Kathryn Paige Harden (behavioral geneticist)

26:31And they don't say, I'm siding with this third, fourth, fifth century church father. When they do it, it's secularized. I think it's interesting to think about how do those ideas still influence how we respond to the science? And also, is there another option? Why are we stuck with the only two options that were given to us nearly two millennia ago at this point? Well, and I think when people hear those two options laid out, they will be drawn to one or the other. And I think what is interesting is as you go through different examples, I will guarantee that you will flip-flop a lot. At first, I would go, no, that's horseshit, right?

27:07Yeah. So that's my knee jerk. But then weirdly, as we understand behavior and genetics role in behavior, again, on a big spectrum, that's also true. We do inherit things. Whether I'm going to label them sin or not is not really relevant. But lo and behold, you do inherit quite a bit. That has nothing to do with your will or choice. And so in some weird ways, we do inherit sin. That's not positive to you. That can be negative. As we'll uncover. But let's go back to the acid trip because you're having a lovely time. And Travis, okay, now he's your husband. Yeah, we got married. Okay, congratulations.

27:42But Travis has a terrible trip. He does. And he is caught in a hallucination where he has crashed the car, he has killed you, and he is to blame. Yes, it was awful. I've been with someone on a terrible trip. That's horrible. And you were also tripping? And I was also, and I had come out of it a little bit. But, you know, if you're still tripping a little bit, you're not the best companion if someone's having a very bad trip. Oh, my God. You know, there's a contagion there. So I think there's several things about this story. One is this is a reason why you should not do psychedelic drugs unless you have really trusted people to process the experience afterward with.

28:19I don't necessarily say that in the book so explicitly, but this turned into a piece of art in terms of the book and growth for him, in part because he could talk about it with me and his friends and his parents and his therapist. And like we could really integrate that into our experience. So I think we're learning more and more that psychedelics can be really powerful tools for growth and discovery. But it's not just like insert drug, output growth. There needs to be some processing and human interaction and attachment that helps you make that experience coherent and learn from it. It was this horrific time in which he was absolutely convinced that he had done something wrong.

29:04He was absolutely convinced that there was no way he could have not done it every time the loop was played. and he was absolutely convinced that he was totally guilty of doing it, that he was totally on the hook for this action. And so it was in so many ways the lived experience of this Christian doctrine of original sin, which is there's no way for this to have gone any other way and you are 100 % damnable. You're guilty for doing it. I didn't know this at the time. My mind wasn't going like, okay, I understand why this experience is so intellectually and personally meaningful to me. It's his trip.

29:49Why am I writing about it? And it took a while to really articulate what does this experience have to teach me? Why can I not forget about this? Yeah. And that was the connection. It was in that moment that felt so true. This thing that I've completely dismissed as like a relic of my Christian childhood. Is it true? Are we on the hook for things that we can't change? What does it mean to be on the hook for things we can't change? And that's where the book goes from there. Yeah, I think it opens the door to a really compelling thought process, which is blame in itself. You give the example of Oedipus who sexed with his mom and kills his father and then gouges his own eyes out.

30:31Yes. And he gouges his own eyes out even though he's not to blame. He didn't know. There's also this juicy debate about is blame relevant if the person had no idea? There are schools of thought that yes, they are. And there are schools that no. So let's talk about blame a little bit. So complicated. So just what is blame? Part of blame is an emotion. Blame is this feeling of I'm outraged and I'm entitled to be outraged. I'm resentful and I'm entitled to be resentful. because you've done something that violates some moral norms, some social norms, some legal norm. The philosopher Peter Strawson, who's working in the middle of the 20th century, called this the reactive attitudes and basically argued, I think convincingly, that there is no human life without other people mattering to you in a way that makes you sometimes really pissed off at them because they have hurt you in some way.

31:30So the blame is this idea of I am entitled to have these reactive attitudes to you. I'm even entitled maybe to make you suffer or want other people to make you suffer because you've done this bad thing. Part of the journey that I took in writing this book, I actually wrote this book. I wrote a draft of it and I sent it to my editor and she was like, this book reads like you figured out what you were thinking as you were writing it. So now that you figured that out, can you please rewrite it? So then I took it apart and I had to rewrite it. And so part of my journey in this book is really thinking about what is the difference between blame and accountability.

32:11And I think blame is you've done something bad. You're bad. I'm entitled to treat you like you're bad. I'm entitled to feel outrage and resentment at you. Does accountability have to be that? And that was a big intellectual growth and personal growth for me over writing the book is trying to pull those ideas apart in my brain. Because on one hand, we think that blame is warranted when a decision was an option and you picked one or the other. You picked wrong, so you deserve blame. Yeah. But we're very forgiving if you had no choice. You weren't aware of a choice. We don't seem to blame there. But then back to the biblical framing, if you sin, regardless of you knew it was a sin or not, it's a sin.

32:54Still blameworthy. Yeah. So it's like we already have kind of two radically opposed. There's a lot of different ideas that we can realize are contradictory in our collective sort of cultural unconscious that are pulling on our intuitions in different ways. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Apple TV, the new U.S. home of Formula One. You can now watch complete all-access live coverage of every Grand Prix, including practice, qualifying, and sprints all in one place. I will be consuming all of those things, Monica. I know you will. I kill for Friday to start watching practice one, following in on a sprint weekend.

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37:38I think we should maybe attempt to define sin as we'll be using it. So I think we can define sin in two different ways. I think it's been defined in two different ways in church history. And then also it corresponds to these kind of two different notions of blame that we've been talking about. So one is sin is doing something that you ought not to have done. There is some rule in your society that's a moral rule, that's a legal rule, that's a social rule that says thou ought not kill someone. Thou ought not have sex with someone that's not your spouse. And you do it anyway. And usually breaking rules comes with some sort of censure or punishment.

38:24And it has to be an act of choice or no. And it just has to be an act either way. You say your favorite definition of it is from Frances Spufford? Yes. Definition. Uppercase sin is the human propensity to fuck things up. It's our active inclination to break stuff. Stuff here includes moods, promises, relationships we care about and our own well-being and other people's. Yeah. So I think that's a lovely thing for us to think about. And I think it gets to, one, it's not just like there's some authority that's telling you what not to do. When you violate a norm, you are hurting people. Often you're hurting people you care about or people who care about you.

39:04And so that tendency to fuck up your relationships because you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing because the rule is there to protect the relationship or to protect the community. I think that's a really good way to think about sin. What's interesting about that definition is he says it's the tendency to do that. And I think this is where we can kind of have two definitions of sin. is sin the action, the doing it, or is sin the tendency to do it, which could be governed by all sorts of things. And I think in the Augustan tradition of you inherit sin, you're not inheriting doing something.

39:42You're inheriting a tendency to do something. When you're thinking about, are you to blame for what you've done? And then the choice comes in. But sometimes we blame people for even wanting to do something, you know, for being prone to do something. We've even had criminal cases where someone was thinking about cannibalism and that became a court case. We're delineating between thinking of something. Yeah. Okay, so that's all of your kind of personal journey. But then your professional journey, which predates this book, which is heavily involved in the book, is that you publish a paper that talks about a certain aggregate of genes that you have discovered that overlap with really increased outcomes of addiction, aggressive behavior, eating disorders, sexual promiscuity, a whole bevy of different behaviors that seem to be linked by some grouping of genes.

40:35Yes. So my lab is in what the field is known as behavioral and psychiatric genetics. So what we're interested in doing is discovering certain parts of the genome, certain parts of your DNA sequence that differ between people that increase your likelihood of developing a certain mental disorder, mental illness, and or behaving in a certain way. And this is a method, kind of a general enterprise, that is shared across lots of labs, across lots of countries, most of whom have nothing to do with anything that we would consider moral behavior. And the way these studies work is you're basically getting DNA from millions of people.

41:19God bless the Scandinavians, right? Let's give them a shot. They have kind of public. Scandinavians, Iceland, UK Biobank, which is in the UK, and then 23andMe customers. So it's a lot of people that are white British 60-year-olds who've spit into a tube and given the British government so much information about their lives. And also in Scandinavia, their medical records are public, although the identity is obscure. So you can do these enormous epidemiological studies. And they link across medical records, criminal legal system involvement records. They don't do that in China? Well, if they do, they're not sharing.

41:53They wouldn't give the data to us. They're not sharing, but they're probably doing it. But how they infamously debunked these vaccine autism connection claims was they were able to look at a group of 3 million kids who had been vaccinated and then a million that had not. And they could immediately show there's no difference. There's no difference there. So that's where it's like this huge benefit. You have these huge data sets and you're basically going through and you're saying, where do people differ in their DNA? And are those differences correlated with whatever behavior that I'm interested in?

42:26So what we were really interested in in my group was what's known as conduct disorder, which is this diagnosis that's given to children. If they are persistently breaking rules, aggressing against other people, maybe aggressing against animals. And there just wasn't the data on that in enough people. So our strategy was basically to say, what other behaviors do we think are caused by the same genes? Because of family studies, because of adoption studies, for which we do have enough data on huge numbers of people. Let's pull as much data as we can on all these different behaviors and kind of triangulate across them to be like, what genes are associated with all of them?

