speaker-0: The inequality among men is in dating apps is extreme. You could live in a country like South Africa where a small percentage of the people have all the money and everyone else is poor. That's what it's like to be a man on a dating app. About 20% of the men get all the female interest, and the other 80% of men basically are ignored on the apps. Women, in contrast, live in Scandinavia, where 80% of the women get a lot of interest on these dating apps. But the problem is that that 80% of women who's getting interest is only interested in the 20% of men. who all the other women are interested in.

speaker-1: Welcome to the XX Lab, where we explore the science and stories that matter to you. Today on the XX Lab, I'm joined by evolutionary psychologist and bestselling author Dr. William Von Hippel. Dr. Von Hippel is one of the world's leading experts on human nature, social connection, and the hidden evolutionary forces shaping modern life. In today's conversation, Dr. Von Hippel and I talk about what he calls the social paradox, which is that Tension between two of our deepest human needs, our need for autonomy and our need for connection. We explore why modern society is structured in ways that leave so many people feeling lonely, disconnected, and unhappy, despite the fact that we're more technologically connected than ever before. We also spend time talking about what we can actually do about this. Dr. Von Hippel shares practical, actionable ways that people can create more connection, build stronger relationships. And actually build lives that feel socially nourishing in a world that often pushes us toward isolation. And because this is the XX Lab, we also dive into mating and relationships in an age of dating apps and social media. We talk about what men and women are looking for in partners, why modern dating can feel so frustrating and disoriented, and why finding genuine connection can seem harder than ever. Dr. Von Hippel offers some surprisingly hopeful insights in how we can overcome these challenges and become better at forming meaningful romantic relationships. This was such a thoughtful, fascinating, and genuinely fun conversation. And it's one that I think that's going to leave you feeling both happier and more connected in our current life. I'm so excited for you to listen to today's episode. This is the XX Lab. I'm Dr. Sarah Hill. Let's get started. doctor William Von Hippel, welcome to the XX Lab.

speaker-0: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'm so excited to talk to you. ⁓ I've been a long fan of your work. You've worked in the field of ⁓ of psychology. How how long have you been out in the world? Like what like

speaker-0: I hate to admit it. Thirty I got my PhD thirty six years ago.

speaker-1: Yeah, thirty yeah, th yeah. So you've been out there and you've I've got a huge body of work behind you, including two books. ⁓ your first book, The Social Leap, and then your new book, which I have with me right here, and I'm wearing this shirt to coordinate on the social paradox. and ⁓ and I'm excited today to talk to you about the social paradox and then also just about ⁓ evolutionary psychology more broadly, because I think there's a lot of misunderstandings out there. And you've done a really good job both ⁓ in your public facing work and then in your written work of being able to address some of these ⁓ misunderstandings and and sort of walk through some of the things that ⁓ will be relevant to listeners. And I want to start by talking about your book. And ⁓ you know, most of us have been, and especially in the US and the Western world. ⁓ I know you're now in Australia, if I ⁓ but you you all buy the same myths that we do. and one of the myths that we have is this idea that the path of happiness runs through freedom and independence, right? And that when we have more choices and we have more independence and we're more self reliant ⁓ and have more control over our own lives. That this is really the key to our well being and happiness. ⁓ and yet we are lonelier and more miserable than ever before. ⁓ and you argue in your new book, ⁓ The Social Paradox, that this is not a coincidence. ⁓ so what is going on?

speaker-0: Yeah, so I I think what we have is an evolutionary mismatch. ⁓ and so ⁓ you know, you can think about the environment in which our mind evolved for 99.9% of our time as the species, we're hunter-gatherers, immediate return, what we eat today is what we kill today. We live in very small groups. There's a lot of features to that environment, that's some many of which still exist today, but sometimes the features of that environment Are a mismatch for what exists today. And it can lead to two kinds of conundrums, two kinds of of of strange psychological outcomes. And I refer to those as as miswanting and misfeeling. And and miswanting is the the classic form of evolutionary mismatch where so for example, on the savannah, you know, f fat, salt, and sugar were really rare. And so even if you're hungry. If you run across fat, salt, and sugar, you should eat it now because you might not get any tomorrow. Better to have a little fat on you than than to have nothing. So I'm sorry, even if you're not hungry, you should eat that. And and now we live in a world where fat, salt, and sugar are ubiquitous. All you have to do is open your fridge or your pantry. And so our tendency to want to eat them when we're full is causing more health problems than probably ⁓ lack of food in almost all places of the world today because. You with all the metabolic syndromes and obesity and things, because this evolved tendency served our ancestors really well, but now it doesn't serve us at all. And so it's creates this evolutionary mismatch. Now, if if evolution were given enough time, that would go away. We would stop wanting to eat that stuff when we're hungry. ⁓ but we're we're on the cusp where this has all happened really fast. And so I think that this desire for control and autonomy and all these things is a form of evolutionary mismatch. That it's it it It relates to our ancestral life and it's it how it doesn't fit our current life and it leads us to do things that we think we want, but we really don't.

speaker-1: So ultimately, like historically, because we were so interdependent, right? So dependent on other people and our interactions with other people were kind of baked into social life. I mean, it was like survival meant that we had to ⁓ have relationships with ⁓ neighbors and we had to have relationships with our family and and ⁓ and now we don't need any of that, right? ⁓ it's no longer baked into the system. And so We you're saying that our brain has been sort of wired to want this freedom, right? Because we didn't have it. And so it was rare. And so we like pursue this reward of of, you know, having autonomy. ⁓ but then the result is that we feel like disconnected. Is that am I understanding that correctly?

speaker-0: That's yeah, that's basically right. And so if you think about it this way, what's the purpose of autonomy? Well, you know, if we're dung beetles, we don't need autonomy. We've got one job in life, roll the biggest ball of poo you can. And if you roll a big enough ball of poo, you're gonna make it. but but humans have many ways that we can be a success. And so, you know, all of us have this goal in our ancestral world to bring in more calories than we're consuming. Because that meant our group likes us and our group will keep us around. And if our group gives us the heave ho, that's a death sentence. So we all have this desire And you know, in my group I could say, ⁓ I think I'll be the best hunter, but you're a better hunter than I am, and so's Bob, and so's and so I'm like, okay, that's not gonna work out. I I've got to be good at it, but that's not gonna be where I'm gonna put all my eggs. Maybe I could be the best arrow maker, and I'll give that a try. You know, so autonomy allows you to choose the path that you think you could be best at and that you enjoy the most so you could dedicate the necessary hours to do it. So it's a key component that allows us to choose our domain of positive distinctiveness. Well If you think about what that really means, it's also in service of connection. It's in service of our goal for our group to like us more and to want to keep us around. But it has this irony that to pursue one is to forego the other. Now, as you said, in our ancestral past, connection was guaranteed. We were cheek by jowl with all of our ⁓ fellow group members all the time. So the consequence of this world is that we evolved to to want autonomy, but to need connection. And because our connection needs were always met, they were guaranteed to be met because we were around each other all the time. We were constantly grabbing those rare opportunities when we really could be autonomous. Now, in principle, hunter gathers can make every decision autonomously, but they need each other. So they can't just go south when the group goes north. They have to persuade people to go along with their agenda. And as a consequence, I think what we evolved is this constant pursuit of autonomy because it was so rare then, like fat, salt, and sugar, and now we're over pursuing it when We're getting what we want when we have all this autonomy, but we're not getting what we need.

speaker-1: You know, I think that I see this happen with people also with ⁓ with relaxation and retirement. Because I think that people think that what they want is rest and what they they think that what they want is to not do anything because it's like historically that would have been so rare. It's like we we would seek out these moments of rest so that way You know, because b again, hard work was just baked into the system, right? We had no choice. And so we would seek these opportunities to not do a whole lot. And so it's like what the brain thinks it wants is to do nothing. But then when you do nothing, it I mean, you go downhill right away. I mean, we we see what happens when people retire. Like if they don't have something else that they're working on, ⁓ they can very quickly become very depressed and even, you know, their health begins to decline and and so on. And so I I think that there's so much of this, you know, this tendency for our brain to think that it wants, like you said, like like the the you called it miswanting, which I really I love, you know, the fat, ⁓ salt and sugar, the autonomy, the ⁓ the rest. But ultimately, like when we just chase those things, it's empty. Like we need to have it baked into this larger, you know, milieu of like having to do some hard work to get there.

speaker-0: No, that's absolutely right. And and rest is a really good example because we do love rest, but we love it when it's rest bit from work. If our life becomes rest, suddenly we're not bringing any more calories at all and we start to feel that life doesn't have meaning. And that that that feeling of lack of meaning is really what our ancestor it's translated to that ancestral feeling like, ⁓ they're gonna throw me out of my group. And now in our modern world it's well, I don't what's my purpose anymore? What's my identity? Because I'm not contributing anymore. And so even if you don't need to contribute Even if you've contributed more than anybody else has, once you stop, it it's this awkward feeling.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think that like so much because there's so many traps, don't you think, in our modern world that ⁓ where like marketers have essentially been, you know, created a bunch of like they're tapping into and preying on our miswanting where it's like, ⁓ well, I want social connection without any friction. And so I go to social media, right? Cause my brain thinks that that's what it wants is this little hit. But then ⁓ it doesn't feel meaningful. And then pornography, right? Instead of like I want, I want an orgasm without friction, you know, without any friction of having to go meet somebody and attract a mate. And ⁓ and so you just get that. So again, your brain thinks that it wants this, but ultimately the thing that it wanted used to historically was baked into a larger context that created meaning. And now we have all of these different ways of being able to juice the mechanism, as David Buss would say. Right. Where it's it's essentially tapping into and hitting that pleasure response that you get from satiating wanting, but without creating meaning. And I think there's so many traps like that, you know, like with pornography and with social media and like with ultra processed food. ⁓ and I think ul you know, social media I always think about as like ultra processed information. Like you don't even have like read a you don't you know, we used to have like read a book or watch an entire show. And now it's just like the punchline. You know, it's just like punchlines, these little clips of like punchline, punchline, punch line. It's like, ⁓ my gosh, it's ⁓ it's so much. What can we do to like get away from some of this, you know, without having to move, you know, ⁓ to a mountaintop? Yeah, to Mars.

