second. All those cells are a little bit different because they got a bunch of mutations in them, which ones are taken.
Over and reproducing the fastest the worst ones. Well, if you just try to kill a bunch of them, you're basically opening up the ecosystem. So the worst ones can reproduce faster yet and gate and be came up with the idea of hey, maybe we shouldn't just try to cream every single cell. Maybe we should be more gentle with our chemotherapy and leave some of those other inhibitory cells around and he has fabulous results so far with prostate cancer and now in breast cancer mostly in mice, but some trials I'm studying humans showing you get
A lot longer survival with lower doses of chemotherapy mean if this works out. It's going to be just wonderful but it's got to be replicated in other labs a big problem with any medical research accursed people jump into conclusions from one study. What about other sorts of
harmful dysfunction ride? So let me rephrase that. I mean can we see mental illness in the brain using things like fmri? Can we see emotional or mental illnesses or is that not really how
this works so you
My book is really an attempt. It's called good good reasons for bad feelings. It's really an attempt to put Psychiatry and a solid scientific foundation and the attempt has been made for the past 40 years to put it on a foundation of Neuroscience and that's made enormous progress. But back when I was just starting my psychiatric training exactly 40 years ago this month. We were all pretty certain that we were going to find the specific genes. The specific brain causes a specific brain hormones and that
We'd have diagnosis just like the rest of medicine where there was a identifiable lesion. You can see under the microscope and we're going to find these things for Psychiatry and fix up our diagnostic system and cure people better, you know so much wonderful science has gone into looking for those things and it's so so disappointing that no one's been able to find them. We now know there are a lot of genes that influence whether you get a mental illness or not, but they're almost all influencing things by 1% or less. There are thousands of
Incident fluent schizophrenia autism and bipolar disease all with TTC effects except for really rare rare things. What a disappointment we thought that we were going to find neurotransmitters responsible dopamine was supposed to be the big thing for schizophrenia wrong or then we're going to do brain scans. And by the year the brain was going to find the brain spots the where there was depression or anxiety not so it's been such a huge disappointment and I think just about everybody in Psychiatry and the rest of Mental Health
Perfections is now saying oh geez, what are you doing? Now? The National Institutes of mental health is just come out with this new big plan for the future and they say, yep, we got to keep looking harder. Well, that's good. I hope we find things
that sounds like a great plan. Keep
looking harder. Remember how Einstein defined crazy? Yeah. He says what crazy is when something doesn't work. You keep doing the same old thing and sadly, I think this is what we've been doing in Psychiatry and my mission really my whole career is
Try to help people put Psychiatry on the same Foundation as scientists study animal behavior in general and that is evolutionary biology the rest of medicine distinguishes symptoms from diseases. If you go into the doctor with abdominal pain, the doctor doesn't say you have abdominal pain. It's been there for at least two weeks and it's badly and treat you with the abdominal pain plan. The doctor says, let's find out what's causing it. Right your appendix exploded. Yeah her something, but if you go in with low mood or depression, sometimes you're not going to get anybody even talk.
And you're just going to say you got depression. Here's the treatment right
turns out you have low mood. I'm here for that. Thank you, though, right? Yeah
frustrating right but it's mean I can see why because what people want is relief. Yeah, and you know, a lot of times talking about a people's person's problems doesn't bring them early because they're trapped in some kind of situation. You can't get out of and plus that really often results in complicated long-term relationships, you know, and and all the rest is expensive and I would
For every psychiatrist and every mental health condition to spend hours with each patient trying to really understand where they came from what their life is like now what feelings that have what relationships that have what they want things to be like in the future dream on dr. Nassif. I mean, there's so many people in need so much help and so few psychiatrists and other people that's never going to happen. I
wouldn't say never I mean what about AI eventually being able to have let's say 75% of these quote-unquote online or virtual conversations with somebody and then someone like
You looks it over for an hour and goes. Ah ha. Okay. Now I'm starting to get a feeling for this person. And then you wrap the
treatment up. I think you just started a new company there. Yeah. Well that might be there are people doing cognitive behavioral therapy using online Bots. Yeah, and it seems to work pretty well. If you can convince people to examine their thoughts and correct bad thoughts or go do things that they're afraid of doing. They're really likely to get better and there's three things you can change to help someone who's got an emotional problem.