43:12So we were looking at ADHD symptoms in childhood. We were looking at sexual behavior, age at first sexual intercourse, and number of sexual partners. The UK Biobank, if you say that you've had more than 99 sexual partners, it gives you a follow-up question, which is, are you sure? Wow, that's very cultural. Are you sure that you've had more than 99 sexual partners? Have you ever smoked pot? Have you ever smoked a cigarette? Are you engaged in problematic alcohol use? So you drink to the point that it's a problem in your life. And do you describe yourself as a risk taker? And none of these are serious antisocial behavior.

43:53Like having sex at a slightly younger age or like being a little bit more hyperactive. Most people wouldn't even consider that necessarily sinful behavior. But what all those things have in common is someone in our society, Maybe not your group, but someone in our society thinks that's bad behavior. And you did it anyways. You had sex even though in 1960s England it maybe wasn't that acceptable. Is it like misdemeanor sense? Misdemeanor. That's a great word. And what's interesting is that if you identify genes that are associated with these misdemeanors that are consistently associated with all of them, you end up with a set of genes that also project felonies.

44:35Oh, wow. Like literally predict your likelihood of ever being arrested, of ever pulling a knife or gun on someone, of engaging in much more serious antisocial behavior. It also predicts if you've ever attempted suicide. So it also predicts kind of this harmful disinhibition against the self. Yeah, and in this paper, you established that this group, the people who share this cluster of genes, are twice as likely to be arrested. Yeah. So that's a pretty significant finding. Yeah, exactly. And I'll add, too, it's not the case of one in one million versus two in one million. This is like 20 % versus 40%.

45:12Many Americans have a lot of interactions with the criminal legal system. But yeah, so it's not destiny, right? It's not 100%. It's not all genetic. This probably goes without saying, but no geneticist believes really in genetic determinism. This is not a set of genes that fate you to be arrested. But it is a very significant increase in risk. And it's a significant increase in your risk of developing an addictive disorder, too. And this is tricky to think through. How should this information, if at all, affect our judgments of the moral blameworthiness and the legal responsibility that are attached ordinarily to these behaviors?

45:54Well, I think the adoption studies are really interesting. That's another great resource, right, to establish a genetic predisposition to some of this behavior. So tell us about what we discovered. So again, this is thank goodness for the Northern European countries that have these registries. Although there are some good adoption studies in the United States too. My colleague Janae Niederheiser runs one of them. So what you're looking at is children who've been given up for adoption at birth or very near birth and raised by adoptive parents in a closed adoption where they're not having contact with the biological parent, does the characteristic of the biological mother or father or both predict something about the child's outcome regardless of the adoptive parent that they were?

46:39And what these studies show you is that it's always nature and nurture. So if you're adopted into a family where they have substance use problems, you're more likely to have substance use problems. But if your biological parents were addicted to substances or had ever committed a violent crime, you are more likely to develop those same things. Three times more likely. Even if you never met them, even if you're raised by other people. And those odds ratios can change. You know, for some things it's as high as three. Sometimes it's one and a half times more likely. These are people that you've never met, that never raised you, and it still is affecting your behavior.

47:20I like this line. Adopted children who never live with their biological parents are three times more likely to abuse drugs if biological parents abuse drugs. Identical twins are similar in their drug abuse as they are in their body mass index or coronary artery disease. Yeah. Wow. Isn't that telling? Yeah. So there was a great paper published in 2015 by Tinka Polderman and Nature Genetics where they looked at 50 years of twin studies. and aggregating across all of those twins, how similar are identical twins, how similar are fraternal twins, what psychiatric traits look like. They look almost identical to cardiovascular traits.

48:02I find that a really interesting comparison for our intuitions because we are now so used to thinking, well, of course your body weight is nature. Of course it's nurture. Of course it's gene environment interactions. Of course you have some agency, but also a limited amount of it. At least that's your experience of it. And your set point that you inherited from your parents that maybe got catalyzed really early in your life all make a difference. We can do that so easily when it comes to weight. Why do we have such a hard time doing that with becoming addictive to alcohol or drugs? On a sliding scale, addiction, we can kind of get there.

48:37Violence, we don't want. We don't want to go. We don't want to let anyone off the hook for that. Yes. Because violence has a clear victim other than the person doing the behavior. So addiction can hurt other people, but the primary victim is the person using. And so when we're asked to make sense of this science and we tend towards a kind of Pelagianism of its either biological nature or moral, and we're asked to choose. For body weight, we can be like, okay, let's reclassify this as biological instead of moral. With addiction, there's like, I don't know. But then as soon as it's obviously a moral issue, because there's nothing that gets closer to the heart of what humans think immoral behavior is than hurting another person deliberately.

49:30And then we're saying we're not going to be able to reclassify this as not moral. And also you have to take seriously that there's a biological element of it. But that doesn't mean that some people are born bad. That's such a mind fuck, I think, for Americans to keep all of that in their heads at the same time. Yes. They're all a part of this aggregate of genes you have identified. It's not just me. This is such a team science effort. My former graduate student just is an author on the paper that I just finished. And if he's listening to this, he's probably like, it was me doing all this. I'm the one in the trenches.

50:05But I think a really great example is just one gene, and one gene in isolation has a tiny effect, but I think it's illustrative anyway. It's this CADM2. It's a cell adhesion molecule gene. And if you look at what it's associated with, it's associated with having sex with more people and putting more salt in your food and smoking cigarettes and becoming addicted to alcohol. And what is it associated with? It's associated with doing things that bring you short-term pleasure, but you might have a voice in the back of your head saying, Eh, it's not a good idea. That have potential negative consequences.

50:42That really troubles our sense of who we are to think that a gene could be involved in that. It threatens our agency. Why do I do the things I don't want to do? But I think it would be a great time to educate people on, I think the colloquial understanding of genes is a little too simple, which is we like to think there's, they found the gene, the BRCA gene. And there are a handful of these genes, but there are 3 billion genes. Well, there's probably not 3 billion genes. Oh, okay. How many genes are there? I think we're estimating there's 20 ,000 genes. Oh my God. I'm sorry. There's 3 billion ACGT on the DNA string.

51:20Yes. Humans have way fewer genes than we thought that we were going to have. That was one of the big surprises of the Human Genome Project. It was like, we're so complex. We're going to have more genes than anyone. There's species of apples, I think, that have more genes than we do. Oh, okay, okay. And part of it is because there's a lot of our DNA sequence that used to be called junk DNA that regulates how the genes are read. And that seems to be where a lot of the action is in human uniqueness. Not what are the ingredients, but when are the ingredients combined? So yes, you're totally right.

51:53People think of the gene for nearly every psychological characteristic is what we call massively polygenic. So poly means manygenic gene, which means that it's influenced by thousands and thousands and thousands of genetic variants, of genetic differences between people that are scattered throughout the gene, hundreds of genes, maybe thousands of genes. And each of these genetic differences makes the tiniest little bit of an influence. So for height, there's not one gene for height unless you have like Marfans or dwarfism. Most people are taller or shorter because you got a thousand slightly height increasing genetic variants that increase your height by a millimeter.

52:41But you got so many of them that you ended up a tall person rather than a short person. In my first book that came out five years ago, I write about this NBA player who happened to sit on a plane next to a geneticist. And the geneticist was like, why are you so tall? You're seven and a half feet tall. And he was like, I don't know. And so they genotyped him. He didn't have any gigantism. There's no weird, rare thing going on. What it was is there's the gene that makes you a little bit taller than your siblings. And he just had six standard deviations above the mean and all these tiny. If you're flipping the genetic coin, it just came up heads like a thousand times in a row.

53:23And that's why he's so tall. Everything we're talking about when we're talking about addiction potential or likelihood statistically to be arrested for a crime, there's no crime gene. There's no addiction gene. Just like there's really no obesity gene, there's lots of genetic differences. And so there's a distribution. But then every distribution, there's someone who ends up on the tails of that distribution. And that's where we see really big differences in their likelihood of developing one of these disorders. Is AI going to completely make these correlations come rapid pace? Like you must be using AI to go through all this DNA info.

54:03I mean, so one of the big challenges now is we can find genes now that we have many people more rapidly than we can figure out what the heck they're doing. Yeah. There's still ambiguity sometimes as to like which gene this genetic variant is because it's located next to this one and this one. What do we know about that? And then how do these combine to affect protein, to affect cells in which part of the brain? I guess I mean in that it's a pattern recognition machine. I feel like they'll be coming hot and fast. I'm very low confidence about my predictions for AI because I feel like the whole field is moving more rapidly than I'm comfortable prognosticating about.

54:40But it's done amazing things with protein folding problems, which are also really complex. And so how is our knowledge of the genome and the sheer amount of data that's available plus the advances in AI? Where are we going to be in 10 years? I think where we are now would have felt like science fiction 10 years ago. So I'm hopeful that AI will be particularly helpful in this. Okay, we have a gene and then we have an outcome 25 years later, which is being arrested. What is it doing in the body, in the brain? Well, now would be a great time to introduce the fact that this group of genes you and your colleagues have identified are most active in utero.