speaker-0: And to Mars. Look, it it's super hard. ⁓ Robert Trivers, ⁓ who, you know, just passed away and was ⁓ complicated but lovely guy, ⁓ called these phenotypic indulgences. That ⁓ you have this ⁓ the a genotypic ⁓ indulgence, I guess would be things that actually help you in your genes propagate and do all the things that our species ⁓ evolved to do. But a phenotypic indulgence is when you're grabbing something that that looks like it. That feels like it but isn't. And you know, he he would talk about things like potato chips, where they they feel like they're loaded with with nutrients, but you know, they're obviously not. I I like to use the example of watching the show friends because it kind of feels like you have friends and they're really cool friends, but they don't know you and they're not real anyway. And you know, so and the examples that you give are are great ones. And I I think it's none of us are ever gonna escape that. Like you just have to. Th those a and frictionless pleasures aren't a terrible thing, right? W we live lives that have lots of friction. We're crazy busy, we work crazy hard. There's no harm in relaxing and and sitting down and doing a little bit of nothing. ⁓ if you look at Danny Kahneman's wonderful work when he's back before iPhones, when he would beat people and ask, What are you doing and how much fun are you having? If you take the most meaningful things we do, like raising our children, that ended up coming up pretty low on the fun scale around doing the laundry. ⁓ but if you look at the the most trivial things we do ⁓ watching TV came in second. Like people are happiest. Only sex was more fun than TV. And so, you know, it's it's this like complete phenotypic indulgence. There's nothing actually happening. But there's no harm in that little bit. The problem comes when we you start to replace our day-to-day existence and our face to face ⁓ social interactions with that kind of fluff. And it's you know, there's there's no harm in ordering cotton candy when you go to the fair, but you don't want to live on it, right? And so A and that's how I view social media and all that. And and what it does mean is you you have to th you you have to think about putting yourself on a you know, we have exercise diets, we have food diets, w you should have a socialization diet, and you should have a social media diet and you should have a T V diet. Like d those things should be allocated only X amount of time during your day, in the same way that cotton candy can't be more than one percent of your calories, right?

speaker-1: Right, do you think that having those needs met through these like I always think of it as like ultra processed, right? I think of like ultra processed information, ultra processed food, ultra processed sex, ultra processed dating. Like do you think that when and ult you know, ultra ultra processed friendship, ⁓ by watching the show friends? ⁓ do you think that when we have our you know, when our brain thinks that it's having these needs met, like that that it then detracts from our motivation and willingness to like put in effort to actually get the real reward. So like for example, does like watching too much porn then decrease your desire or your willingness to put up with all the, you know, hoops you have to jump through to date? Or does looking at social media all the time does that decrease your willingness to then, you know, put in the mo or the motivation that you need to go and jump through all the hoops that you have to jump through to socialize?

speaker-0: Yeah, I I think it does. And so if you if you look at at the world, you know, that old people like myself grew up in where if you wanted to talk to somebody, even telephoning wasn't that convenient because they didn't have a phone on them. You probably couldn't reach them. And so you'd you'd you had to show up. You had to go through the snow, so to speak, ⁓ uphill both ways, kind of in order to go to a party or social event. But people are desper people we're social beings. We want to socialize, and so we did it. Well now it's just too easy to to do it via social media. And and the other side of the coin was whenever you went to a party, especially one where you don't necessarily know everybody, the social rewards are going to be a little unclear. There's gonna be lots of awkward moments where you're standing by yourself and no one's talking to you and and you're thinking about approaching somebody, but you don't know if he or she wants to talk to you. You know, the list goes on and social media kind of removes all that. And so I I've invented this absurd acronym that I'm sure won't catch on, ⁓ that I call SMILSH. our social media induced laziness and our social habits. And and I think that people smilch. I think that they go, ⁓ I wanna I I kinda would like to go to that party, but ⁓ I gotta get on the subway and cross town and and I'll just get on Instagram and see what people see what my friends are doing. It's so much easier. I'll put my feet up on the couch and and so if you look at there's there's lots of potential evidence for this phenomenon and it's broader than just social media, but but in my mind some of the clearest evidence comes if you look at the sexual habits of single people from 18 to 25. And if you look at when the advent to social media, when it first came on, actually they increased ⁓ the 18 to 25 year olds were more likely to have had sex in the past year because of course apps in the beginning helped you meet new people. but then we started using the apps for their own sake rather than helping you meet new people in person, and so s rates of sex went up, but then they went down to below where they had been before. And, you know, that's one of the strongest drives that humans have. You know, reproduction is the currency of evolution, and so we want to have sex. And and and yet it's actually social media's replacing that. And what is happening simultaneously, exactly as you say, is that pornography consumption's going up in the same age group. And so it's almost like this hydraulic model where you're not doing the real thing as much and so you do the fake thing. And and really probably the The causality goes the other way. Doing the fake thing more causes you to do the real thing less.

speaker-1: Yeah, I I was gonna say that that same thing. I think that like when you have ⁓ an easy out, right, that I think that our brain, again, it's like it's like we're wired to go down the most frictionless past or path just simply because historically that that was never available, you know. And so if there was a frictionless path, like take it. Because most of of life was so difficult. And so it's like our brain is just like, you know, ⁓ there's the here's this frictionless path to let's say sex. Right. And so you gonna go down the pornography path and ⁓ and then yeah, it it leaves less in the tank for you, you know, to invest in actually doing the things that you need to do, ⁓ in order to ⁓ in order to actually, you know, meet somebody and and go through all of the the difficulty of of of mating. And you know, I've wondered about this with with ⁓ the the achievement gap even. So, you know, one of the things that we s have seen, ⁓ and ⁓ The the achievement gap is just referring to this idea that women are going to college more, they're graduating from college more than men. Right now, they're entering the workforce in ⁓ in greater numbers, they're, you know, ⁓ going into graduate school and medical school and law school ⁓ at in higher numbers than are men now. And I've wondered whether that may also have ⁓ something to do with with pornography, because when you look at male achievement. You know, w one of the greatest motivators for men historically has been this promise of, you know, if you achieve something that you're gonna be able to attract a partner and and that you might get laid. You know, and now men are able to scratch that itch without having to actually do anything, right? But just simply by ⁓ by by logging onto internet porn. And ⁓ and I I wonder whether that also, you know, as is ⁓ crazy that as that might sound to somebody who's not ⁓ an evolutionary based thinker, you know, where you think about just how powerful sexual motivation has been for men. ⁓ just again, as you noted, because evolution, ⁓ you know, sex and reproduction is the currency that drives the evolutionary process. And so so many of our psychological features have been inherited, specifically because they were inheritable, right? Meaning that they were something that led to sex and reproduction and ⁓ and I do I have wondered whether there's something to that general idea. And, you know, my my husband jokes, you know, about the fact that now that there's, you know, such ease of access to this sort of thing that this is going to create all these problems for boys, because according to him, you know, his joke is that all of his problem solving skills that he developed as a as a young man were developed trying to see a boob, you know. And And like, you know, the things that they would do to try to find out whose neighbor, you know, which neighbor's dad had Playboy. And then they could like sneak over there and then where were they gonna put it? And, you know, it was like they they worked so hard ⁓ just, you know, to to even see something like that. And now we have this, you know, such easy access to all of this. I just wonder whether that has been like a total demotivator of male achievement in addition to just, you know, men's unwillingness to to take women out on a date.

speaker-0: Yeah, I I think that's a great point. And and I would say that I think it's gonna get worse before it's gonna get better. And so I don't know if you know ⁓ Rob Henderson. I'm sorry, not Rob Henderson, Rob Brooks, ⁓ the evolutionary biologist ⁓ from Sydney. And he's got ⁓ he has two great books. One's ⁓ Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll or Sex Genes, Rock and Roll, I think it's called. And in that book he argues that we see male dominance of ⁓ of ⁓ music, like being h overrepresented in the number of professional musicians, as soon as things like radio get invented, and now you can project your music to large numbers of people, and it becomes a way for men to meet women and to potentially have access to lots of women because there's a big audience for their music. Whereas previously there's a small audience for music and men and women who are equally talented musically on average were equally likely to pursue it because it was equally valuable for both. ⁓ In this new book he argues That we're on the cusp of sex bots, where you'll be able to have the perfect girlfriend. She always loves you. She always does exactly what you want her to do. And she becomes almost indifferentiable from an actual woman. The it sounds wildly dystopian, but it also has this weird positive th feature to it, whereby these incels who in today's world aren't very motivated to go out there and try harder because there is pornography, are going to be potentially even less motivated. And maybe the end result is that they become ⁓ they're no longer unhappy. I mean, the the downside of the of the incel movement is that a lot of unhappiness comes about by virtue of the fact that they believe that women aren't interested in them and they're not doing the kinds of things that would, you know, moving out of their parents' basement that would cause women to be interested in them. And the end result is that there's this sort of big misogyny movement. Well Maybe the misogyny side of it will go away if they've got this robotic perfect girlfriend at home who they don't need to leap move out of their parents' basement. But of course, that might even lead to a bigger demotivation among men in general. And you might see huge numbers of men dropping out rather than the, you know, at least comparatively small numbers. Right now I think it's basically what we see at university is 60-40 female male. You could easily imagine it going to 80-20 before something comes along to correct that.

speaker-1: Yeah, well hopefully then there'll also be something available for women where they can have a male robot or if that's their you know, if they're a heterosexual woman, like a male robot that's going to provide the things that they are looking for. And ⁓ yeah, and then I guess reproduction will just be left to being a clinical act. Dystopian dystopian indeed.

speaker-0: Yeah. Right. That that is the dystopian version. I it's I I it's my hope that ⁓ Yeah, look, I it's hard to know. ⁓ you know, it seems so weird now to think of having sex with a robot, but but like I bet you our ancestors would have thought it was super weird to talk to somebody on ⁓ the internet. And I bet you they would have thought it was weird to watch two people you don't know having sex, which is n you know, now it's the most common thing people do on the internet. And so Maybe they won't maybe in a hundred years people won't think it's weird in the slightest to have sex with a robot instead of another person.

speaker-1: So the work that you do, including in in in your books and ⁓ in all of your research career, ⁓ a lot of it has really been derived using an evolutionary perspective, which we've already begun to kind of get our toes into a little bit. And it's just this idea that ⁓ our brain is something that we've inherited from successful ancestors who managed to be able to survive and reproduce, and therefore we inherited that brain from that long chain. Of ancestors who were able to successfully do both things, right? Survive long enough to reproduce and then reproduce. And that we can kind of use this perspective to understand features of human behavior and motivational systems. And ⁓ and you've written extensively on evolutionary psychology and this perspective. And you've also written about like people's objections to it. Right, and misunderstandings that they have ⁓ about this perspective. And I'm I I'm just wondering if you could speak to us a little bit about that. Like what do you think that people misunderstand and and object to about using this approach to understand humans?