What is the situation itself and to is how you think about the situation and 3 as the brain? And we do all three of those it's often hard to change. The situation is often the easier to change how you think about the situation and there is often distorted thinking and often people can take drugs to change their brains, but I'm a great advocate for doing whatever works that's safe. You know, there's so much suffering out there and right now with the whole world being upset by covid and especially by its
Complications that minute I'm think it's fewer covid. Mostly it's people in traps at home with her husband and kids. It's people who don't have any money. It's people who are wondering what they're going to do another job is gone and that's the stuff that's really upsetting people and jeez, that's tough.
So viewing symptoms as diseases. We basically look for effects of these issues because we can't see physical manifestations much of the time especially in the brain. There's no blood panel that says Ah you have anxiety because you're something something something in your blood is
Evaded that's the problem instead. We look for symptoms and we say oh you can't sleep. Oh you get afraid when you have to go do whatever triggering event. Go to the grocery store. Oh, well, here's a pill that blocks a bunch of stuff that you would normally probably not be worth, you know not be a problem for you. And now it's going to sort of make you kind of maybe behave like other people as long as you use as long as you take these pills so we can't see in the brain of the body why some people get turned on let's say by shiny black rubber asking for a
A friend, of
course, right? You know there's cool research going on with brain scanning in particular and and the genetics you can find small differences. But are they enough to make a confident diagnosis not for a single disorder in a medicine, you know, you take a biopsy of the pathologist says, yep. Sorry. It's cancer or you take a blood test and say, yep, you got Addison's disease or diabetes. Is there any psychiatric disease where you can take a blood test or a genetic test or brain scan?
Nique EEG and diagnose it confidently not really Alzheimer's disease kind of we're getting there but it's such a disappointment. Like I said, and so what do we do now? And I think what we do now is go back to what the rest of medicine has done. Rest of medicine understands pathology in the light of normal physiology and how things work now in the rest of the body you can kind of Trace how the thyroid hormone works, you know, and to trace how it doesn't work. If you have too much or too little of it in the mind. It's an information.
Processing system and it's really hard to find something comparable to too much thyroid or too little thyroid instead. We have to start recognizing that it's more like a computer that's vulnerable to crash not just because of the hardware problems, but because of software problems x-ray your computer and look at the hot spots to see if you can find out why your computer has crashed. Sorry. Yeah. It's not going to work now. It's probably because of some information clash and I think that's a lot of the problems. We're seeing in our human minds. And again, I pause to say it's
So incredible that so many people function so well so often there's a lot of people are kind of happy and rational had good relationships mean pot. It's just fabulous the things were so well for so many people so often help. Why
would we have evolved forms of mental illness like schizophrenia or is this also the same thing like the heart aorta
where your was wrong question? Okay, we didn't evolve schizophrenia, right? Okay, we went through this before and I know what you're saying. Yeah, you're not saying why it's get screen. You useful you're saying why?
I'm not sure slightest
exist. Yeah, why didn't natural selection eliminate this earlier. Is it the same reason right, but I guess not another
person who did a PhD is Matthew Keller is now a geneticist and behavioral biologist in Colorado and he's been studies looking at the tiny effects of many many genes that do influence your risk of schizophrenia. Most have been increasingly Risk by, you know, only less than 1% and he finds out that they all increase the risk the same amount they count for the same amount of variance and the answer is probably
Be because anything that does more than that has gotten selected out. But now we're asking the question. It's one percent of everybody in the world who is vulnerable to schizophrenia one percent of everybody who has autism maybe 2% 1% of everybody has bipolar disease. What about all these 1% disorders what's going on there? And the last chapter of my book is about what I call Cliff Edge effects, and it's a speculation, but it's my best attempt to at least offer some alternatives.
Alternative way of thinking about these things and it goes back to my thinking about why horses break their legs. You've been to the track sometime.
No, but I know what horse racing is. I don't think I've ever been to a horse
track now that I think about it, I should go to her Strachan. Usually there's a guy or at least are used to be standing behind someplace with a gun ready. Geez because one out of every thousand starts a horse is going to break. It's like start six horses at a time. Why do horses break their legs so much. This is a classic thing, isn't it? Not white?