55:23There's this idea that you sometimes get in psychiatry that some disorders are neurodevelopmental disorders. So you'll hear that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder or schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder. And I'm always like, what disorder is not neuro and not developmental? Right. Everything is neurodevelopmental. And when we're looking at this collection of genes that predict misdemeanors, but also predict more serious antisocial offending and more serious substance use disorders, we can look with reference data sets and be like, okay, well, where in the body and when in development are these genes most turned on, most expressed?

56:08And it seems to be in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. So in utero, prenatal development is when these genes are most specifically active. That fits also with what we know from the animal literature on preterm birth, which disrupts brain development in utero, is associated with elevated risks of aggressive behavior in animals. Children who are born preterm are at elevated risk for ADHD and conduct problems. There's something about pregnancy and your brain being grown when you're being cooked that seems to be really important. And I think, again, part of the reason we struggle to make sense of this is we're so used to thinking about adult behaviors as choices.

56:57But the person doing that choosing was created by a developmental process that begins in utero. and that all of the luck of who they came home from the hospital to is there. But that genetic luck starts affecting their brain development even before they come home from the hospital. And then we get into the juicy philosophical element of this, which is we have come to have appropriate toleration for someone with ADHD, for someone with autism, and these are neurodevelopmental conditions that started in utero. It would hold that we would have that same level of compassion and understanding for the other ones that developed in Europe, which would be addiction and these other behaviors.

57:41But then philosophically, we have an interesting line between all of these. Yes. People's intuitions about what does it mean if you can show that someone's behavior is linked to their early genetic and environmental luck? How should that affect how we treat them? those intuitions are really unstable depending on what the behavior is. So if that behavior is weight, we're like, well, there's nothing wrong with being heavier or skinnier. If that behavior is sexual orientation, we're like, of course, this is a difference between people. When it comes to addiction, I think we're kind of all over the place, actually, as a culture.

58:21But then as soon as there's harm to another person and there's violence, you're, wait, so they... It might have inherited a predisposition to violence, and that's supposed to make me more compassionate of them. This is very Sapolsky determined, that book. I was just thinking about this the other day. I think I'm a determinist. I really do. Really? That's interesting. Before you got in here, we were both saying we love Sapolsky, but we don't like determinism. You don't? Knowing all this? I don't know if I'm a determinist. Like in the academic philosophy sense. So an academic philosopher would say a determinist An incompatibilist is someone who says, everything we do is determined by causal factors.

59:05Our agency is an illusion. And having the freedom necessary for moral responsibility is incompatible with what we know about the determinist universe. I would say that I don't know if the universe is a determinist universe or not. That seems like a physics question that's beyond my pay grade. I don't know if we have free will in the way that a lot of philosophers, but I think that the practice of holding each other responsible is really baked into being human. A social primate. Yeah. We're a social primate. I think Sapolsky would carry it to we're not free, so therefore blame is never appropriate.

59:51Punishment is never appropriate. it's as useless to be mad at your husband who cheated on you as it is to be mad at the sky for raining. Whereas I think, I don't know if we live in a determinist world. I don't know if we have free will, but we're all on this planet and we still have to make decisions about how we treat each other. And I think holding each other accountable is not a supernatural condition, but a social one. Do you want to hear my two arguments against it? Number one, I think because although I agree, we could look back in time at any behavior we observed, we could look back and we could know every single thing that added up to that behavior.

1:00:30That is knowable. If we knew the location of every atom in the universe, we could see exactly why this effect occurred. That gives you the illusion that we would somehow be able to predict what happens next. But my argument is until you can predict, till you have data, till you have scientifically proven a prediction is possible, bullshit because just because you can see how things landed here does not mean you can look forward and predict the future, which would mean it's not deterministic. Secondly, we have this amazing dude on Neil Theis teaching us about self-organizing complex systems and all self-organizing complex systems of which we are one.

1:01:07They have to have divergence in them or they collapse. And divergence is innately non-deterministic. So there cannot be a system without divergence in it. So you're not a determinist and I'm not a we need freedom in order to hold each other responsible. So we have two objections. OK, I'm not like a full I'm not like I'm determined to pick up this cup right now and now I'm doing that. It's not that everything's already decided. but I can recognize it's easy for me to sit here and say we have to keep that person accountable who behaved this way when I'm not behaving that way even though I wasn't gonna behave that way exactly and if I was given the exact same situation genetics I would be behaving that way No one's better than, and I don't know that we're making choices so much as living out a program or living out a process that our genes have given us.

1:02:05I think we're living out a very probabilistic situation. We have a very high probability of doing certain things, which I agree with. Yeah, and I think that number's very high, actually. For people who are listening who are already jumping to, well, no one's going to be held accountable. I want to make clear about Sapolsky's argument, Indetermined, and your argument as well, I think, by the time we get to the end of the book, is... There is a huge difference between removing people who are dangerous from hurting other people. No one is arguing for no accounting. Just letting them go. Yes. The argument is you can take people and remove them from other people so that everyone's safe without blame and without hatred and without being punitive.

1:02:43Many of the people in this country, and in this book, it shocked me to read it, like 60 % of Americans believe in hell. So if you believe in the notion of hell, 60 % of us do, God believes you should be punished. So of course, our criminal system should involve punishment and pain and suffering and atonement. And so that's the division you and I, and I think Monica would all like to see, which is probably you would have done the same thing in the same environment with the same genes. You're not better than anyone. So let's remove them and make everyone safe and make everyone accountable, but without any of the blame, hatred and moral righteousness.

1:03:21The hatred. I mean, I think in particular the sense of you've done this and therefore you deserve to be scorned. You deserve to be exiled. I'm entitled to be elated and happy and feel pleasure at seeing you suffer. Talk about that study you were talking about when people get shocked. Yeah. Please walk us through that. Most typically developing humans, they come in and they show empathy at another person's distress very early in life. Like if a baby hears another baby cry, they will start to cry. It's a really innately aversive thing to see a fellow human suffer. Again, we are a social primate.

1:04:00So ordinarily, if you see another person being electrocuted, you see in the person who's observing that patterns of electrical activity in parts of the brain that ordinarily respond to being pained yourself, right? Like I'm feeling your pain. Unless the person being shocked is first portrayed as being a wrongdoer in some way. They've violated a moral norm. And so they've hooked people's brain up to presumably an fMRI and they're going to watch someone get shocked. And if it's a quote, good guy that gets shocked, you're going to see empathy and discomfort. And then if you see someone being hurt that was first portrayed as a wrongdoer, then you see brain activity that's more characteristic of pleasure.

1:04:43Dopaminergic areas. And that, I think, is telling us multiple interesting things. The first is that why do we feel pleasure at certain activities? Why do we have dopamine when we have sex and eat sugar and drink water and interact with people who like us and experience ourselves being esteemed and watch someone else suffer? That's indicative of how evolutionarily old and necessary to the survival of humans this consequences to violating the social rules is. And this is where I also I think differ from Sapolsky is I don't think we're going to reason ourself out of that. Like I think it's baked into the sauce.

1:05:27I think that telling people that they're going to lay aside their retributive urges is like people advocating for total sexual abstinence and becoming a monk. Some people can do it, but not most people. And it's going to go really against the grain of our nature. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. There's nothing like your first Mac. Here's what people online are sharing. At Dr. Rain says, Everything is just so smooth and fast, I still can't get over it. Sinking stuff between my phone and this is just chef's kiss. At Mr. Incredible 488 says, Apple Silicon basically cures low battery trauma.

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1:07:18It's comfort food with purpose.

1:07:26On the other side, all of our ingrained pleasures can be hijacked and we can feed them really empty calorie versions of it. Right. It's like I'm evolved to like sugar and someone can offer me Skittles. And I think a lot of our culture is basically like the empty calorie version of that retributive pleasure. Well, again, we evolved to overconsume because when we found something in bloom, we were smart to overconsume, get some fat reserves because we would go long periods without. So now we live in a time of abundance where we have to imply morals on top of it. Yes. I felt this so acutely last week and I was aware of it.

1:08:06I'm watching the new Game of Thrones show, A Night in the Seven Kingdoms. Have you watched it? No. Did you watch the first Game of Thrones? I did. Okay, so then you've already experienced this in Game of Thrones, which is there's a battle scene and there's a guy we fucking hate. And there was a moment where our hero was making the bad guy suffer. And we were watching it with two friends and me and the other guy were going, let's go, boys. Like the elation of make this motherfucker pay was so visceral. And I was aware of it. I'm like, look at this thing. But then again, if you think evolutionarily, someone who is a threat to the group is a threat to the group.

1:08:43So if they are eliminated, there should be elation. The big threat to the group is gone. There's other studies where it's like at what point in time will children pay tokens or give up stickers or pay their money in order to see someone who's been portrayed as taking a ball away from a child, see them hit with a club? And it's like by the time they're, I think, five, they're like, here are my stickers. You know, people pay to see those movies. So there's something so fundamental there with that retributive instinct. And then the question is, what do we do with that? Are we going to give ourselves all the Skittles we want because it feels really good?