speaker-0: So I I think there's two things that that one of them comes from misunderstanding and the other one comes from unfortunately understanding. So to start with the misunderstanding, I think that when people hear that there's a genetic influence on your behavior, what they understand it to mean is that there's this genetic determinism. And that it creates all sorts of unfortunate implications. ⁓ like so for example, if if people have inherited a tendency to be violent, then Well, A, we just can't help it. And B, the more violent genes you have, the more violent you're gonna be. And and of course that's it's that's far from the truth because what the tendency to be violent was always situationally determined. And so if you look at the most violent human beings on the planet a thousand years ago, today they're the most peaceful people on the planet. They're Scandinavians. They sell furniture instead of raping and pillaging up and down the European coast. And so the And genetically they're the same. When you dig up a Viking, they look like the Prime Minister of Sweden or Denmark. And so the just because you have a genetic tendency to do something doesn't mean you just do it willy-nilly. It means that you decide when to do it and the and you decide what the rewards and costs are going to be of engaging in that behavior. And so it doesn't it doesn't cause you to do it. It might lead you to have a proclivity to do it, but you can do it or not. And so, There's lots of great examples of of this effect. And perhaps my favorite is ⁓ the genetics of obesity. I'm not sure if you've seen these data on the polygenic scores of obesity, but when you look at in the modern world, obesity is about 70% genetic, which is remarkable given that when I was a kid, almost nobody was obese. And so you've got this crazy cultural shift. And what we're really seeing is sensitivity to something like ultra processed foods like you were talking about before. And some people are genetically very susceptible to those and some aren't. Well, if you then look at people and you look at their actual body weight and their polygenic score, what you see is you've got a lot of th thin people are predominantly made up of people who have thin polygenic scores. You know, they're it's easy for them to be thin. But there are people who have overweight polygenic scores and even obese polygenic scores. In other words, the genetics are pushing them to obesity and yet they're thin. And so what that tells you is that even in a case where genetics are very strong, 70% is more than your typical genetic impact, you've got people who do the opposite, who it may be harder for them, but they do the hard yards and they are able to achieve their goals. sex, the example we were talking about earlier, you know, there's the history's full of people who've decided not to have sex, like monks and things like that. And many failed, but but many succeeded. And so genes don't make you do things, they just nudge you in that direction. And so they make it more likely that you'll choose to do those things. Now ⁓ lots of people don't like that. ⁓ I I think also lots of people don't like the implications of the genetic perspective. So if you look at do you I don't know if you know the Dunedin study, Caspian and Moffitt and and so and crew have been running for a very long time, but but they in they've they've got everybody who's born in Dunedin in about a five year period and they've been tracking them for almost fifty years now, Dunedin, New Zealand. And one of the things that they found when they do polygenic scores on educational attainment. Is that if you are born poor and you rise out of your social class, you typically have polygenic scores for higher educational attainment. And if you were born rich and you fall out of your class, you typically have polygenic scores for lower educational attainment. And so it it kind of starts to make us wonder about everything, right? Well, should I be really impressed and proud of this person who rose out of their background? well, yeah, they kind of won the genetic lottery. But at the same time, obviously there's a lot of hard work that goes into it too, but it starts to make human traits a lot more ambiguous. How much do you get sort of credit, so to speak, for the things that you've done? And and I think people don't like that in the evolutionary perspective because it what do we blame? What do we give credit for? what does it mean to pull yourself up by the bootstraps? ⁓ all these questions become a little bit unclear.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think that ⁓ one of the things that we do know from research is that yeah, that even like the tendency to pull yourself up from the bootstraps, I mean, has some biological components to it, right? And some of those are in fact heritable. And so ⁓ it does it does sort of remind us of the fact that biology is not fair. And I think that we we all we all hate that. Like I hate that. Like I that doesn't make me feel good that biology is unfair and yet it's biology is what it is.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's wildly unfair.

speaker-1: Yes, it is wildly unfair. And ⁓ go ahead.

speaker-0: No no no, please.

speaker-1: ⁓ okay. Well w one of the things that ⁓ that I also think that people sometimes take exception to ⁓ when talking about, you know, evolutionary approaches to human behavior has to do with ⁓ sex differences, right? And and people it li it's like people get kind of squeamish about the idea that there may be biological differences between men and women that can contribute to ⁓ you know, different pat different patterns that we see in behavior and and so on. And ⁓ And you know, one of the most well studied areas of sex differences in this area has to do with partner preferences, right? And like the types of things that ⁓ men and women tend to prioritize in their romantic partners. And I was wondering whether you could tell us a little bit about what research finds in terms of differences that we see in partner preferences ⁓ between, you know, men and women. And generally this research is done on on heterosexual. men and women, although th there's some really interesting stuff that's been done on on same-sex attraction that essentially shows that ⁓ most of the time when we're looking at same sex attraction, the types of qualities that we're looking for are the same for people of our sex. They just are falling on a different gender, right? There's like falling like I it's like ⁓ if women prefer X ⁓ in men, heterosexual women like trait X in men, then ⁓ lesbian women like trait X in women. ⁓ and that it seems to sort of fall on that fall in that way. And ⁓ I I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about ⁓ about sex similarities and differences when it comes to partner preferences.

speaker-0: Sure, sure. It's a super interesting topic. And in fact, our our mutual friend David Buss has done a lot of work on this. David and and Marty Hazleton and I even have a paper from about ten or fifteen years ago where we included very large samples of bisexual men and women and h homosexual men and women. And you're absolutely right. The preferences barely moved as a function of what your sexuality was. They were they were essentially the same across the board. Now sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad in the sense of of making people compatible with each other. So for example, one of the sex differences is that on average, men are interested in younger women and women are interested in older men. And there's a good reason for that. And and in humans, fertility, you know, humans go through females go through menopause. And so fertility is mainly when you're younger. And so men are focused on younger women as a potential reproductive partner. And but it takes a lot of resources to raise a child. And so men are focused women are focused more on older men who ⁓ are more likely to have accrued resources and skills to help them successfully raise their children. So that's a really nice example of compatibility that disappears if you're gay. And so gay men like younger men, but ⁓ then of course older men like younger men, but younger men are less inclined to like older men. And so it that that same compatibility's not there. Now mind you of course there's lots of incompatibilities. And so we see, for example, that divorces ⁓ is quite common around the time the kids leave the household. But another way to interpret those same data is that divorce is also quite common around the time that women go through menopause. And so there's some very unfortunate features about male focus on ⁓ the the cues of fertility because nobody stays young forever, right? And so the it it it can lead to both compatibility between the sexes and also incompatibilities. Now of course the The negative viewpoint of these things is that men are shallow, they're very focused on attractiveness. And and they are. ⁓ and but from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense because reproduction is so hard for women that the things that we regard as attractive are the things that correlate with reproductive capabilities. Whereas reproduction is so easy for a man, if a sperm can crawl out of the end of his penis, he's got a shot at it. ⁓ And so he could look like he could be desiccated and barely alive, but he could probably still reproduce. So his attractiveness is less indicative, whereas as we just discussed, his resources and ambition are very indicative. And so men are shallow but women are gold diggers is a common way of of framing this sort of looking for different things in each other. ⁓ and and you're absolutely right, people don't like this at all.

speaker-1: Yeah, and and and what like when you consider the deep evolutionary wisdom behind these differences, I I think that it can be, ⁓ I it for me, like this was one of the things that I learned about when I was an undergraduate still. ⁓ I re had read David's the first edition of his textbook, Evolutionary Psychology during my senior year of college. And ⁓ and, you know, understanding the fact that ⁓ throughout, you know, the course of evolutionary time that men who just so happen to find most beautiful women who had qualities that were related to reproductive capacity, right? And then they choose these women as mates, like they're going to pass that preference down to a lot more children, right? Than is a man who has a preference for qualities related to being postmenopausal. That preference isn't going to be passed down anywhere. ⁓ because it can't. And and and the the the logic is just you can't avoid it. You know, it's just, it's just so transparent that it's it it makes it very clear. And I and I think that it can kind of take the bitter taste out of the mouth from that sort of thing. And then, you know, as you noted, because childbearing is so costly for women and historically, ⁓ women I mean, they're go through this period of time when they're very late in pregnancy and soon after postpartum and then having to care for a young baby when they're not going to be able to get access to food and other necessary resources or be able to protect themselves. the way that they would normally be able to protect themselves when they're not, you know, postpartum. And in that women historically have had to be very reliant on their male partners ⁓ to be able to care for offspring. I it's it's it's like it makes sense. And in some ways, you know, one thing that's always kind of pissed me off, even though I know that there's, you know, it's like I understand the data are the data and the science is the science. It's like one of the things that's annoyed me as a female has been like that it feels a little bit unfair. Like 'cause it feels like in some ways for women, the stuff that is related to like, you know, what we call like mate value, right? Which is essentially like the extent to which you possess qualities that your preferred sex would desire in their partners. it seems like it's more out of women's control than it is out of a man's control because it seems like, well, you know, if women like provisioning and protection, just like go to the gym and get a job. Like Anybody can do that. Right. ⁓ and ⁓ and but for women, it's like what can you do? And I guess that we've gotten we've come a long way with cosmetic procedures and ⁓ and you know, and we see all the Kardashians with their deep like or whatever, the deep plain facelift, I think is like the thing that everybody's talking about right now. And so I guess in some ways I think that the playing field has been leveled a little bit just with, you know, the the changes in technology that have allowed women to you know, do the same thing, right? Just get a good job and then get a surgeon or, you know, whoever to give you these qualities that are going to ⁓ allow you to have more value. But I I think in some ways the playing field has been a little bit le more leveled out that way.