This horse broke its leg. But why all horses are vulnerable to breaking their legs and the answer is that horses are bred for Speed. Mmm Secretariat get spread the number three and four horses. They don't command nearly as much for study fees. And so what you get is horses with longer and longer and thinner and thinner and more and more vulnerable leg bones. Now 90% of the time those leg bones. Hold up really fine, even for the fastest horses, but the whole system is pushing it so that some individuals are going to break their legs.
I think it might well be that for the human mind certain traits like regulating our motivation for bipolar disease regulating our social system for autism and regulating our cognition for schizophrenia. They've been pushed so far and so fast up a slope of Fitness that they get to the point that works really really really well for almost everybody except for a few people and they fall off the edge. Oh man. It's a discouraging idea, but it's at least a different approach to these disorders instead of continuing to assume.
That those genes are abnormal. This implies that those genes are perfectly normal. It's just in certain combinations. They push some trait just slightly off the edge
hate to break away from our conversation with Randolph Nessie, but we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Indochine. Oh, I don't know about you Sal but I have a short torso and long legs. So whenever I buy anything I look like I don't know. I look like I'm wearing my dad's Blazer and I'm going to the beach.
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Of discoveries Dirty Jobs and returning the favor on why the advice follow your passion is complete BS. So stay tuned for that after the close of the show. Thank you for listening and supporting the show your support of the advertisers does keep us going and for links to all the great discounts. You've just heard you can check out those amazing sponsors for yourself go to Jordan Harbinger.com deals and don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. The link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com podcast, and now for the conclusion of our conversation with Randolph,
Now what about emotions? This was fascinating from your book which will of course Link in the show notes emotions benefit jeans more than they benefit us as people. So we talked about how our genes benefit themselves more than they benefit us as people in terms of our lifestyle or our quality of life. But emotions are often. It's almost like they're working with our genes and In Cahoots to screw us over sometimes right cheating on a partner. It's an emotional action that's good for reproduction, but definitely not
Not good for our relationships and the quality of Our Lives for
example, but you know, some of it is really good and makes us human and part of our soul almost can think about grief with me for a moment. I mean, if you think about grief kind of objectively what a stupid thing in the person's gone, why not do stuff for other people are still around you instead of you know moping about but there's something very deep and very humid. If you lose a loved one, you're going to feel terrible for quite a while. I mean, it's a natural.
Sure thing and here's a big unanswered question is grief something that's been shaped by natural selection because it's useful or is it just some kind of accident that happens because of attachment and no one knows the answer to that question. I did a giant project one time trying to find the answer trying to look at people who are elderly couples and then one person died and they were followed up in great detail that you know, six months 18 months and 48 months later and I had this hypothesis that the people who did not experience
against grief would get into all kinds of trouble. There must be something wrong with those people, but that's not what we discovered. What we discovered is that people are very just enormously in their responses about a third of people don't experience all that much grief. They mostly go on and a third of people experience some when it goes away to 30 people experiencing intense what we learned from this and there's no one normal thing and I think this goes for emotions in general when people ask what personalities are so different and some evolutionists think that they're different.
Strategies, I think it's because they all lead on average to about the same success, you know, and so there's just this enormous variation in humans. That's just part of how we are. Why did
we evolve then to be susceptible to disease or is this kind of what we had already talked about right fear of heights keeps us safe coughing can help get us rid of infections like pneumonia, but usually this protects and serves our genes in terms of sickness. I don't just mean physical maladies.
But I mean like emotions, you know back to what we were talking about before like jealousy what's going on here. Like why is this something useful that we've that
there's pressure? Oh, I want to try to answer your question Jordan about so why is there disease at all? That's mine. Yeah hook
that might be a different show.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll do it quick though. Okay, my next book is called why does disease exists and it's basically a collaboration of all these ideas we've been talking about the first reason is that hey, there's a lot of stuff natural selection can't do like preventing mutations too bad. We're not perfect but
Any means another one is we live in different environments than we ever evolved in some people think this is the main explanation for depression and anxiety and stuff. It's not it's not at all but it's a big one and it's really big for heart disease an autoimmune disease and then there's what we just have been talking about the natural selection is, you know, doing things are good for our genes but not for us and then this kind of thing you've been edging around about if a lot of things like we talked about with Cliff edges where natural selection shapes something to be really really
Be good like a fast race car, but like a fast race car. It's vulnerable to Breaking, you know, so I think there are several different reasons why natural selection didn't make it better and now we can come back to where we started and run Go full circle with this little conversation about why so many people are bothered so much by so many bad feelings. It just seems like it's nasty, you know, it's not even cancer that about I'm here in support groups for cancer people want for a while. It wasn't even a cancer that bothered him that much it was
The fear of deaths and the knowledge about cancer and to worry about cancer and the concerns about things like that. We live with our emotions and here's a generalization emotions are about the future not the past. I think this is why covid is causing so much problems right now is because of the uncertainty hmm, it's things and pass it cause our emotions, but it's because of what they mean for our ability to do what we're going to do in the future. There's you know, millions of students around the country wondering can I go back to school in the fall?