1:09:24How do we recognize that that has evolved for a reason? Exactly as you say, because we're social animals that are trying to enforce cooperative norms. There's no cooperative system that doesn't have enforcement. without leaning into that. So that primal retributive urge is the only thing that's like running the show. And if you have a theology that says justice is making people suffer eternally in torment, in a lake of fire, and then you have this dopaminergic response to seeing a wrongdoer suffer and you let both of those run the show. You know, I think you end up with the system that we have now, which is not just how do we protect people from themselves so that they can't do any more harm?

1:10:08How do we protect other people from them? But how do we make them hurt? Yeah. Maximally. And not everywhere in the world does that. We have examples of doing differently. And those are really instructive. And what if we keep the impulse behind the pleasure, which is we need to keep each other safe without just doubling down on this juice of retribution? I agree with you. We're always going to have to step over our evolutionary bias. We're going to have to constantly confront these things that were serving us at one time, but now don't serve us. And we got to have tools in place. And I think that's weirdly the great tension of living in this modern world.

1:10:48But also the great opportunity. I mean, I think that humans superpower is our ability to flexibly decide how to live with each other. I mean, back to the anthropological perspective, there are so many different ways that we have ordered our lives and ordered, what are we going to do about the fact that we are messy and perfect people who have to live with other messy and perfect people? There's a lot of ingenuity and creativity that I also think is baked into being human. And so that's really encouraging to like, okay, well, what is the reimagining that people are doing or that we could do around this.

1:11:25Because our systems are aspirational, they're what we hope to act as a collective conscious. Yes. They should be virtuous. We can aim to be better in our institutions than we are in our worst moments. That's right. And so when we evaluate some of our current institutions, they're operating very, however you'd say. Retributively. Retributively. Impunitively. I also read things and I never hear them pronounce. And then I have to talk about the book and I'm like, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. Oh, I want to talk about, well, first of all, I would urge people to go watch. You gave a lecture to, I think it was at college.

1:12:03And it just was, I feel like, made directly for me because you break down Hank William Jr.'s family tradition. Oh, Brain Bar. It's like an ideas festival in Hungary. And there were so many young people there just going to hear talks. Yeah, I loved it. And in there, you talk about, again, to counter the determinist point of view, what an ingenious study. I can't believe they have the technology to do this, but they have done studies where they make a dozen genetically identical rats. Will you talk about that? Yeah. So there's so many different approaches to this where you're looking at genetically identical animals who are raised in identical conditions.

1:12:44and then seeing, this is, I think, back to your fundamental unpredictability of complex systems. If you have the same nature and the same nurture to the extent that we can measure, does that mean you're necessarily going to act in the exact same way? And the answer is no. Your behavior will be similar, but it won't be identical. So some of this is looking at inbred mice, where they're basically in a controlled breeding population. They're all very, very genetically similar. There's also studies of armadillos because armadillos always give birth to four identical quadruplet armadillos. Wow. And then there's what is known as clonal fish who are genetically highly homogenous.

1:13:23Oh, I won't leave out this one. There's also studies of cloned pets. So in Texas, there was a study of there was a couple that was very attached to their pet bull. And so they had him cloned, chance and second chance. So all of these are genetically identical. So in all of these studies, you're looking at if you have the same genotype and if you were raised in a similar or identical environment, are you behaving in the exact same way? So Chance was a very docile bull. Second Chance gored his owners, I think, twice. Maybe even more. When they were doing this American Life episode, they were interviewing him, I think, for the third time in the hospital where he had been gored, the owner.

1:14:04And he said he's not giving up on him. But Chance is a little different because Chance came to them late. Yes, and they don't know the initial. But the rats, when you put them together, that's fast. Yeah, so in this case, it's mice. What they did is they have inbred mice, so they're all genetically very similar. And then they raised them in identical cages with identical food and identical handling, identical temperatures. And then at a certain point, they put them all together in these big mouse vivariums and see what happens. and there's digital sensors everywhere so they can see, you know, which mouse is moving where, when.

1:14:40And what you see is the emergence of mouse personality. Individual differences in which mice are dominating the exits and the access to food, which ones are moving around a lot, which ones are aggressing, which ones are very inhibited and don't want to come out when it's light. and you can't explain it with genotype and you can't explain it with the cages that they were raised in. There's an unpredictable individuality to behavior that's neither one of those. And there's no way at a certain point for humans to have the same environment because we are each other's environments. As soon as they got in a social group, there was no way for every mouse to have the same thing because they had each other.

1:15:28and these initial tiny differences and how that first interaction went. And that could be initially chance, but then life builds on chance. There's a path dependence to those initial things. My colleague at UT also does these studies where he has mice in a vivarium and they establish a dominance hierarchy. And then he plucks the alpha mouse out and sees the power scramble that happens. And one thing that makes the alpha mouse is he pisses everywhere. He's like constantly peeing all the time. And so you see immediately genes involved in drinking water so that I can make pee, like get turned on within minutes of this.

1:16:09And so the plasticity of the nervous system to respond to social cues is amazing. And that's a mouse. Think about how much more complicated it is than a person. Sometimes what I tell my students is that if you're looking at a tapestry, if you're looking at a piece of fabric, Like you would never ask, which is more important, the threads that go this way or this way, right? They're woven together and that is what constitutes the fabric. It is nature and nurture being woven together. And the interface for that is often the epigenome that constitutes the developing person. When we talk about how we can maybe make some changes where we still have accountability, but maybe not this really punitive nature behind it, don't you think in order to do that, everyone has to see this as an issue?

1:16:58Yes. And I don't think they do. I don't think people are upset that people are punitive. Some of us are. But I think people like that there's... Well, they were designed to as we, you know. Right. So like, I don't see how to fix this. That's such a good question. And honestly, I think it's such an important question now. what we're living through politically, where people are being hurt on the streets and then other people are cheering for it. What is that other than identifying with the punisher, identifying with the person that's like, I'm bringing the pain and then inventing a class of wrongdoers to justify it.

1:17:39I think we're used to thinking of their sins and then we get punished for our sins, but I've come to think of it as retribution can also be a sin in that it is another really primitive aspect of our biology that gives us pleasure that we can indulge in and over indulge in and indulge in regardless of how much it's hurting other people. Gosh, I wish I had a good answer for that question. How do you convince people that it's a problem to want to hurt other people or yourself. Yeah. It's tough. In that lecture, you were asked this, it turned over to the audience a bunch, and most people were along the same path.

1:18:19And I think probably a lot of people listening will have this thought, which is, okay, if we've identified this suite of genes, and we're entering into an era where either gene editing is more realistic, perhaps the epigenome, they're erasing chunks of it. In mice, you have people who are about to do IVF can look at the embryo. I think people will be curious to know what you think about embracing these genes or wanting to eliminate these genes. Yeah, I have so many thoughts about this. I'm so glad you asked this question. Okay, so the first thing is going back to all of these behaviors are in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, massively polygenic.

1:18:59So they're influenced by thousands upon thousands of tiny genetic variants that have a tiny effect. And the implication of that for gene editing is that we're not going to be gene editing a 20th of your genome to make you slightly less risk-taking. So I think the applications for CRISPR, Cas9, which is our technology for gene editing, is going to be monogenic disorders. Like you have sickle cell. Brenner syndrome is an example of serious antisocial behavior caused by one gene. The technological question that we're going to have to grapple with is not going to be gene editing. It's going to be genetic selection.

1:19:38And so that's a technique in which people create IVF embryos. They might do this because they have fertility challenges and they were going to do IVF anyways. But increasingly, there's marketing doing this electively. So you could conceive the old-fashioned way, but you choose to conceive by creating a lot of IVF embryos. and then genetically testing those embryos. There's what people already test embryos for. Is there aneuploidy like Down syndrome or trisomy 18? Is there a monogenic disorder? And then looking at a polygenic score. So this would be your genetically predicted likelihood of that embryo eventually developing a substance use disorder or eventually scoring very highly on an IQ test.

1:20:28And this is not science fiction. There are ads on the New York subway right now that say, have your best baby. And it is an ad for pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos. What I think is really important for people to know about this is, one, these genetic risk scores that we've developed, I've developed, other people have developed, they are not crystal balls. For the reasons we've been talking about, I can say that your probability of something is higher or lower, but that's totally different than, say, like Huntington's disease, where if you have this gene, you're going to get that disorder.

1:21:07So there's an uncertainty around the estimates that I don't think often comes through in the marketing for these techniques. The second thing is the science is most applicable when it's applied to people who are genetically similar to the samples in the original research. And most of those people are Northern Europeans. Right. So anyone who comes from a different part of the globe, virtue of having less genetic similarity to Norwegians or white British people from the UK, those estimates are going to work much less well or maybe not at all. And there's no ads on the subway being like, have your best baby only if you're genetically similar to people from Northern Europe, right?

1:21:54Like that's not part of the advertisement around this. And then the third thing is genes don't do just one thing. They're involved in lots of things and there's no gene for risk-taking. And I have this thought experiment in my book and I say, imagine if we had some eugenic dictator and they said, no one gets to reproduce the old-fashioned way. Everyone's going to do IVF-created embryos polygenic selection. and we are only going to select the embryos that have the least risk-taking genes. And we're going to repeat that so that in every generation, we are only getting the most inhibited, puritanical, not risk-taking, not likely to use substances.