speaker-0: Yeah, I I agree with you. I think that the the downside is the unfairness of these things. And and so, you know, bizarrely, ⁓ if you look at the manosphere at all, the the the men who are who come across as very misogynists and probably mostly are, in some ways their message is exactly what you just said. They're they're like, Look, you as a guy, listener to me, you have no inherent value. You'll gain value by getting a job and going to the gym. And these are two things that you can in fact do. So the and and then you'll be attractive to women. So so go do that first. That's that's your first and and foremost job. And women, their argument is women have intrinsic value. Now, interestingly, as you point out, that intrinsic value is not fairly distributed. Not all women are equally attractive, et cetera. But and then a lot of misogynist attitudes come from that. But but in some ways the problem gets even worse than that though. Because it's not just different preferences that men and women have for each other, but it's also the different rewards of extra partner sex, of of ⁓ having a roaming eye of of affairs. And you know, if the the simplest version of that statement is that if you know a ⁓ a woman who has a hundred partners in a year can still only have one baby in a year. But a man who has a hundred partners in a year could conceivably have a hundred babies. And so Although both men and women get rewards from having greater genetic diversity in their offspring, and therefore both men and women have some interest in extra partner relationships, the benefits to men are much stronger. And so what you end up with is a world where men are much more motivated by variety than women are. Now, variety ends up being like fat, salt, and sugar, though, because if you if you actually are trying to gain life satisfaction, if your goal is not to leave as many offspring as you possibly can, which probably some people actually explicitly have that goal, but most of us don't. Most of us have a goal of happiness. And the problem with variety is that it very soon becomes it's like potato chips. It very soon becomes ⁓ lost in the shuffle. It it's no longer satisfying because we have an overwhelming variety today. And our ancestors, for them variety meant, we ran into this other group and and there were these two women who I'd never met before Because I'm all every other female in my group I've known my entire life and and that's kind of exciting. And maybe I'll sneak off into the bushes with one of them if she's interested. Well, now it's every single day. And so we really evolved to have long term relationships, which are our primary source of satisfaction, and maybe the the very rare and occasional sneak away. But now the the sneak aways could be every day if you just if you look at how many people cross our doors. And then you destroy the long term relationships that actually make us happy.

speaker-1: You know, given that men have this heightened preference for variety, which you noted, and there's been a lot of research that supports this idea, just generally that because men historically could have had this increased reproductive output that acts simply as a function of their access to partners, right? The more partners they have access to, the potentially greater number of offspring that they could leave down or or ⁓ le pass down genes to, right? Whereas for women, it's not that it it sort of hits a a ceiling after one partner. ⁓ and ⁓ and and this is called ⁓ Bateman's principle for those of you who are listening and are into biology. ⁓ and it's just refers to this this asymmetry and the benefits related to novel partners, right? And it's greater for for males than it is for females, greater than men than it is for women. And ⁓ I wonder whether, you know, one of the ways that I've see this play out that I think has has really made dating kind of a hot garbage dumpster fire is ⁓ is with dating apps, right? Because I I think that, you know, dating apps here you have men have this greater desire for sexual variety. You have women who have a greater variety or you have women who have a greater preference for like sort of longer term committed relationships. And then you have dating apps where you have some men, and particularly men who have the types of qualities that women are looking for. And they are just seeing a a smorgasbord, right? It's just like access to like so many women. And and my guess is that these men are then slower to want to actually settle down into a long term relationship. Do you is is d does the research support that idea?

speaker-0: Yeah, very much so. And in fact, we're currently at this very bad spot in in dating apps where it's exactly as you say that that the inequality among men is extreme. So men it's f if you're a man and you think about inequality in terms of economic terms, y you could live in a country like, you know, South Africa, where a small percentage of the people have all the money and everyone else is poor. That's what it's like to be a man on a dating app. About twenty percent of the men get all the female interest and the other eighty percent of men basically are ignored on the apps. Women in contrast live in the version, you know, Scandinavia where basically life is very equal, and so most women, eighty percent of the women get a lot of interest on these dating apps. But the problem is that that eighty percent of women who's getting interest is only interested in the twenty percent of men who all the other women are interested in. And so even if those guys in a previous world would have happily married and settled down and never been, you know, likely to keep to keep delaying marriage and and just maintain short term relationships, well, they're bombarded. And so it's hard for them to not just maintain short term relationships. And so the end result is that really the only people who are happy are the 20% of men who are in these short term relationships. And they end up unhappy too, because you could like I said, that what we evolved to do is form long term monogamous relationships, even if they're serially monogamous. And those men aren't really doing that. And so they can get caught up in this cycle of availability because it ver variety's so common now. But on the positive side, ⁓ the it seems to me that we're this was is could be fixed any day because all you need is an app that makes it easier for women to see the kinds of qualities that she would be attracted to in a guy if she'd only met him. And so when she looks at him on the internet and sees, ⁓ he's tall, he's handsome, he makes a lot of money, he's for me. The that's what comes across the most easily. And of course that's twenty percent of the guys are the ones who Who attract all the interest. But all the other guys that she would have fallen in love with if she met him at the gym or the church or school, an app that can find that person's qualities and transmit them to her and say, This is the guy you actually want. He's the one who will fall in love with you, he's the one who will stay with you for your life, he's the one who'll make you happy and make you laugh every day. Once apps figure that out, and and they will, psychology hasn't figured out the answer, so it's no wonder apps haven't either. But once we get there, then I think this problem will go away. And And internet dating might actually be just an unmitigated plus because it'll be a way to, you know, find that needle in a haystack because suddenly the whole world is your is your oyster and you I'm mixing metaphors in a terrible way, but but that that suddenly you can find people readily who actually would be a good match to you. And unfortunately, right now, psychology doesn't even know what creates spark. Like they know how many people would be attracted to you, how many people would be attracted to me, and so that they can just do the math and say, well. ⁓ odds are we'll be attracted to each other at X rate, but they have no idea of saying, Well what's would us would two individuals actually have a spark or where they just go with the base rate probability being attracted? And nobody knows the answer to that question.

speaker-1: Yeah, do you have a hypothesis about like what some of those qualities ⁓ would be like if if if we if you were to design a dating app? Like what are some of the intangibles that you think might play an important role that people 'cause you know, I'm just imagining a listener right now who's on the dating apps and and is totally frustrated. I'm imagining a woman who's frustrated because, you know, like she finds guys that check the boxes that you noted, right? Tall, wealthy, and and and good looking. Right. And so and so she's after, she's like, Yes, this is my guy, but then there's eight million other guys. Like, what are some of the other qualities that like if if somebody's tired of that game and competing in that pool for the other eight against the other 80,000 women that are going after the same small pool of men, what are some things that they might that might actually matter, like in terms of of who they might be attracted to? What what should they maybe be looking at besides just that? ⁓ if they're hoping to find somebody that they can actually have a connection with?

speaker-0: So so here's the problem and this is why the it hasn't been cracked yet. The ⁓ the it's very easy to create dishonest signals of of having lots of qualities. And so if you're tall, well that's it's you could fake it on the internet and just have like you can't tell that I'm short, but I am I I stand up towering five foot six in my socks because we're on the internet together. I could claim to be six foot two, but the second w we rock up to the day, then you're taller than I am. You're gonna be, ⁓ yeah, you're really six foot two, pal. And so I'm gonna give up on doing that, right? It's an being tall is an honest signal. You can't get away with pretending you're you are when you're not. ⁓ Same with wealth and and handsome you can just see in the photo. And so the problem is that those are hard to fake and the things that really matter are super easy to fake. I can say things that make me sound kind. I can say things that make me sound generous. I can say things that make me sound like I'll I'll want to make you laugh. I can say things that make me sound like ⁓ I'm highly empathic and I take your perspective and and I want you to be happy too, that that'll make me happy. You know, those are the qualities that we want in a partner, but they're hard to differentiate in without actual real long term experience with the person. And so if you like let's say that that you always wanted a tall, handsome guy who loves ⁓ disco and I'm this short, not terribly attractive guy who loves country music. And you're thinking, yeah, I would never date him in a million years. But you and I live in the same apartment building and we do our laundry together at the same time. And every time I see you, I'm kind and I make you laugh and and you start listen I have my music and sometimes you listen to it and you go, ⁓ I kinda like that. You know, you can discover that this person who you thought was nowhere near what you want in life actually is exactly what you want in life. But you discovered that through this long term process whereby they The honest signals are the only ones that stay because I can't keep pretending to be kind to you without really being kind. I can't keep pretending to have your best interest at heart without really having your best interest at heart because eventually the veil will drop and I'll reveal the schmuck I really am, right? And so the it's the the trick of of the internet is how do you convey the truth of those underlying qualities that you can't see and that ancestrally we we picked up over long periods of time where you go, ⁓ my gosh, I when I met him I had zero interest but he just charmed me and he's such a wonderful person and you know I don't yet know how to bottle that and put that online because that's what we're all looking for.

speaker-1: So do you think that the the best solution might be just to get off the dating apps and maybe take some of the attention that we're d investing in that and like making the perfect profile and swiping and swiping and instead maybe try to create more like analog experiences where we're interacting with other people and and attempting to just be out in the world and paying attention to pot prospective partners?

speaker-0: I do think analog experiences are super important, but the internet has a huge advantage that can expose you to huge numbers of people, so you can really find your perfect match. And so in the early days of the internet, John Cassiopo had some really nice data that showed that you were actually more likely to find a good match on the internet than you were to find them in most of the standard face to face places. And we found those data surprising. That was almost fifteen years ago now. The I think it's now gotten worse again. Like it it's a lot of things in the early internet were good and then they got bad. And and so what what you want is an ideal world where this the app exposes you to to the numbers and so then you find the ones who look like they could be a good fit, but then you then move to some kind of form of more face to face and it doesn't have to be the real world. It could still be online, but in a way that socializes, that that maintains the positive qualities of of real life. And and I have to admit, I don't know what that app it's it's hard. I don't know what that app would look like. Somebody, you know, it somebody's gonna solve it and it's like a great scientific idea. The second they do, you're gonna go, Of course. I I can't believe I didn't think of that. That's the solution. But until we get there, it it's opaque to me. I don't know how to get around this problem.

speaker-1: Yeah, I know that there's ⁓ like there's an increasing number of ⁓ companies that are creating little pop up events for singles. So essentially we're going back to the days of singles events. ⁓ and apparently like they're pretty popular. And I think that in some ways you get the best of both worlds with these kinds of things. Now you don't cast as wide of a net as you do with the whole internet, you know, like if it's internet dating, but it does cast you a wider net where it's, you know, getting different, you know people interacting with each with each other ⁓ than than what they might get if they're only, you know, shopping at their one grocery store or, you know, going to a certain laundromat, right, where they're gonna be interacting with a broader range of folks. Which I think is a good thing.