All and they don't know or should they get a job should they sign up for online school? And the uncertainty I think is so hard for us because our emotions are predicated on trying to figure out the emotions are trying to get us to behave differently to do something that's going to be better in the future. What about
depression is that an adaptation like what function could that have or is it a my again making this mistake that I made
before, you know, as soon as you say the word depression these days it means to most people it's a disease. Okay because of television
Is and everything else so I try very carefully to distinguish what I call low mood from depression and low mood is basically the same thing but you can use different words for it and point out that there are certain times when it's best not to be too enthusiastic now in our Modern Life, you know with hot and cold running water and food at our disposal. There's not too many times anymore when the physical aspects of Life make it better to just hole up, but there are social times when its best
not to keep just doing what you're doing and I felt I had Eric Klinger a psychologist in Minnesota wrote about this I think in 1975 and his work and that of many other people have drawn on his led me to what my Psychiatry residents tell me is the single most important thing I've ever taught them and it's extremely simple question to ask it is for someone who's depressed to ask them. There's something you're doing or trying to do that seems so important you can't possibly give it up even though it's pretty clear you're
Going to succeed that question really gets you to the nothing of things for many people because with ordinary low mood is for is to get us to pause when things aren't working to try to find another direction to try to think about doing something else and eventually if nothing works to give up that mean I read an article today in New York Times about everybody has been trying to make it in New York in a $3,000 a month apartment on a $2,000 a month waitressing job. That's gone away. Yeah, and there's all kinds of
people ditching the city because they are realizing it's just never going to work in that circumstance feeling pessimistic is good. If you're just optimistic and say it'll work it'll work. It'll work at some point. That is not smart. So what happens is if you keep trying against what your system is telling you about it's never going to work and it's not just leaving the fancy job in York City. It's trying to get your spouse to stop drinking, you know, or trying to get your kid off opiates or there's some things you can't give
And those are the things that are really really prone to cause ordinary useful low mood to escalate into really big time depression out on the pause right here. I think this understand explains all depression. Absolutely not I see lots of patients who have pretty good lives and there's nothing I can find it's more than your genes and our hormones and it really is a brain disorder for many people but for about half of my find that they're trapped in some kind of situation where they're trying to do something.
That they can't succeed at and they can't quit. It's not easy to quit on see what it done it, you know. Yeah, but I think this also leads to really productive conversations and therapy about let's talk about this and see what about eating
disorders. For example, is this mating strategy to remain thin for women for example, or is it about like food scarcity? What is this actually about do you think
so a lot of people have suggested that Eating Disorders are and adaptation shaped by selection. I don't buy it, you know, it's rare, you know.
Few percent of people and it know is much more common in some cultures and others I Street at some Eating Disorders patients and they convinced me that to look at the whole system that regulates eating and almost every eating disorder starts with a crash diet. And what happens after you decide I'm not going to eat it all from next two days. I'm sick of being fat. Well after about two days you suddenly find yourself staring at an empty half gallon of ice cream and then you feel sick to your stomach and you feel sick to your soul and you think oh my God, I really
a am out of control. I got to try harder. And so you try harder. I'm gonna go three days without eating. Can you see how this escalates in a vicious cycle sure and worse yet. There's a system built in the first system built-in in the face of famine is get whatever food you can get and eat it really fast. And the second part is built-in is really unfortunate. If your food supplies are erratic your body sets the set point for wait up a little bit and actually makes you heavier. When what a tragic thing the harder you try the worse it gets
right because
Body just will store energy more effectively because your food supplies are erratic. So we end up with somebody who has easy access to food, but really doesn't want to gain any weight with a system that is now regulating itself to say I need you to gain weight with every bite you take
that's right. Now, there are people who can successfully controller intake chair not all that many most of us are overweight in this country. Now, most people also don't go into anorexia where they get very thin and really controller eating most people who have Eating Disorders have been
Bulimia, and they intermittently Gorge and sometimes vomit and do things like that, but it's such a tragic serious illness. It's not people's fault. They can't control it. It's that they're trying to fight and evolve mechanism and getting into a positive feedback cycle that really gets them deluded about their bodies and deluded about how they can control their way. It's a serious awful problem. There's a big study recently published showing that there are a few genes that have tiny effects on this and the authors of that study went into great detail about
This means it's a biological disorder and therefore must have a brain abnormality. I don't think that makes any sense at all. I think it makes much more sense to try to think about how eating is normally regulated by evolved mechanisms and how doing things like severe dieting can set off a positive feedback cycle. It really causes a disease.