1:22:40Separate from a terrible dystopian lack of freedom, do we actually want to live in a world in which no one has that? Thank you. Your last point is the one that I believe in strongest, which is the nature of your study is we have criminal data. We have genetic data. We do not have data of overachieving, writing prowess. These are things that are hard to measure. So one that I love is I grew up learning dyslexia made you twice as likely to end up in jail. But over time, what we've learned is dyslexia also makes you two to three times more likely to be a SEO? Addiction? How many of our writers are addicts?

1:23:20How many of our poets? How many of our musicians? We have data on that. We're only looking at the pathological side. This is the inherent problem with the DSM is we've observed these pathologies, but we're not really shining a light on, well, what's the upside of it? There might be more upside than there is downside. This is a trade-off situation. So we're coming up with, quote, normal, and we're going to lose all this diversity. And then you will have determinism. Variety is necessary to the richness of human experience. And I totally agree with you. I mean, if you look at who is most likely to be a successful entrepreneur by the age of 30, we can see this in the data.

1:23:56It's people who have social privilege, white men from middle to upper income families, and then men who experimented with substances and had a little bit too much sex and engaged in low level delinquent behavior when they were teenagers. And what is that? That's risk tolerance. and society needs people who are very aware of risks and potential negative consequences, but we also need people who are willing to go for it and are more risk tolerant. I think that everyone's strength can also be their weakness, but also everyone's weakness can also be their superpower. I mean, there'll be no technological developments.

1:24:31There'll probably be no art. There'll be so many things missing. We'll just freeze right here. There's another study where they look at people who are very high on genetic risk scores for schizophrenia, which again, people can select against now in their embryos. If they're not patients with schizophrenia, they're more likely to be artists. They're more likely to be musicians. They're more likely to be in creative professions. Oh God, that's so hard though. If you think about a distribution and the top 1 % is this, but this zone in the like 75th to 99th zone are the people who are having so much imagination and openness to new experience.

1:25:12How can you say that gene is a good gene or a bad gene? It's all of the above. Yeah. I have a chapter in my book about this. It's called Variety. And it ends with this observation from Durkheim, who's a founding sociologist. And he had a paper where he said, some level of crime is necessary to society because a crimeless society is one in which everyone thinks about things exactly the same and no one has any differences in moral imagination. And if we look back in time, many of the people we now think of as moral pioneers were criminalized in their time. So I don't want to underplay serious antisocial behavior has costs.

1:25:57It hurts people. But I don't think that we can sin then say, so let's get rid of the genes. People can do bad things, but that doesn't mean the genes are bad genes because those genes are doing many different things in the human body. Diversity is grist for evolution. There's no evolution without mutation. There's no evolution without diversity. Yeah, Galileo was a criminal. Socrates, Jesus. Yeah, a lot of criminals. Andy. Okay, original sin on the genetics of vice, the problem of blame, and the future of forgiveness. Forgiveness. Radical book. I do applaud and love how personal and memoir-y it is.

1:26:33Thank you for saying that. In addition to being chock full of yummy scientific research. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's wonderful. Thank you so much for coming. Everyone check out Original Sin. I hope you'll come back when you have another book. I would love to. Thank you for having me. This was a delight. Oh, good. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

1:26:59Rob brought us coffees today. So nice. Very exciting and nice. I agree. Excited by it and I think it's nice. I agree. And because as you know, are we recording, Rob? As you know, I, oh, wow. Okay. Well, because we talked about it. For the listener, Dax is wearing his sunglasses that he just got that he's obsessed with. The aforementioned sunglasses. From a previous episode. Go find it if you missed it. Do you ever watch people at like award shows who wear sunglasses and they pull it off? Yeah. I'm a little jealous of them. I know people would be like, what do you do? I can't pull it that off. They'd be like, why?

1:27:38It's not about— Similar to how you're feeling right now, you know? It's not about pulling it off. It's just like, oh, why? Because it's a nice little safety blanket. I know. You know? It's like a little armor for people. I think if you started doing it, I think people might be like— He relapsed. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that would be like the number one. They'd say that first. Yeah, this guy's high. I'm losing my touch because I hadn't even thought about that. Don't get any ideas. And then two, I think they'd be like, oh, he has an eye issue. A sty. Or blindness. He's going black. Exactly. Acular degeneration.

1:28:17Now, another pair that I have, just look how gorgeous these are. The other pair I have are black frames, but they're kind of a light pink lens. And that I think I can wear inside because it really kind of looks like a reading glass. Okay. And so you're interested in wearing them inside. I don't know what it is about these. I prefer to just be in them. Wow. Isn't that something? Yeah, because I don't think you're the type. I don't like them. No, I just don't think you're the type that needs like a shield. You're just not really that type. That's totally. You really put yourself out. You're the opposite of someone who's needing a shield.

1:28:59That's fair. Yeah, I think like there are people with a lot more social anxiety. Yes. But I will say I've had moments at those things where it's like either I want to look around in rubberneck. Sure. But I don't want to be caught doing that. Okay, hold on. Put your glasses on. Okay. They're going for the listener. They're going back on. They're going back on for the listener. Now, I want Dex to look at, like, you're trying to look at somebody, okay? And I'm going to see if I see what you're doing. I'm also highly lit from the front because of the nature of the studio. Yeah, I see what you're looking at.

1:29:28You're looking that way. Oh, and you're making sexy faces. A chair. The old yellow chair. Yeah, that is a sexy chair. But if I thought you couldn't see me one time. I'm moving your mouth. My whole eyebrow. Okay. Okay. So I tend to walk and travel, even when I drove here way back when. Uh-huh. I don't take to-go cups. I just bring my mug open carry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that you're calling it open carry because that is, I guess. That is what it is. It's illegal if there's alcohol in here, but there's not. It's just tea. And I saw on Instagram someone writing about people like me who open carry their coffee.

1:30:09They have an opinion about that. Yeah. Okay. It said those people have chaotic energies. And I wonder what you think about that. Well, I bet what they're inferring is that someone has scrambled to leave the house. And they didn't either have time to transfer it to a to-go travel mug. Or they're just like so scattywampus leaving. They don't even know what's in their hand. Yeah. I don't think I would lead to any of those conclusions. But I see the logic underlying the theory. Well, they said that it reads chaotic energy just truly deeply I don't give a fuck. So kind of cool as well? Well, yeah, it ended up being a positive review of these types of people, which I appreciated.

1:30:55But also, like, I don't think it means I don't give a fuck. It actually means there's no to-go mugs that are as cute as my mugs. Yeah, you're a mug collector. Yeah, connoisseur. A curator of mugs. Yeah. So it's actually more about that mixed with rats, rats in water bottles. Now you're afraid to have a clothes carry. I just don't think you can ever get those that clean. I do hate. In fact, this is one. I have these little annoying habits as a family member. I think I do a lot of the dishes. Okay, yeah. And I, they drink from, my family members drink from certain water bottles that are impossible to clean.

1:31:37I know, yeah. And I do get a little, I will clean like 600 dishes and I will sometimes leave these two or three things because I'm like, they can't be clean. If you want to drink out of this impossible to clean thing, you got to clean it. I'm with you on that. I get a little stubborn about that. And I should just clean them. And most of the time I do just clean them and I like myself more if I just clean them. But I am annoyed when someone makes a choice that's going to be harder for me. Yeah, I hate that about life. I could make a whole Greek tragedy about the dumb little tiny wars that go on in a house, in a family.

1:32:12Silent wars. Yeah, another one that's going on, which is hysterical, is Kristen's very, very conscious of microplastics. Yes. I have surrendered to that they're everywhere, right? I'm not even going to try. And so there's two different kinds of paper plates. One is covered in a little bit. I would have thought like some kind of a wax. You know the type. Yeah, I do. And then there's just the raw paper ones. The one you're talking about is classic. It's what most people are eating off of. And it is covered, I think, in a thin layer of plastic. It has goo. Yeah. And if you don't use it and you put like a steak on it, all the sauce gets absorbed into the paper.

1:32:48If you use a natural kind, yeah. Yeah. Or anything you would have with moisture, once you put it on there, it just sucks it out like a sponge. So I can't stand those plates. If I were having like a piece of toast, fine. But I generally feel like I'm putting something with some moisture. Bravi toss. Yeah. And so there's two different stacks of them. Okay. Basically his and hers. Yeah, sure. And this battle of which one's on top. So it's like I had seen the paper ones. And in my mind, I'm like, none of us like those paper ones except for you. The kids and I like this other one. So I put that on top.

1:33:23And then I noticed, then I came in the cupboard and I noticed there were her big stack of raw ones, my stack of plastic covered ones and then now a new stack of paper different kind no the ones that were on the bottom but now we've just added sandwiched kind of like the game you play we put a hand on top of each other and you know and i was like oh my god this is hysterical look at us like working out this plate thing in the cabinet i know make make both making our adjustments and then i was like i mean the solution here is a two state system like two separate stacks there should be two different stacks but somehow we've designated one area for stacking the paper plates I have a detailed question.