speaker-0: It it is a good thing. And the problem of course remains that it's those long term interactions that are the most telling on the internal traits, the truth of those internal qualities. And and we still don't have that in the in the pop up events. You know, I can I can pretend to be really kind but I'm not, but worse yet well not in say worse yet, but equally bad, I can come across as boring and ⁓ nervous when in fact I'm I'm neither boring nor nervous if I just got to know you and then I could be a delightful person because maybe I'm a bit introverted and shy or or maybe I just when I don't know somebody I don't I'm not sure what to say. ⁓ and so I'd say nothing. And so those events still you know our our ancestors never met this way. They they knew each other for long periods of time and they knew a lot about each other. And if you ask women in lots of societies You know, what what's your number one trait you're looking for in a man? The answer is usually kind. And especially when we have sexual dimorphism and so men are more capable of harming their partners and they're and we have dimorphism in and economic opportunity, they're they're they're more p likely to provision th their partners. The kind is you know, number one it's the winner, right? And and it's kind is hard

speaker-1: Yeah, well, what I was gonna say is what what you know, one of the things that I that I think gets lost sometimes in the conversations about partner preferences, ⁓ from in in, you know, especially when we're talking about things evolutionarily, is that there's a lot of focus on the the differences because just because they're really interesting. I mean, just when we consider the different, you know, contributions that men and women make to reproduction and therefore we have these differences in preferences, and I think it's really interesting. ⁓ but is is like there's a lot of overlap. And in terms of the things that that are there's overlap, like the the qualities that men and women both find most important in a long term relationship is kindness and understanding, right? And then like ⁓ warmth and trustworthiness, like tend to be like up there at the top. And these are things that, you know, it's like like this is a really kind of a happy story, right? That that nice guys can win, right? So like people think nice guys finish last. Like I would say no. Nice guys don't finish.

speaker-0: I agree with you. Nice n nice guys, nice people finish first reliably and even if you look at When you look at hunter gatherers and who they choose to hunt with, they don't choose the best hunter, they choose the most generous kind hunter because they want somebody who'll share with them, who will elevate their game, etcetera. And the same holds for relationships. But again, our ancestors knew who was kind because they were with them every day. It's super hard to know how kind somebody is on a first date. They're just so inherently kind or they're so inherently unkind. But the most of the rest of us it it takes a little you can fake it for a while looking kinder than you really are and and And that unfortunately we don't have a good way of of filtering that dishonest signal out yet.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think that there's some kinds of cues though. Like I think that, you know, so I in and obviously people can fake some of these things, but it's like the way that people treat the wait staff, right? Or the the valet, right? The way that people treat ⁓ the service workers, the way that people have relationships with their families. Like, do they have a relationship, a good relationship with their family? How do they talk about their family? ⁓ because it's like I think that ⁓ there is a tendency For some of those ⁓ negative personality traits to leak out. You know, even if somebody's actively trying to fake nice. Yeah. Where they'll be an asshole to the, you know, the server if they forget to bring their silverware. Yeah. Right. Or they'll ⁓ not have a relationship with their family, which I always see as kind, you know, and obviously some people have such toxic families that it's, you know, it's actually a good thing that but most you know, most people if they have a no relationship with anybody in their family, to me that's like mm, like, mm, like maybe there's something are you not tolerant? Yeah, are you not tolerant of other humans? ⁓ because I think that's part of the kindness and understanding, right? Is just understanding that people make mistakes and do dumb things and that we can love them anyway.

speaker-0: Exactly. Exactly. No, you're absolutely right. And and look, I I do believe that it's not too many years from now where some website is gonna crack how you can communicate kindness. And it's still gonna be the case that the tall, handsome rich guy is gonna get a lot of swipes, but the kind people are going after you've swiped enough tall, handsome rich guys and you've only dated them three times and then they disappear, you're gonna start swiping the kind guys and it'll self solve. I do I it has to get there. I just we're just not there right now.

speaker-1: Do you think that having that amazing dating app, which I'll invest in as soon as they ⁓ as soon as they figure out what ⁓ like well how to crack that code? Do you think that that will help solve ⁓ what is currently kind of a mating crisis, right? It's like men and women aren't getting together at the rate that they used to. And ⁓ and and a lot of people are feeling dissatisfied. I think that men are feeling like like women are are too picky, right? And they're angry because they think that women need to be lowering their standards. ⁓ women, because ⁓ women tend to like to partner with people who have at least as much educational attainment ⁓ and resource access as themselves, ⁓ now that women are becoming more educated relative to men and are earning more, ⁓ they're finding themselves being squeezed out of the mating market in a lot of ways, or else they're not able to get married until they're much older than what they would ideally prefer, given their that their fertility has a ⁓ time clock on it. ⁓ do you think that that that might help get us out of this ⁓ this mating crisis that we're in?

speaker-0: Yeah, we are in a really funny state. We it we are in a funny state. I don't know if there's a current solution because everything you said is true. And you know, women used to they literally were less picky. And of course it made sense to be less picky when you have almost no economic resources of your own because your economic outcomes are depending on the fact that you partner up with somebody. And so if you gotta partner with somebody, then you don't you're not looking f you don't have a set standard, you're just looking for the best of the available options. And so what we see when when we survey women and ask them and men, you say, What are your deal breakers in a relationship? The more education a woman has, the more capable she is of earning her own money, the more deal breakers start to appear in her list. Now, that's that's both a good thing and a bad thing, right? It's a good thing because you don't want people having to be forced into relationships for economic reasons that are that our our direct ancestors were all forced into those relationships. Every one of our grandmothers made that bargain. She's well, what's the best guy I can pick? Because I'm not making an income of any meaningfulness on my own. ⁓ so it's great that that doesn't exist anymore. The downside is that we are way less likely to partner up, and that's not just the the United States, it's every industrialized country in the world. And and we're not it's not even just formalized marriage, it's also cohabitation and any of the kind of s informal versions of marriage that you might think about. And the only reason that that's a problem. when you kind of think through the psychology of it is that married people on average are a lot happier than unmarried people. And that itself creates this weird conundrum because marriage doesn't make most people happier. On average, marriage makes you a little happier for a while and then you go back to where you were, yet married people are happier than unmarried people. And so how could those two things both be true? And I don't know the answer, but what I believe the answer is is that it's actually it's not marriage that's mission critical. It's being a connection oriented person. And the people who don't marry tend to be, they they've put connection lower on their priority list. And so they know ⁓ they have to have all these particular qualities. ⁓ and so on average, these are just averages, lots of course single people are happy as clams, but on average, ⁓ the people who are single are leading lives that are less satisfying to them because they have fewer connections writ large, even if the marital connection itself is not the one that actually tends to make us happy.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's so interesting because that also, I mean, it it just reiterates the themes from your book. And it's just this idea that, you know, I I think about this with the w with women. You were saying that, you know, as our need for men for, you know, just economic security decreases, then our list of deal breakers increases, which makes sense. Right. It's like essentially like, I don't need this, and therefore, if I'm going to do this, then, you know, it better be damn good. ⁓ and ⁓ and and I think about that with with people too. It's like I think that one of the biggest ⁓ benefits that other humans have provided each other over most of evolutionary time has been, I mean, it's there's been shared provisioning, right? But there's also information. You know, it's like one of the biggest values that we offer each other is is shared information and ⁓ it's the ability to, you know communicate things like don't eat from that berry bush and you know do eat from that berry bush and and that's where the right you know the scary guys live and don't go over there and then you do want to go over here because this is where the good mates are. And now that we have, you know, we don't need each other for provisioning, right? We can get our jobs and we can do this all on our own. And we can look anything up on the internet. You know, I was I was actually having this conversation with my mom. Who was ⁓ lamenting the fact that I used to call her more frequently than I do now. And, you know, I used to have to call her like every time that I was like, you know, if I was like baking something, I was like, how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? You know? And it was like I would call her because I needed, you know, she had all this information. And so I was constantly calling her, like, and you know, and and what do I do when my car breaks? You know, it was now we can just like look look all this up online. But I think that Again, you know, as our need for other people do again, this is this autonomy thing that you that you write about in your book. I think that we, in addition to, you know, sort of making us less connected, I think that it makes us less tolerant. Like I think that our list of deal breakers for like what we're willing to put up with with other people also becomes less tolerant, right? I I think we're becoming assholes, don't you?

speaker-0: Look, that's a great point. I mean I I never thought about the fact that we don't need each other because in fact I completely agree with you. What made all human interactions so positive some compared to all of other animals on this planet is our information sharing capabilities. That we're information machines, we occupy the cognitive niche. Information's super valuable, but it's free to disseminate. I will told some information because it's valuable only if I know it and you don't, but by and large fact that there's a bear around the corner or those bears are toxic, unless I hate you, I I want I I can share that with you for free and it does me it costs me nothing. And so humans create these these societies that pay it forward where we offer each other this very, very valuable things for free. And other animals, you know, if if a if a vampire bat wants to help its friend, it has to regurgitate blood that it got that night. And now it's at a little bit of risk of starving. But When I tell you there's a bear around the corner, I haven't lost anything, right? So it's it's so wonderful. But but if I don't have to talk to you as much because I can find out from the internet that there's a bear around the corner, or or then we lose a a huge part of the reason that that humans socialize. But our psychology doesn't know that. Our psychology still requires that constant connection. And Bob Zion once told me, and I thought he was talking nonsense at the time, but I've come to realize that he's probably true, that That like 80% of what we're really communicating is sharing emotions. And only 20% of it is actually information. And and I think he's right about that. And I think it's actually a super important point about being human is that we evolve to want to be on the same page as each other emotionally, because that way we we understand we agree that something's a threat or we agree that something's an opportunity. We can act together as a group because that's where our power comes from. Not from individuals, but from groups. And so groups People who know each other and care about each other need to share emotions. And we've evolved to really want to do that. And so even though we can now look up everything on the internet, when you stop calling your mother as frequently because it's just quicker and easier to look up the answer of teaspoons and tablespoons on the internet, and then you don't have to answer six other questions and it doesn't take as much time, you stop being on the same page as your mother a lot because you're no longer sharing day-to-day realities. And that's actually costly to your long-term relationships. And so again, it's one of these want-need things where what I really want is to s answer this question really quickly, but what I need is to actually talk to my mom and reconnect with her and in so doing find out how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon, but take ten minutes to answer the question instead of ten seconds. And and and unfortunately, we don't know that that's what we should be doing. And so you check the internet instead of calling your mother, and you're making both of you less happy because you're Your connection's not as strong as it was.