I found it interesting that we're hardwired for many things but say to pick the optimal amount of berries off of a bush.
Shhhh, so if I'm looking at a raspberry bush, I look for the one that has the most let's say dark colored bright red raspberries on it. I start picking and I'm picking them really fast and put them into a bucket and then instead of getting every last Berry off that plant. I just kind of move on to the next plant that has a lot more.
How do you feel when you first start picking Jordan?
I'm a little excited right? I got all these like raspberries in my hand and I could do it really fast. I get a little bit of a dopamine Rush right because I'm killing the
game and how about as there's only a few
Berries left in the bush how you feeling then?
It's a little tedious. I feel a little up. I feel a little fomo because there's a plant next to me that has
more if their plan is right next to you. What are you gonna do? I just reach over and start picking that one. But if you don't see any plants for ways,
well, I'll probably finish picking the ones off of that bush. I don't know
should you pick every single Berry even though there's a kind of a cruddy Berry through some Pickers
now, I'm not going to go for that
one. So it turns out that what you're describing is how I understand how the mood system evolved mean mood is
a about much more about relationships for humans, but every animal has to figure out how long does it stay in this patch eaten apples from this tree or raspberries Miss Bush before it goes looking for another one and the answer is a technical calculation, but they do it in their minds without even thinking about it. You should stay at that. Lets apple trees is make a little bit easier how much you say at this apple tree? Well, some of them are way high up right? I'm not going up there. No, no, I'm not going to but how long is it going to take you to find another apple tree, maybe 10
It's so what you have to figure out is the rate of apples. I'm getting from this tree is going down and down and down. It's getting kind of boring. We're not getting very many apples per minute. In fact, I'm not getting many apples per hour. I think I'm gonna go to another tree. You got to leave that tree at exactly the time when the number of apples per minute is equal to the overall number of apples per minute you get over many trees and then you're going to get the maximum number apples per day turns out that people do this very well every animal rabbits.
Do that very well chimpanzees do that very well. My favorite example is those ladybug beetles you see with a little orange shag. They eat aphids. Okay, and if you put them a little cardboard box with a whole lot of aphids, they'll suck a little juice out of each one and go to the next one because it's easy to find one and don't get the maximum amount of a few juice per minute. But if there's just a few aphids, they'll suck every bit of juice out of the aphid before they can looking for another one. Every animal has a system built in and there's something about motivation that decreases when
You're not getting the payoff. It sends you off looking for something else, but then we talked about bumblebees mean. What about a bumblebee when it's getting dark and cold there's a certain amount of time when it's not just that the flowers aren't open. It's cold and you're spending more calories than you're getting and it's getting dangerous out there that bumblebee should just go home and do nothing sure and there are times like that in life. I'm afraid there are times like that when the best thing to do is nothing not it's rare these days these days you can usually figure out something to do but
But for our ancestors, there were times when the best thing to do is
nothing and maybe that's why we feel low mood because it our systems encouraging us to not do anything that makes
sense. It does indeed in their so called seasonal affective disorder right now. Yeah, they're a lot of people who get down if they're in the gloominess of February and March and all the rest and there's a big discussion about so is that an adaptation hard to say, but it could well because there are times I mean mine ancestors lived in a very tiny
Off the coast of Norway and I try to imagine them, you know being very enthusiastic in February and running off looking for food those ones who were very enthusiastic and went running off looking for food and February. They did not pass on their genes. And so most of us who come from that place are kind of more on the pessimistic side of things and it's probably a good thing
in closing here. Why did we evolve the power to even deceive ourselves answer me that one and I'm particularly talented at believing my own brand of BS and I think a lot of us,
Those are is this tied to our us evolving the ability to deceive other people which is obviously