1:34:00It does matter, though. Okay. Are the plates the same size? They are, which they generally aren't. So that becomes another issue. Well, yeah, because if they're not the same size, I think feng shui. The smaller diameter should go on top. Correct. And by the way, we're in an interesting phase right now because somehow they're the same size. But traditionally, historically, the plastic-covered ones are a little bit smaller. Oh, really? And then when I see the bigger ones teetering on top, I'm like, it makes me feel uncomfortable. And then you add in my just wanting to use those plates. Sure, sure, sure.

1:34:33But all these hilarious little subtle quiet dramas that are going on in households is really funny. Or another one is, and I found that this is kind of a common thing that happens in marriages, and it tends to also line up gender-wise. I cannot stand the dishwasher. My take on the dishwasher is you have to wash it to put it in the dishwasher. And people are like, no, you don't. Yeah, you don't. And then I'm constantly pulling things out of the dishwasher that need to be rewashed, particularly silverware. I'll find a knife and I'm like, someone needed to scrub that before you put it in there. The dishwasher is not going to scrub.

1:35:07So it's like, I'm going to clean it, right? And then I'm either going to go put it, bend down and put it in this box that I then have to go later and bend down and pick it out of the box. I hear you. Or just put it on the drying rack. To me, there's an extra step. I know. And it's this endless battle. and everyone, you know, the people that are in the dishwasher can't think they get the dishes clean enough. I don't. It seems like an extra step. I'm like, just wash the damn thing and be done with it. Can I input here? Yeah. Oh, I got to add one more grievance. Okay. What also happens is in my circle, a lot of the people that prefer the dishwasher, they want it to be full to run it because they don't want to waste.

1:35:43And that's admirable. But what ends up happening is the things everyone uses a lot end up in there. And then you're out of, it's always the bowls are gone. We're out of bowls. and then we're out of fucking silverware. Now I got to go into the washer and rewash the whole thing to use. That part, I get. That part's bad. I get that. Okay, so I've aired all my grief. Now I want to weigh in on the dishwasher because I have a very, very rare and unique perspective. Oh, okay. Okay? So I grew up as dishwasher being my chore, like loading and unloading. And I hated it so much. And I fucking hated the dishwasher.

1:36:25And it was my nemesis. Then I have lived without a dishwasher. For the last 15 years. Yes. And I started to hate myself. Like I hated not having a dishwasher. But having to wash every dish was so hard, especially when you're cooking. Because then you have the big pots and pans and the little dishes. And then if you're cooking for a lot of people, oh, my God. That I started to just—I would walk into the kitchen after everyone left, and I would just look around. And I was like, I'm walking out. I'm going to move out. Yeah, I can't. I'm burning this place down. I don't know what to do. I mean, hours.

1:37:08Hours. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Um, so now back full circle, I have my, I have a dishwasher and I've had one for a month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. You love it. Oh my God. And do you just pitch a bunch of dirty dishes in there? I put clean ones in there just for fun. Okay. Um, no, I, I, yeah, I use it. I don't mind loading and unloading. Do you wash the stuff before you put it in? Rinse. I do. You, you have to rinse it. What if there's cheese stuck to like a knife or a fork? You got to get that off. But you just push that off. You got to scrub it with a sponge. I've never, I don't scrub anything with the sponge before it goes in.

1:37:49I do rinse it. Sometimes I'll use my hand to like get something hard off of it. Yeah. But I don't do any scrubbies. My breakfast every single morning, as you know, is oatmeal. Bob's Trusted Brandt's two scoops of protein. Everything's sticky. Protein is sticky. Oatmeal's sticky. If I were to rinse that bowl off, forget it. All that stuff would be stuck to it after the dishwasher. And then the spoon itself is also covered with very sticky stuff between the oatmeal and the protein powder. It's like sticky. So I have to wash it with a scrubby sponge to put it in the dishwasher. But at that point, it's clean.

1:38:23Well, hold on. Can you just put it in the sink? Yeah. Put the hot water immediately. Like you finish, you put it in the sink, hot water in the bowl, then you leave, right? So it's sitting. No. Really? Well, first of all, no. then we might have dishes soaking all over. That's unacceptable. We have a bunch of stagnant water. Mosquitoes may lay their eggs in there. It will not just fall off. It's going to require scrubbing, period, because it's that sticky. It's like a cement. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm going to have another thing. Now you have another. It'll just make me vomit. Yeah. It was when you were talking about cooking.

1:38:57So, and I'm recognizing, like, what a, I'm so terrible. It sounds very controlling. I'm sorry. Yes. This is, like, the most type A side of my personality, And it's probably my kink, my proclivity. And I keep waiting for someone to notice now for 20 years and no one's ever noticed. When I cook my big spaghetti dinner, it's involved. There's lots of pots and pans. What I pride myself on is that I'm cleaning while I go. And by the time I put the stuff on the table, there's no dishes. I know. And I'm waiting for someone to clap their hands for me. You say it all the time. While I'm trying to get my kids in, I was like, you can clean while you're cooking.

1:39:34and then you don't have this big thing to do. Because there's all these five minutes downtime when you're cooking, right? I gotta let that simmer for this. Well, that's a great time to clean this. Trust me, I know all... Natalie and I fight about that all the time. Clean while you go? Yeah. And you're a what? Clean while you go guy? Yeah, because we're cooking together. Yeah. Listen. We should move in together, Rob. Hold on, stop this. Everyone wants to be slash tries to be a clean while you go person, okay? Normally, if I'm making a... like when I make Monsgiving. Yeah. For most of it, I'm cleaning while I'm going.

1:40:09I'm like, oh my God, this is great. And I don't have any dishes. I don't have any dishes. All of a sudden at the end, when things are. The system breaks down. It backs up. All of a sudden you have so much crap. And like. There's a lager jam somewhere in the system. There's nothing you can do about it. Then, even if you do, even if you clean completely while you go. Yeah. Then you serve everyone. Uh-huh. All the dishes that had the food are dirty. All the dishes that people are eating off are dirty, the utensils. it's dirty again. Immediately, there's so much to do. There is, but then why add in all of the heavy-duty stuff, the cutting board, the knives, the things that you're scrubbing that you got to do?

1:40:44Cleaning while you go is definitely the way, but you can't— We're making a meal, pun intended, out of this, but of course, now you just— So spaghetti is a great example. I'll watch Kristen warm up a plate of spaghetti bolognese on those raw paper plates, and I'm like, oh my God, how could you do this? You need a non-absorbent. It's like a sauce. Right. And then those things are like thick with saturated spaghetti. It's almost going to break through the bottom. It's so waterlogged. She loves it. She loves it. And she's doing just fine. And she did fine before me. Exactly. And she would do fine after me.

1:41:24You got to constantly tell yourself this. Everyone's so different. I mean, even because you put your paper plates in the microwave. Oh, yeah. I love it. Yeah. I don't put any paper in the microwave. Why? I'm against that. Tell me why. Similar, well, sort of similar to what you're saying. Like, then it's like in the plate. And even though it has that goo, I just don't like what ends up happening. Well, you probably shouldn't microwave the kind of paper plates I use because that's probably when you get a lot of leaching. That's also part of it. I'm like, I don't think this paper is supposed to be heated up like this.

1:42:01So I heat glass. Okay. And ceramic. Yeah. But everyone's different is all I'm saying. Absolutely. And also, like, another thing I'm aware of is, like, we all think we don't waste. Or, like, we all have a commitment. But what I realize is it's, like, it's such specific categories. Yeah. Like, Kristen's really, really dedicated and great at not wasting. Yeah. She cares a lot about that. But then there are these things that I don't waste on. And I realize, oh, she's wasting up a storm. Right. So, like, as good as you think you are, there's just stuff you don't even see. You would hate living with me.

1:42:40I waste so much. And I don't care. And I think it's, yeah. You don't have any kind of ethical hangover. And actually, my parents were just here. I am. But I wonder if it's because my parents care a lot about waste. Uh-huh. And you're rebelling. I think it's their frugality. And like even so my mom. That's kind of what I'm stuck with is the like trying to get way too many uses out of things. Yes. And I think I've rebelled because I'm just like, oh, I didn't. My parents were here when my farm box came. Okay. I get a farm box once every two weeks. Delivery of produce, right? Yeah. From the farmer's market.

1:43:18Uh-huh. And it's a one-person box. There's not like that much stuff in it, but it's exciting. I love it. Yeah. And it came and my dad was like, oh, cool. And then he was like, what are you going to do with all this food? And I was like, well, I mean, I cook stuff. And he was like, well, all of it. I'm going to eat 30 % of it. What do you mean? Yeah. What do you mean am I going to do it? I'm going to eat a third of it. I was like, no. I either, like, maybe I'll give it to someone or I'll throw it out. And then they hated that, you know. My mom made spaghetti one day. But really quick, did they hate, because these are two much different categories.