speaker-1: Yeah, and I also like I don't don't you also think that there's something to this idea that when we don't need other people that it ⁓ just makes us less tolerant of them? Like I I I think that ⁓ that our willingness to put up with bullshit and and and and all interactions are full of bullshit. I mean, you it's like like people are messy, you know, and ⁓ and and and I think about this with dating, because you know, you're talking about this with with women who have access to resources and essentially their list of like non negotiables increases. ⁓ because they they don't need to do this. And so therefore, you know, better be good. ⁓ I kind of I kind of think that that happens with people. Like I I I I feel like, you know, I I know that we've become, you know, societally kind of hypercritical of one another and there's a lot of finger pointing. And ⁓ and I wonder whether part of that lack of tolerance for other people is just also due to the fact that other people are less valuable to us, like on the one hand, because they're not providing information. Right. And and we still do need social connection because obviously like there's a disconnect, right? Because it's like on the one hand, our brain is like, I'm not dealing with this because I don't need this. And, you know, I can look this up on the internet and I don't need this person. And this, you know, this person is doing this bad behavior and this person is doing that bad behavior. And this is toxic and that is toxic. And I don't need these people. But then ultimately, then they still feel terrible. Right. And so, ⁓ yeah, I I I yeah, I I think there's a disconnect.

speaker-0: I I think that's a great point, Sarah. I I think you've hit the nail on the head and I've not thought about that before, but you c you're what you're tapping is the societal level problem where we don't in the moment need each other anymore. And so if we evolved in this world, if if all of our evolutionary history had an internet and had I could drone in my lattes and I could work online, well we wouldn't be the gregarious species that we are. The problem arises from the fact that we are very gregarious species. And so when we keep doing all those things, I become intolerant of others because I'm wealthy and I don't need them, we end up kind of friendless. And that is far more harmful than all the things that we've gained ⁓ by not interacting with others. my favorite piece of data to support that is if you look at the ⁓ Happiness that comes with attending religious services. It's as close as we can get to a natural experiment because on average people go to religious services because they're highly religious and they believe in God and they think God wants them to. And so you're not choosing to go in that sense. You're feeling like you should go. This is the right thing to do. And if you look at at at people who never or or very frequently more than once a week go to religious services, when they're poor, they get a pretty big bump in happiness. But when they're rich, they get an even bigger bump in happiness. And because poor people need each other. They they can't afford to be intolerant. They've got to borrow somebody's mower because there's when there's breaks, they can't just take it to the shop. They have to have somebody look after their dog when they go on holiday because they can't afford the kennel. And so poor people live in these densely interconnected networks that rich people just don't live in. And so when rich people are forced into socializing because God wants them to, wants them to go to services, it's actually way better for them than it is for poor people who We're doing that anyway. And so this intolerance that we've created through wealth and technology is actually, it makes perfect sense, but it's doing us enormous harm.

speaker-1: It is doing us enormous harm. And I think that one of the things, you know, it that can be helpful sometimes is I think understanding this stuff is is is helpful. You know, I I think a little bit of self awareness, like when you understand the traps that our brain because our our brain ⁓ it's like the social environment and our I mean it like our brain falls into a lot of traps because of the changes, this evolutionary mismatch that you're talking about. It's like our environment has changed in all these different ways where our brain is pursuing all of these things that ultimately are going to make it miserable. And ⁓ and I think that if you are have awareness of these things that you really can do something about it. I mean, and and and even at the level of recognizing that if you're being an intolerant asshole, you know, like and not being, you know, willing to ⁓ put up with other people's hum humanity, that, you know, this might be ⁓ it might you might need to dial it down a bit, right? And that, and that we're that everybody's imperfect. And ⁓ and and that it's really important to be around these people and learn to adjust ⁓ accordingly. So that way we are able to get the nourishment, the social nourishment that we need.

speaker-0: No, you're absolutely right. And and I do think knowledge is really important. And so when I began working on the book, one of the things that I saw was that although humanity's been moving to cities for over a hundred years, ⁓ well we cities are five thousand years old, but moving in mass to cities for over a hundred years, ⁓ it's actually people living in the country are happier than people living in the city. And the reason seems to be that despite having fewer people around, they're closer to the people who are there. And so I literally decided, well, I work in Boston, but I live in Australia. I'm gonna move into the country. And so I I now live in the middle of nowhere. And I have this lovely neighbor who ⁓ lives on on the other side of my property, and she she's a super interesting person and she's a vegetarian, so it's a mild pain in the butt for me to have her over for dinner because I gotta source vegetables, which I basically avoid in life. ⁓ but because I live in the country and I don't have somebody else on that side and that side and that side. I am happily go, ⁓ hey, can you come over for dinner? And I think to myself, I'll go to the shops and I'll pick up, you know, something that I can make for a vegetarian. And so you when there's fewer options available and you know you're gonna see that person more regularly, we start to become much more tolerant of their vagaries and we try to work around them. And and I think that that you're right that that that ends up making us a lot happier because you end up being much closer with somebody. You don't wanna have thirty eight people that you say hi to and none of them even knows your middle name or or anything about where you live or how you live, you want close friends, and not tons of them, but ⁓ several. And and living in the country is an example of something that creates that, even though you have fewer options, because we tend to see have we know we're gonna see them over and over again. And we tend to be more tolerant and understanding of differences because that's the options that are available.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's like ⁓ I there was this really great work that I just heard about from ⁓ Andrea Meltzer. She's at ⁓ Florida State and she actually found that couples who met and and this is to get back to our online ⁓ so it kind of circles back to our online dating discussion as well. But she found that ⁓ couples who met online are less satisfied with their relationships. And ultimately what she found out is that it's it's because of the perception that there's so many different alternatives available, right? It's it's that choice paradox that we like the more options you have, the less satisfied you are and the less willing you are to sort of in invest in the choice that you have. And so I see this playing out with your with your neighbor where you're like, I have this one neighbor and that means that I'm going to have to go and buy veg veg vegetables and like create a vegetarian dish. And I'm willing to do this because this is my neighbor and there's there's one of them. Like what what are some other things that ⁓ that and you and you talk about some of these things in your book? Like what are some of the things that research supports in terms of helping us, you know, when we're feeling lonely and overstimulated and disconnected because our current world is essentially set up to trap our brain into misery? ⁓ what can we do? Like what are some small changes that people can actually make if they can't move to the countryside?

speaker-0: Well, that's a great question. And the the problem is that they have to be realistic. And so lots of the changes, lots of the things that made our us happy just a generation ago, we're not gonna do anymore. We're not gonna take huge amounts of time to get together with old friends across town. ⁓ we're just too busy. Our lives are too chakras with activities. But There are things that we can do that allow us to satisfy our connection needs without sacrificing our autonomy needs because most of us are disinclined to sacrifice our autonomy needs. And the first place I always start is look at every single activity that you do alone and ask yourself if you actually want to be alone or if you're alone just as a byproduct of the activity you're doing. And so, as a for example, I like to do the New York Times crossword puzzle. And it starts out kind of easy in the beginning of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then it gets harder as the week progresses. And I'm not very good at it, and so I start to get stymied as the week progresses. And ⁓ my my little sister likes to do the crossword puzzle. And so here we are both just doing the crossword puzzle alone because we enjoy the activity. Now COVID comes along and she's like, hey, why don't we start doing the crossword together? You know, she lives in London, I live in Australia, and so Starting on Thursday morning when it gets difficult, she wakes up in the morning, makes herself a coffee, and then she calls me on WhatsApp. So it's free, and then we we do the crossword together. And it's a lot like you asking your mother how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon, because you know, we're not just if all you did say, Hey mom, how many teaspoons are a tablespoon? And she said 2.5 and you said thanks, click, you know, that wouldn't be connecting at all, right? But but that's not human nature. And so I we we start doing the crossword and then she tells me about something annoying or funny that happened in her day and I mentioned something in my day as we're going. And so suddenly we're talking four times a week instead of once every fortnight, and we're reconnecting in a way that's really nice. And so I would say and the beauty is it didn't cost me anything. I'm I'm doing the crossword anyway, right? And so all we do is we find the time to do it. And secondarily, it has a really nice advantage that it's easy to form the habit because We're not deciding should we do the crossword together today? We know that as soon as Thursday comes around, it's hard enough to warrant doing it together. ⁓ and if you every day if you have to decide something, you're often gonna decide not to. But if you do it by Peter Goldwisser talks about surrendering control of your behavior to the environment. It's Thursday, so I'm gonna do this. I just had breakfast, so I'm gonna brush my teeth. You know, we don't decide whether to brush our teeth, it just happens. And so you want to turn these things into habits. So what I always suggest is look at the things that you love to do, that you love to do alone, and ask yourself, do you want to be alone or is alone a byproduct? And if it's a byproduct, find a way to do it with somebody. Ideally face to face. But it doesn't have to be my doing the crossword online with my sister who's halfway around the world works out really well. And I I think that's a great place to start because it's painless, it's frictionless, and and you'll do it and it'll make you happier right away.

speaker-1: You know what's funny is that ⁓ I developed this ⁓ practice of because I do the wordle every morning. And so I send my mom my wordle score and I there's always some commentary about like, hey, what do you got going on today? You know, I've got this and I'm doing that or I'm c doing this. And then I have this great aunt who lives not that far from me, but I, you know, I hadn't like really spoken to her in a couple of years, but ⁓ but my mom also was found out that she was doing the wordle. And so my mom was sending her scores. And now I send her a score too. And, you know, and now I have this relationship with her that, you know, I hadn't had in a long time. And it's just because we're you we do the Wordle. And then it's like something about the weather 'cause she lives locally and s and and so it's really this wonderful opportunity to have like a daily touch and ⁓ and it creates connection and it cr it also creates ⁓ It creates meaning. You know, it's like I I think about the fact like one of the things I thought about is, you know, that with this great aunt of mine and you know, and she's older, she's in her eighties. And ⁓ you know, if ⁓ if she were to have passed away with without this wordle thing, like I wouldn't have even you know what I mean? Like I I would have been sad at the idea that that somebody had been lost, but ⁓ but it's like I'm gonna really feel that. Like like she's like an interconnected part of my life now just because of this little interaction with the wordle. And ⁓ and I think about how many opportunities there are to do that, like to have meaning and to matter in people's lives just simply by these little acts. And ⁓ and yeah, and like you you said, like n you know, another thing that ⁓ I I think is like if you go to the same coffee shop, like if you're getting coffee, just like go to the same place and you can get to know the people who work there and ⁓ and it really makes a difference in your day. Like it it kinda changes my for me, it it it it always changes my mood in a good way.