useful certain. There's a lot of kinds of misrepresentation. We do have the world in our own minds. And yes people are you a better driver than other people and eighty percent of people say, yeah. I'm a better driver and other people trash is of course impossible. And if you ask people, you know how smart they are. Most people think they're smarter than other people and all the rest and this is probably a good thing. I think it's normal for people to you know, think well of themselves because
People who think well of themselves do better in life than people who think oh, I don't have much to offer me now. That's not a very useful thing. But you're asking a different question Jordan you're asking one about real self deception about things like, you know, I think she hates me. Did she ever say anything to you know, how can you tell she hates you I can tell by the way. She looks at me tell me about this woman. Well, you know, she's kind of a floozy really. Oh she did say something to me. She said do you want to come up and have a drink with me and my
It meant some time. Oh really? What did you say to that? Oh, I told her I wasn't that kind of a guy. Are you sure she hates you she invited you up to your apartment. Maybe it's more complicated. Maybe we should so people do all kinds of stuff like that. You know, it wasn't that she hates you it's that you're trying to protect yourself from your own impulses of going up to her apartment and getting in trouble with your wife. You got away. I mean or or whatever, you know, it's people have all kinds of deceptions about that two people Robert rivers and Dick Alexander.
I think made a very wonderful point that people can do better at deceiving other people if they deceive themselves about their own impulses kind of like the example. I just gave and I thought about that and that bothered me because the people I was seeing in therapy, I mean they weren't lying awake at night trying to figure out how to trick somebody into getting in bed with him. They were lying in bed at night thinking. Oh my God that I accidentally failed to smile at that person that I accidentally forget to comment about that person's pregnancy.
I did forget, you know, people are very sensitive to their own flaws, you know, and so I try to figure out so art rivers and Alexander, right? I worked on that for a year and wrote a couple of articles about it and that's comes to psychoanalysis. Doesn't it in whole idea of psychoanalysis started by recognition that were unaware of a lot of our own impulses. Not only are we unaware of what their systems in there to keep us on a where so if I were to tell you you don't actually hate her and she doesn't actually hate you actually you're hot for her you
Yeah, I am not. Yeah, right. That's the kind of denial that goes on with those kinds of defense's but I've been totally discovered that reluctantly that I thought that Bob Trevor's and take Alexander were right that sometimes we do deceive ourselves to better deceive other people but a lot of the times I think it's for an entirely different purpose. I think if we have friends and they accidentally don't meet us for lunch. We could go into a big song and dance about although the Bubba. It's better just to say, oh too bad and then have another lunch with him and nobody's a perfect.
Friend or a perfect spouse or perfect child or person parent we're all screwing up sometimes and I think the best thing to do about that usually is to forget about it. Don't even notice. It just go right on when things get bad. Then you got to do something about it. But I think very often the ability to deceive ourselves about things is really useful and it's also really good to deceive ourselves about a lot of our impulses to keep ourselves from doing stuff that gets us into trouble. I mean, if every time we saw somebody who's sexy we started thinking about that or
Every time we experience Envy we started thinking about that. Our minds is going to be filled with all these negative unfulfilled desires. Right? And that were to Buddhism aren't we Robert Wright is written wonderful stuff about why Buddhism is true. No, it's really true. I think that most bad feelings come from desires that we can't satisfy him. I'm not Buddhist or anything close to that. But I do think there's wisdom from Ancients that really melds very nicely with a modern view of how emotions are trying to get us to do.
Do things that benefit our genes trying to get us to go and do things and a lot of the things we can never have never get never do never succeed at and a big challenge for life is how we deal with that
that can SE thank you so much for coming on the show today has been really interesting and I appreciate
time great fun talking with you Jordan love your show and your podcast. I'm listening whenever I can.