1:43:51Did they hate that you're wasting your money? Or did they hate that the food's being wasted? Both. Both? Yeah. Double whammy. Yeah. Okay. It's not even like, they're not thinking it through like, oh, wasted food because other kids don't have food. It's not like ethical like that. Yeah, yeah. It's just like, as sort of you would say, like, I'm not a good steward of things coming my way. I'm not like, oh, then how will I use this, make this last for two weeks or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, my mom made spaghetti one night and then she was like, you know, then they were both obsessed with like eating the spaghetti.

1:44:23When are we going to eat the rest of the spaghetti? And when is it? And I was like, we're not going to eat it. I'm going to throw it away. Like, enough with this, like, you spending all your brain power on figuring out when to eat the leftover spaghetti on your vacation. Yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle of YouTube. Yeah. They're my parents. They're going to, like, any time I spend, like, any money, they're worried. They're probably still worrying about how you're going to turn out. Like, I don't think a parent can turn that off. It's like, bitch, she turned out. She's 38. This is who she is. And I know I'll probably be fighting that with my own children.

1:45:02But it's like, at some point you're like, there's no more, you know, how they're going to turn out. They're out. I know. But it's scary. It's scary when you have these little people walking around and living their lives. And they came out of your body and they came out of your egg and your sperm. Like, it's too scary. even so they left this morning and you know they were walking they just there's just so funny they just think my everything through so many steps you know it's so like my dad was like okay well the uber oh i guess we'll just walk to the he's probably worried about how they're gonna get in the gate exactly like how they're gonna i was like well it's fine because we'll just give them the code that calls my phone he was like yeah but your work i think i have to call your phone i was Like, okay, whatever.

1:45:47Just, I guess, do whatever you're going to do. Just walk to the airport, man. Just stop. I know. It's so funny. But, yeah, so then they walked out of my house, and they were walking to the gate and waiting for the Uber there. I heard, you know, he was walking, and I heard somebody else walking up, and I heard him say to my parents, do you live here? And then my dad said, no, our daughter lives here. and I was like, oh, that's so cute. But think how funny they looked walking through our neighborhood with rolling bags. I know. I know, but like I thought that was. They really don't look like robbers.

1:46:29It's cute to have a daughter. They could be carrying television sets out of a house and I would not think they were robbers. They're the opposite of robbers. Yeah, yeah. Just look wise. They'd be great. In that way, they'd be great robbers. They should be jewel thieves. Jewel heists. Yeah. Yeah. So it's cute. It's cute to have parents who care about their daughters and their sons. Yeah. It's really sweet. But also I'm like, I'm throwing out the spaghetti. Just get out of here, Harvey. You need to get out of here. Yeah, just go. I'm going to throw everything away. Speaking of daughters, you wanted to tell me something.

1:46:57Oh, just that I had a dream day with Lincoln. She had the day off of school. And so I said, what do you think about going out to the beach and riding bikes along the strand, the paved bike path. Santa Monica. In Santa Monica, which if you don't live here, I would imagine you'd think, well, people must go out to the beach a lot. You don't. It's very far. Unless you live there. Yeah, yeah. It's like an hour drive generally, even though it's 18 miles away. So, yeah, we loaded up the bikes in the truck and we went and we rode bikes for like, I don't know, six, seven miles. Wow. We got to look at some of the fire damage in the Palisades.

1:47:38You can see it from the bike path. Wow. And then we went to my very favorite restaurant from when I lived there for 10 years. Frito Misto. And sat down inside and ordered. I tried to talk her into the pink sauce. She didn't want it. But then my pink sauce came. She had it. She loved it. And we got a side of pink sauce. Oh, good. And we fixed it. But, yeah, she actually loved it, which is great. Because most of these things I share with them that I'm so excited to share with them, they could take it or leave it, you know. Ouch. You're also doing this thing and I'm aware of it, but I still do it, which is like I want them to – I guess it's – probably I just want them to be interested in me.

1:48:17Yeah. As a person independent of – right? Yeah. And so like when we were getting off at the highway or right before we got off, I was like, oh, that was my exit for 10 years. Uh-huh. And of course she doesn't – She doesn't care. I was like, give a shit. I was like, even as I'm saying this stuff, I'm like, she doesn't even care. Did she say, oh, did she pretend? Yeah, she like feigns. Sure. But I know, I know. I'm just picturing like my dad told me he got off an exit. I wouldn't care. That's just the nature of. Well, is it? Okay. I don't know. Well, so it culminates in. Okay, help me. I never, I'm rarely in Santa Monica, but I did live there for a decade.

1:48:55We leave Frito Misto. And of course, I always have to drive by my old apartment. I can't go to Santa Monica now. We were in a hurry to beat traffic. I was like, I'm turning right on you. I got to look at it. Wow. Okay. Okay. So we're driving. I don't even stop. I know better than to stop. Well, I would have liked to have stopped and stared at the building for five minutes. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, that's where the gang came up my stairwell. Maybe that's what they're worried you're going to start talking about. And they're like, I don't want to know about that. No, but we look at the place. And also, okay, then the subversive thing I'm hoping trickles through is like, hey, we didn't always have money.

1:49:33Look how far we've come. And look how I lived for a decade. Yeah. And you may have to live that way for a decade too, you know. There's some, and maybe they won't, whatever. They won't. We know they won't. We just have to be realistic, right? I don't know. I could definitely see Lincoln having the same pride that I had, which is I can see her deciding, no, no, no. I want to have my own place. And she wants the pride of it being her own place and her pay for it. Yeah, I can see that. That's very foreseeable for her. I could 100 % see that. Definitely. And in which case it'll be something similar to the thing we're looking at.

1:50:10Yeah, but don't you think, and maybe this is not, maybe this isn't true. I don't know. And there's no way for us to know. But I feel like there is a difference when you know at the end of the day when push comes to shove, you can call your parents and you can get some help. By the way, I have that. I had that. Right, right, right. I was working on SoulCycle. I did not—I was making$13 an hour. It was tight. It was hard. But— You weren't panicked. I wasn't, I was, like, I was stressed a lot, but I wasn't, like, deeply in my soul panicked because I knew at the end of the day, one, they could probably help me in a jam.

1:50:49Yeah. And two, I'd always go back there if I had to. Yeah. I could live in their basement if I had to. Like, they could support me. Right. In that way. Yeah. Even though they told me over and over again not, like, don't depend on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we need, like, you know, they were trying to scare me. Of course. It didn't work. Well, why don't you come back? Well, you're not allowed to come back. Yeah, exactly. You need to proceed as if you can't come back, but of course you can't come back. Exactly. So, you know, that's a little different. But I agree with you. I think, I'm sure she'll want something of hers.

1:51:20She's prideful in the same way I'm kind of prideful. So, but yeah, so we're just, and I'm also like, I'm aware. I'm like, she's just looking at a random building. Like that building means so much to me. But that is just, there's no difference between that building and the one next door. it's just a building and she did go she gave me a like oh wow that's that's pretty like cool that that where you started and where we're at that's nice that was nice yeah yeah and then she like looked up on her phone like it was a script yeah i was like chan gbt what to say to your dad when he's trying to feel proud of himself and instill a lesson into you somehow it's also probably it's different because maybe in Michigan, if you're driving by your old house in Michigan, they probably will feel, they would feel different.

1:52:06It's some, they live here. Yeah. I think that's different probably. But I do wonder, yes, if we were ever in Michigan, cause I very much want to do that. I want to take them on a tour of every place I lived. Didn't you already do that? No, I do that. I did that with my dad when he was dying. You do that with Aaron. Aaron and I always go back to Milford and we look at his house and my house and our junior high and a couple other places we hung out. And we can sit there forever and just look at it. But yeah, no, I drove with my dad around and looked at every single place I lived because I wanted to take pictures of it.

1:52:42Of which I don't know where they are now, but I had this. But I doubt they would be terribly interested, but they would be nice enough to act interested. I think they'd be much more I'm not interested in that. They're just a thing, you know? No. They're a given. You're not interested at all in them. It's like— In some ways, yes, and in some ways, no. Obviously, the older you get, you become more and more interested because you start understanding that they're you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That you come from that. Like, would you—I would love to see where Ashok lived. Yeah, that I love. Yeah. And I have.

1:53:15I've been there. I—when I was little. Yeah. Um, we stayed there and like, I love that, like that that's our family history. That's what I mean. I think part of it's the location. Yeah. Obviously seeing something in India. I mean that really like he grew up in a village. I don't even have to say anything. He's just like, here you go. Yeah. And that's cool. But even like, even in Savannah, I feel like we would go by sometimes the first house my mom lived in. Uh-huh. And I think that's cool. Okay. Okay, good. But I've been increasingly embarrassed about my self-indulgence. Okay. Yeah. And it's pretty self-indulgence.

1:53:58Well, you can just go by yourself. Maybe you just don't need to bring her. I would have gone without her. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I go. Yeah. And I generally, what she got spared is I also drive down the alley and I pull into my old spot. Oh, you do? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yes, yeah. That's funny. You know, I was very superstitious about that apartment. Because, again, I lived in it for a decade. Yeah. At the time I left, I had lived in it for more than a third of my life. Yep. And we moved so much as kids that, like, I came to, like, just love how permanent that was. Yeah. And I was so afraid to move into the house here in Los Feliz.