speaker-0: Yeah, no, ⁓ absolutely that what we what we don't realize is how many lost opportunities we have in life because we don't live this kind of ancestral world where we get to be close to lots of people. And so your great aunt is a perfect example. You didn't realize what you're missing until you re-engaged. And then you're like, ⁓ this is really nice. And and it does make a big difference in your day. And and so the problem is that ⁓ we're now in in every industrialized country on earth, we're spending more time alone than we ever had before. In part because there's so many opportunities to to be very specifically engaged in behavior that satisfies our particular wants and needs. And so I like to paint landscape scenes. I don't, I'm a terrible painter. But but that's my particular niche and and now I'm spending all my time alone painting landscaping scenes because I want to do that and and and you want to paint fruit bowls. And so we we there's just too much opportunity for us to do our own thing. And what What the data show very clearly is that all that time alone is not helpful, that it's it's making us feel disconnected. And so if you in an ideal world you reconnect with the people I'm sorry?

speaker-1: ⁓ no, I was just gonna say it. I also think that it like removes our shared reality. I mean, like for me, like one of the things that our smartphones have done that has is been so damaging to ⁓ to our relationships and and even just our relationships with other humans, sort of in the broader sense, has been that none of us have the same r shared reality because everybody's reality is so deeply shaped by the the screens and and you know the their social media feed and everybody's is different. And so it's like we don't even, you know, in addition to the fact that you might be ⁓ painting your landscapes over here and I might be painting my fruit baskets over here, that ⁓ that we also like our understanding of the world isn't even the same. Like like we don't even we can't even like rely on the fact that like I can't know that you actually have my same understanding of the world because your input is so different than mine.

speaker-0: Yeah. And the downside of that is we no longer feel the connection. And so again, there's no magic to connection. Lots of animals get through life without any, but we're not those animals. We're the animals that need connection. And what we don't realize is that when we continually pursue the activities that we want to do, we sacrifice the connections that we used to have when we did the couple of activities that all humans could do 'cause there weren't very many more. And so, you know, I always tell people, try to reconnect with the people who matter in your life. But secondarily, if that's not possible, or if you don't want to, like you're happy to be finally rid of those people, which is fair enough, ⁓ reconnect with new people. Like you said, go to the same coffee shop, or if I liked if I'm trying to learn German or or go running and get fit, do that with somebody else because other people will probably have the same goal and you may not even know them already, but find ways to do it with others in such a way that you can then form new friendships. Because, you know, it it it definitely helps us achieve our our self-improvement goals if we do them with other humans. We commit to them in a better way and we f and it's more fun anyway. And so you when we think about it, we think, ⁓ but it's kind of a pain in the ass to find a running club. I could just run out my front door and I go whenever I want. Yeah, that's true. But trust me, in the long run, you'll way appreciate the running club and it'll keep you motivated and you'll still be running two years from now. Whereas if all you do is run out your front door, three months from now you've got no obligation to anybody, you hurt your ankle and that's the end of that habit for the rest of your life.

speaker-1: Yeah, you know, one thing that I've ⁓ that I've caught like that I've set myself up with that it has been really helpful to me has been ⁓ because my brain does the same thing that everybody's brain does where it objects to things that are gonna be a pain in the ass, right? Where it's like, ⁓ that's gonna be a pain in the ass, so I'm not gonna do that. ⁓ it's gonna be a pain in like I I don't wanna go into work. I'm gonna work from home because driving is gonna be a pain in the ass. And ⁓ it's gonna be a pain in the Anytime that my brain says it's gonna be a pain in the ass that I need I'm flipping my I flip the narrative and I'm like, that is exactly why you need to do it. That is exactly why you need to do it. And and it it always ends up being the right decision. I mean, ⁓ not a hundred percent of the time, but most of the time, like, yes, driving to work and back is a pain in the ass. But when I'm there, I connect with other people, you know, I have the opportunity to have face to face interactions. I come home at the end of the day and ⁓ and I feel better. My life feels more meaningful than it does when I'm working from home. And it's like the same is true, like if I go to the gym versus working out in at my gym at my house, right? It's like it's a pain in the ass. I hate getting in the car. And if it's raining and I get but it's like no. It's like when I when my brain is like, no, you know, it's pain in the ass, it's like yes. And that's why you need to do it.

speaker-0: Yeah, I totally agree. And and I I remember when I started rock climbing about ten years ago and I like to go outside, but that's a big effort and I don't always have the time. So I climb in the gym a lot. And I remember thinking, Boy, if I were a billionaire, I'd just put a beautiful gym in my basement and I'd hire someone to mix it up every day. But it I then realized that's just not true. When I get to the rock gym and I see the same faces every day, and then I chat with them, ⁓ how do you do that climb? And ⁓ and and they ch you know, you start to form this community and that's half of what I love about The Rock Gym. And and I'm when I moved up north I left Brisbane and and the Rock Gym I love dearly and had to find a new rock gym up here. And part of the problem was I'd lost all that community of my fellow climbers who I've become tight with over the years of climbing at the same gyms on the same days. And so yeah, it's a pain in the ass because the gym might be crowded and you can't go you have to wait for that schmuck to get off the rock wall so that you can do it. But but but that schmuck is actually a fellow human being who you enjoy talking to, who is ha i is an interesting and nice person and who when you walk in the front door and you see that same person for the thirtieth time, you feel this sense of warmth and community that's so important to human beings and that's completely lacking when we just do things on our own among strangers.

speaker-1: Yeah, and I love the idea that ⁓ of just recognizing the fact that especially when you're first starting something in a social setting, that it feels hard. And and and just like just keeping in mind that it's like gonna get so much better. Like, you know, you just keep showing up and the mere exposure effect means that people are gonna start to like you after you've after you've been there six or seven times just simply because they recognize your face and it's like everybody's gonna start to have warm regard for you after a period of time. And just like really embrace like when when you're in that that moment of like, ⁓ this feels awkward and I don't wanna ⁓ it's just like knowing that the next time's gonna be a little better and it's gonna be a little better and then you're really gonna get the rewards.

speaker-0: Yeah, totally agreed. And it's obviously harder for introverted people than extroverted people. And it and and the thing is that you have to remember when you do something like go to the rock gym or go to the painting studio or or join the running club, you don't have to strike up a conversation with six new people every day and tell them your life story. All you have to do is be a friendly presence. Because as you say, that slowly then you do become part of the group. And even if you're the worst person there, you know, we always have the sense ⁓ but I'll be the worst climber in the gym and and here I am, I'm so old I could be all their f fathers, which is literally true. ⁓ but th that that's all right. Like over time they like grandpa who rocks up to the gym and who's even though he's terrible, he keeps giving it a go. We we think people are much more judgmental about us than they are. Peop by and large, people are are pleased and impressed that you're giving it a whack. Not they're not judgy like, ⁓ I could do that. I can run or paint or whatever so much better than you can.

speaker-1: I love it. I love it. Now I want to ⁓ switch and talk about what you're working on right now. I want to tell well, one of the things you're working on right now. And you are ⁓ doing ⁓ some cool work with the whoop band. And I'm hoping that you can tell us a little bit about that. So so for people who don't know what that is, ⁓ that is of course a piece of wearable tech. ⁓ I wear an aura ring, so it's kind of a similar like to that, but that's the it's like the yep, the the wrist version of that. So tell me about the work that you are doing with them and what's like really exciting ⁓ in in that world.

speaker-0: So there's so many exciting things going on in this world. And and part of the reason there's so much excitement is that the tech is taking off. Huge numbers of people are wearing aura and whoop and and other bands like that. And we're starting to be able to match activities all day long to your psychological state and to your physical states. And so ⁓ just as a for example, we just so this is these data are unpublished, and whenever the data are unpublished, We could be wrong, right? Until we can survive peer review. So take what I say with a grain of salt. But here's a good example of a project we just finished. ⁓ we took and and then the the sample sizes are wonderful in data like this. So we took 5,000 women who track their menstrual cycle, and another 5,000 women who are menopausal or po or perimenopausal and track ⁓ not their menstrual cycle anymore, but track their symptoms. And the their perimenopausal, menopausal symptoms. And then the 5,000 women who tracked their psycho, we also had them track, we also looked at women who tracked their symptoms. Because there's this journal on the app that you can say, ⁓ today I felt bloated or or whatever. And now, I'm not sure how much you and your listeners know about circadian rhythms, but but our body, you know, we we evolved on a planet where we're diurnal, we we're busy during the day when we're predators, and then we go hide at night and sleep when we would be prey because we're not so good, you know, we're vision dependent and light goes away and we're were pretty much anyone's dinner. And so th we have these very strong circadian cycles and it it stands to reason that a a healthy person will have a stronger circadian cycle than an unhealthy person. And it also stands to reason that there might even be shifts that are meaningful within person. And so what we look for in this research was can I predict your menstrual symptoms or your menopausal symptoms tomorrow by what your amplitude looks like today. And and we found that sure enough we can. We

speaker-1: Amplitude.

speaker-0: Sorry, I wasn't clear. Yeah. The the magnitude of that circadian fluctuation. So like I can look at, for example, your heart rate, and I can say, how fast does your heart beat at night? And then how fast does it beat during the day when you're still, not when you're out running, because of course it's beating very fast, but when you're holding still. And what you see is there's a circadian rhythm whereby even when you're just being awake, your heart beats faster than being asleep. And it it's it follows this very a lovely diurnal pattern. You can see the same thing with cortisol, with melatonin. There's lots of hormonal and there's monthly changes as well, of course. And so in this work we find that independent of how whatever symptoms you're experiencing today, I can tell you that your probability of experiencing symptoms tomorrow is less or more than usual as a function of the magnitude of your amplitude. That that on days where you're about to start feeling un unwell tomorrow, Your amplitude already diminishes twenty-four hours in advance so that we can see it coming, even though you personally aren't experiencing it yet. So it's a nice example of how you could none of these features are available yet in the app, but they will be once we get the research nail down where it can start to tell you, hey, tomorrow's likely not to be a great day for you. Schedule your life accordingly.

speaker-1: That's really interesting. So do you think that it's ⁓ is is it the fact that your body is doing something that's creating the strong amplitude that then also is related to having a bad day the next day, is that it? Or is it that like Yeah, yeah. Do you do you have any idea like what that is?