When a bit long there, but I thought this was worth it. This guy's super interesting. His new book is about why we actually get sick and I think that's a topic that many of us would like to know about I want to know why we evolve the ability to get sick in the first place. Why can't we just be immune to stuff? Why can't we just sort of kind of have a background process going on? Why do I actually need to get sick? There's more in this book good reasons for bad feelings many people in hospitals right now wouldn't be there if we were living in an ancestral environment how he touched on that during the show.
He doesn't mean we've got to eat these specific types of foods and you know do a paleo diet. What do you mean? I mean maybe he means partly that but he's talking about smoking cancer caused by hormone stuff birth control pills obesity diabetes. We talked about that offline every extreme emotional response pattern or lack thereof has consequences and that was a big takeaway for me from this episode people who are too enthusiastic about things often go from one thing to the next and they can't finish a project or keep a business.
Going and people who don't get that way. They don't end up being enthusiastic at all are seldom motivated to act. So it's the sort of balance that nature puts us in where we don't actually want to evolve an extreme extremes are outliers and they're often bad for us. This show reminded me of a previous show. We did will link to it in the show notes. It was with Todd cashed in and he spoke about why negative emotions like anger are useful and it was all about emotions and how things that we think are negative about our emotions are actually
a very useful again that episode was Todd Cashton and that was episode 60 of the Jordan Harbinger show. His book is called the upside of your dark side and I'll leave you with this the berry picking thing did that trip anyone else up this whole time? I thought I was bad at math and lo and behold I can do Advanced calculus on the fly without so much as a pencil and paper that whole moving from one berry tree or bush to another at the exact time where the cost-benefit analysis of moving from one Bush to another is actually perfect. This is a really cool experiment I Can Only Imagine
Ajan, the aha moment that the researchers had and there was a lot in this book. It is very sciency. And there's a lot of stuff where you kind of go. What the hell just happened. What did I just read and I found myself rereading it over and over. So it was good to get a chance to do this show here with Randolph, Nessie and a big thank you to him will link to his book in the show notes links to everything always in the show notes. And if you do buy the book, please use our website links because it does help support the show worksheets as we have for every episode. Those are in the show notes transcripts in the show notes, and there's a video
Video of this interview on our YouTube channel or there will be soon at Jordan Harbinger.com /youtube. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six minute networking course, which is free over at Jordan Harbinger.com course, don't do it later do it. Now. You got to dig the well before you get thirsty build your network before you need it, even if it means you feel like you're starting from scratch these drills take just a few minutes a day. I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago.
Find it all for free at Jordan Harbinger.com course and by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course and the newsletter to come join us. You'll be in smart company. In fact, why not reach out to Randolph and tell him you enjoyed this episode of the show show guests usually love hearing from you depending on what you're going to write. You never know. What might shake out of that and speaking of building relationships. You can always reach out and follow me on social media. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram can also add me on LinkedIn actually quite active there these days this shows
Created an association with podcast one. And of course my amazing team including Jen Harbinger. Jason Anderson, Robert Fogarty Ian Baird Millie Ocampo and Sal coaching. And remember we Rise by lifting others the fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting, you know, another nerd who likes evolutionary psychology. You want to know why somebody feels the way they do or somebody that wants to know that as well share this episode with him and hopefully you find something great in every episode. Please do share the show with those you love in the meantime do your
Best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen and we'll see you next time.
As promised here's a preview of our interview with micro Follow Your Passion as a bromide is precisely what 98% of the people do who auditioned for American Idol and they're lined up thousands of people who have been told if you believe something deeply enough and if you want something bad enough, if you truly embrace the essence of persistence and your passion, if you let your passion lead you stick with it. Well following your passion is terrific advice.
If the passion is taking you to a place where opportunity and your own set of skills will be able to coexist passion is something that all of the dirty-jobbers that I met possessed in Spades. They just weren't doing anything that looked aspirational. So it was confusing. So the guy in a plaid shirts have been a cappuccino that doesn't make sense. Well guess what neither does a septic tank cleaner worth a million dollars. I got a million.
Our business I actually counted them up once I could be wrong by a couple but I put over 40 people that we featured on dirty jobs as multimillionaires passion isn't the enemy. It's just not the thing you want pulling the train, but look, I don't say don't follow your passion. I Say Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you for more with micro including a behind-the-scenes look at some of the shows and why we should
Not view a blue-collar career as some sort of cautionary tale check out episode 264 right here on the Jordan Harbinger show Beth Saratoga from anywhere this summer with
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