speaker-0: I think so. ⁓ th so, you know, the there's there's lots of things that can go wrong, but most of the ⁓ menstrual and menopausal symptoms are hormonally mediated. And so what you probably have is some fluctuation in hormonal balance that leads you to experience more or less symptoms on those days. You know, we see if you we can track your cycle and we can see your HRV and it perfectly like it's it it looks like a chart that somebody drew in a textbook as your HR V drops, you know, in your when you start menstruation and then starts to rise later in your cycle in your luteal phase, we see the same thing with resting heart rate. And I can see the exact same thing with irritability. Your irritability is perfectly follows the sine wave of your monthly cycle, whereas other emotions don't. You know, depression or con or sense of control or efficacy, they'll have a low point, but then they're basically flat otherwise. And so we see clear hormonal mediation of some states, but not all of them. And in this particular case, you know, your Both menopausal and menstrual symptoms that by and large are hormonally mediated. And I think what what you're picking up in advance of experiencing the symptom is that that hormonal mediation is disrupting the amplitude of your signal, the the regularity of it, and that regularity is going to be felt tomorrow. That irregular.

speaker-1: That yeah, that's so fascinating. I think that ⁓ I I'm really interested in in th those types of data to try to 'cause ⁓ you know, most menstrual cycle tracking apps and and that that use tech, like wearable tech, like the ring or the band or the even the Apple Watch, ⁓ like when they're trying to predict ovulation, they do it sort of based on what happened last month and 'cause it it's all done after the fact where you're looking at, you know, the the increase in in basal body temperature and then increase in respiration rate and some of these other things. ⁓ which I I find like my HRV tanks in the second half of the cycle, my respiration because my respiration rate increases, my heart rate increases, ⁓ and et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ but I'm I'm really curious whether ⁓ we're any closer, and I don't know whether you can answer this question, ⁓ for identifying a really good tell for ovulation prior to the fact. Right? So like We're good at estimating ovulation and then good at confirming it, but we're not good at actually predicting it. And ⁓ and and that is ⁓ the eight million dollar question, I think, in in in those types of devices.

speaker-0: So ⁓ there's a team at Stanford that we've been working with at Whoop and and literally a few days ago there's a paper that the team published with some of our ⁓ acad some of our research scientists as well, ⁓ but really led by the Stanford team, where they use big data sets for women who tract closely and they now they can see a few things. I don't know that they can tell you you'll ovulate tomorrow. But I do think that they can tell you when your ovulation's likely to be irregular, when you might miss a cycle entirely, and when you are now ovulating today. It's that's my memory. I I haven't looked at that paper in a little while, I'm afraid. Even though it just came out, I was looking at earlier instantiations and and I should have reread it to so that I could answer this question. I know, I know, it's terrible. But but they're super close to you know, the it's it's a combination, as you say, of temperature and

speaker-1: Gosh, didn't you prepare? No.

speaker-0: HR V and RHR because they do follow these very distinct patterns. Weird in the sense that like they tend to be high on the first day of menstruation, which you don't you know, that's a day of high symptoms too. So it it doesn't always go with what you would kind of intuitively expect your heart your cardior respiratory system to be doing. But ⁓ but regardless, they're they're getting really close. And I think that ⁓ with a few more iterations, not only will they be able to tell you you'll ovulate tomorrow. But they'll also be able to tell you, ⁓ when you may not ovulate this cycle at all. This is looking like a a long cycle or a missed cycle or something like that. And that would be pretty cool.

speaker-1: Yeah, that is that is really cool. One of the things that ⁓ that really struck me when I started doing research in that area, looking at cycles, was how frequently ⁓ women fail to ovulate. ⁓ and when we first started doing studies, I was finding in my college age sample of ⁓ only women with normal, you know, cycles, like regular cycles, healthy, healthy BMI, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I would reliably get about 30% failure to ovulate on a given data collection cycle. And then when I talk to other researchers who are doing this research, they have the same rates, like about 30%. And I mean, this is a high stress population when we're talking about college students. And we know that stress predicts, you know, failure to ovulate. ⁓ so you know, it may be higher than what it is for like a a normal, non super stressed population, but it's it's still really high. I mean, so it it happens a lot. And I think that women ⁓ really underestimate the ⁓ the extent to which they may be experiencing disrupted cycles. And what a gift to know that. And also just in terms of being able to ⁓ better understand your own fertility, because of course, you know, most women have no idea if they're not trying to get pregnant, whether or not their fertility is in decline or whether their i the tendency to fail to ovulate is increasing or decreasing or stabilizing, like they have no ⁓ window into any of that.

speaker-0: Yeah. And so the beauty of of Aura or Whoop or these straps where you can track is that they start to then be able to tell you. and I think that we're we're not at a we're at the level where we do a great job with population. We're getting closer and closer to the level where we do a great job with individuals. And and I do think, you know, you though you should the nature ⁓ NPJ Digital Health is where this paper just came out. ⁓ and it's the the Wu-Sai is the big funding team that that is ⁓ running it. But the Stanford investigators, some of them are crazy knowledgeable about actual the the day-to-day mechanics of what data are actually useful in determining whether you're going to miss a cycle or not. And so anyway, they'd be a it'd be a great group for you to talk to and or paper to look at.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'll ⁓ I'll link the paper in the show notes for those of you who are interested in having a look. Yeah. And so in kind of closing our conversation, I'm I'm just curious about your overall view. ⁓ and like are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of human connection based on everything that you've done and the way that the world is changing? Like ultimately do you think that that that we're headed in a right place? Like are we gonna be okay?

speaker-0: I think we're gonna be okay. And I think what happens is that we get these major disruptors and th sometimes those major disruptors are so bad that the people who got disrupted never really recover. And so you could look at a lot of the Industrial Revolution as putting people out of work who had great ⁓ hand abilities, you know, maybe they're a seamstress or maybe they were a carpenter and they just never their skills were never valued again for the rest of their life. I mean they they are the the ⁓ sort of unintended consequences the the collateral damage of these societal changes. And every societal change has collateral damage. And ⁓ COVID, the internet, AI, all these are gonna create collateral damage. That's always it's it's a hu human tragedy, but out of that human tragedy rises, you know, ⁓ something that I think is better for everybody. And right now we're at this really weird early stages where first of all AI's down the track and that's doing its all a lot of weird things. But secondarily, all the internet has brought us to a very bad spot where, you know, the companies that are focused on on algorithms that'll keep you engaged so they could sell more products are ascendant right now. But that just creates an opportunity. You know, capitalism is self-correcting in the sense that if I have a great idea for an app that'll actually make you happy and it's better than Facebook or Instagram or whatever, because It you'll use it when you want to and it'll help you connect with others in real time and real space. I'm gonna make a gazillion dollars and so I'm gonna start doing that right away, right? we're just at this bad spot where it hasn't happened right now. And I know of ⁓ I I've talked to founders and innovators who are trying exit to do exactly that. And so far they haven't found the sweet spot, or maybe they did, but they got unlucky and it never got picked up. We d we don't know. But but I do believe that we're not far. Probably I would g I'm gonna guess. five to ten years at the most before instead of all this rage bait Twitter, all the kind of unpleasant aspects of social media, it's actually a supportive milieu rather than a disruptive one. And it's not trying to suck you in, it's trying to help you and then eject you back into the world in a way that makes you happier and and leaving a more meaningful life. So I could be completely full of it. ⁓ but I'm super optimistic actually about all these changes, with the caveat that if if you're on the wrong side of them, It could have just been disruptive for you. If you're at the at the prime age where you're looking for a partner and the apps were always terrible for you, all it did was make your life more difficult. ⁓ but as you said earlier, awareness of that fact is huge because then you can start finding solu you can realize, oops, I'm getting sucked into this vortex ⁓ that I where I don't belong, that's not serving me, and I just need to find another way. And and sometimes it's really hard because it's like a trag it's like ⁓ you can't be the it's an ash equilibrium. You can't be the only one who leaves Instagram behind because then you don't know when the party is, you don't know any of these things. So you could get sucked in and be forced to stay in this n in this evolutionarily stable strategy that's not a good one, but that's a local optima when there's a much better one somewhere else. And all that is happening and will happen, but in the end I I see things getting a lot better.

speaker-1: I love it. And is there anything that ⁓ that I didn't ask you about today that you wanted to talk about?

speaker-0: no, I I I think we covered the this ground really well. You know, it's it's there's it's such an interesting world we live in right now where where the science is getting much better. We've we've discovered that some of our practices were causing us to think we're discovering when we're not, that they're just not not even real results. We're starting to be able to link data across different disciplines in a way that we never could before. You know, there's some wonderful sleep data on hunter gatherers where you give them one of the a whoop or an aura and then you see how long do you sleep without electricity. You know, the answers aren't always what you'd think that they would be, too. And so it's a really cool time for science and for society in my mind. It's just that really cool times are also a little bit scary and disruptive and it and we could get a little bit focused on the negative. But you know the the one thing I always come back to is that uncertainty is aversive, it's scary, but it's also the spice of life. If you If you win a certain reward that you knew you were gonna get, you get almost no dopamine response. It's only when you win uncertain rewards that you get these dopamine hits. And in fact making progress to uncertain rewards gives you a dopamine hit. So really, although we we wish that we had certainty, that would be a mistaken goal. It's the uncertainty that makes life fun and and worthwhile and worth doing.

speaker-1: I love it. I think that's a perfect note to close on. So thank you so much for your time today. And ⁓ where can my listeners find your books and learn more about you?

speaker-0: ⁓ so the easiest place to find the books is wherever you typically like to buy them, Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your local bookshop and and there's all the different versions, you know, they're E or audio or or physical if you're like a Luddite and you wanna have something in your hands. ⁓ Like me. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which I I see real value in myself, I have to admit. and ⁓ and then I you know, you can find me on the web if you're interested in the the scholastic side, unlike Google Scholar and places ResearchGate places like that. And you can also, you know, there's lots of podcasts floating around and there's ⁓ I even have my own website that my publisher asked me to set up. And so Billvonhippel.com ⁓ or William von Hippel dot com, I'm sure you can hit either of those and and you'll land on me and and the kinds of things that I'm up to and like to do.

speaker-1: Great. Well thank you so much and and until next time.

speaker-0: It's been a pleasure.

speaker-1: And that's it for today's episode of the XX Lab. If you want more, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, a rating or review helps other people find it. See you next episode.