1:54:34I just thought my whole world was going to unravel. Yeah. And I had this fantasy that I was going to like rebuild it in my garage identically. Oh, my God. So that I could go like sit in it and remember the hunger and write in there maybe. Yeah. And I still have so many recurring dreams about that apartment. That is weird because we were just talking about— I don't have it with that house. Yeah, we were just talking about it with the house where you're just like, I don't care. I don't care to be back there. Well, I think a lot of it is like I think where you cement your identity. Like I cemented so many parts of my identity in that 20 to 30 in that apartment.

1:55:20Yeah. That I still kind of define myself as. Yeah. And that, I kind of came to this house already baked. Sure. Interesting. The kids are the new addition there. Yeah. That's a huge thing. And the only part I'm nostalgic about, as I was saying when we talked about it, is like, I see pictures of when the kids played there. That kind of gets me emotional. You know, it's like, I'm very nostalgic for that house. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Very. Like we did so much. I mean, I guess so much of all of our relationships were built there. The movie room, how many shows we watched. We watched so many shows.

1:55:59Yeah, yeah, yeah. We played so many games. Yes, at that booth. We were outside all the time. Yeah, it was a very good patio to hang on. It was great. And yeah, and the babies. And like I have a lot of nostalgia for that house. Yeah. Sometimes like on Halloween, because your sister lives there on Halloween, We'll, you know, stop by there for candy. And almost always the group is always like, God, remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like everyone's always just like, God, we were just here all the time. So I have some nostalgia for that. But maybe also because it's still in your family. That might make a difference.

1:56:39Yes, it's not gone. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's funny because we were yesterday, I had dinner with my parents on Fairfax. And so we were blocks away from Anthony where Anthony and I live. Yeah. Which I guess I would say, like, I'm trying to think of what I'm the most nostalgic for space wise. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be the apartment I was just in. Yeah, for sure. But probably that one on Gardner, the one that Kristen also lived in 10 years before that. because I think I brought this up recently like we did improv practice there and we played running straights we had no money so I am nostalgic but I didn't feel like oh let's drive by Gardner like I didn't in fact I'm kind of like I don't ever want to see that yeah I kind of just like it in my head and I don't want to see that again yeah yeah yeah yeah weird last thing I'll add is I also, in the continuing updates on the movies, I decided to show Lincoln the prestige.

1:57:47I invited you and your family. That's right. Great movie. It's better than you remember. Wow. It is a flawless movie. It's so fucking good. And Lincoln was blown away. The twist at the end is so juicy. She was so rattled that at the end I looked at her and I said, I have to tell you something. I'm also an identical twin. And she goes, she screams, ah, daddy, don't say that. Like the movie affected her so much. It was just so fun to watch the power of a movie when it's great. She was like, she hated the thought that there were two of me and she didn't know which one she had had certain memories with.

1:58:28And I had to convince her I wasn't a twin. See, you had to walk it back. I did, big time. Okay. Let's do some facts. Let's do facts. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Thank you. I felt like I was wasting money, too. Oh, wow. Like, oh, this is, where's this going? This is expensive Parmesan that I'm not eating. Yeah, it would be very tempting to see it there and not have it in your bite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had some truffled fries, though. That's yummy. That hit the spot. Is there parm on that? I think there is a little parm. So, you know, it's a little scattywampus. Okay, that's okay.

1:59:40I mean, minimally, it's a reduction. Yeah. And then someone in the comments suggested I take an enzyme called DOA or DAO. Okay. This is a ding, ding, ding. It was like, hey, there's this enzyme I take before I eat, and it's like kind of a histamine blocker, and my nose runs after every time I eat. And I was like, mine too. Oh, so does my mom's. So I ordered it, and then it went out to Cara, and then Hannah said to Kristen, did you take your enzyme? And she goes, no, I forgot it. And I go, wait, what enzyme? And Hannah goes, I was suggesting that Kristen take DOA or DAO for histamines so she doesn't get itchy.

2:00:18I've been using it. I like it. And I was like, well, this is crazy. That's weird. Because I just heard about it in the comments and ordered it and it comes tomorrow. Wow. And you guys have already hopped up on it. That's sim. Sim. Very, very sim. Okay. This is for Catherine Page Harden. So did I go to Collierville Elementary School? No. I had to ask my mom this. Oh, this is the Memphis period? Yes. Yeah, yeah. She said Collierville Elementary. And I said, and I think I said, yeah. But then I was like, I don't think that's right. I texted my mom. She said I went to Farmington Elementary. She remembered.

2:00:53Nope. She said she had to look it up. Okay. That's impressive. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, yeah, Farmington. Although I have a hunch I'll remember my kid's name. I don't want to say it out loud, but I'll remember the name of my kid's elementary. You will. But you were there briefly. Yeah. I went to five elementary schools. You did? Why? I can remember the others. You had only one big move, right? Well, first school, Peachtree Elementary. Okay. Classic. Yeah. Kindergarten, first grade. Then we moved to Collierville. I went to Farmington for second and third grade. Okay. Then we moved back. Oh, sorry.

2:01:34I'm wrong. I went to four elementary schools. Okay. So we moved back. And I went to Berkeley. School of music? Yeah. I was a savant. I went to Berkeley Lake because we rented a house. Okay. And then we bought a house. That is still the house. That is still the house. And then I went to Chattahoochee Elementary, my fifth grade. Oh, wow. We don't talk about this. Yeah, I moved a lot. I feel like this is even more significant than your ethnicity. It's all in the stew. Yeah. It's all in the stew. Yeah. I mean, you really had to start over. I moved a lot. Was there any people from Peachtree in the final elementary?

2:02:18No. No. Mm-mm. So brand new start in fifth grade? Well, no. So brand new start in fourth grade. Okay. And then brand new start again in fifth grade. Okay. Right. So fifth grade. And then you stuck with those kids for junior high. Yeah. Well, then what was very fun is then in sixth grade, some people from fourth grade, you know, like then people came back into the fold, which was cool. That would have happened to me had I gone to Milford High and not switched districts. Well, you know, one of my first sim-ist moments was there was a girl in my fourth grade class, Ashley, and she was so popular.

2:02:58Uh-huh. And so cool and pretty. And I wanted to beat her pretty badly. Which was really quick. Let's pause. When you think about the ability for one to be super cool in fourth grade, it's not even really a thing. Like I'm looking at fourth graders. I know. But like the way they eat lunch and stuff is just cooler. Okay. Yeah. And she was also really nice. But she was cool. She didn't have to be it sounds like. No. Yeah, good for her. Her name was Ashley and I was like kind of trying to, you know, I was like trying to be her friend. But, you know, we weren't really good friends. But I do think I was invited to her birthday party.

2:03:31That's big. She had so many Beanie Babies. Okay. Like, her mom was into it. Sure. And so she had so many, and they were, like, in cases and stuff, not, like, fucking Valentino and Liberti. Just, like, I wrote all over them and stuff. I didn't know what I was doing. Do you think moms in the South were more into Beanie Babies than moms in the North? I do for some reason. I mean, yeah. Okay, yeah. My mom was real into Beanie Babies, though, too. Oh. With my sister. Was she, like, getting them for her and bringing them home? I'm like, we got truffles. Yeah, yeah. They had a whole bin. Yeah. I was always trying to get my mom to be like that.

2:04:09Okay, but driven by your sister? Yeah. Okay. I know. It's a little. Like there's women who collect dolls and it's not because they have kids. No. No, also, no. The purpose of this is like ultimately to like have a billion dollars. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I know. I don't want to comment on that. Okay. Anyway, so then I moved. And then I went to fifth grade away from Ashley. And then in sixth, I thought about her. And before sixth grade, I was like, I wonder if like Ashley will be there. Yeah. And on the ride home, the bus ride home on the first day of school, guess who's on my bus? Ashley. And guess why?

2:04:54Her parents got divorced and her mom moved into my neighborhood. Oh, my gosh. And we became best friends. Oh, wow. Best friends. We lived. I mean, I lived at her house. She didn't live at mine. But, yeah, get off at her stop. One time, my dad got really mad because we got lost in the neighborhood and he couldn't find us. And he, like, really panicked. All we were doing was jumping on someone's trampoline. But anyway, so we were best friends. And we were best friends for a long time. To what grade? She was on my cheerleading squad. Oh. Also a fellow double state champ. Oh, my goodness. Okay. We still talk.

2:05:32We texted recently. Oh, that's great. Yes, I love her. And we were boy crazy, and we wrote in each other's diaries. Did she stay, like, on top of the heat? Yes. Oh, she did. Yeah. And she deserved it. She really deserved it. She's a great, great lady. She's a great leader of women. Yeah, she is. Anyway, yeah, I did a lot of moving. So, Farmington. Now, is it pronounced Pelagius or Pelagius? Unfortunately, it's pronounced Pelagius. I don't. You didn't like that. I like Pelagius more. I know. That's what you said. Oh, I did then. Okay, good. I'm consistent. Sometimes I worry I'm not even consistent.

2:06:10And she, because she was saying Pelagius. That sounds nice. Yeah. And you were like, yeah. And she was like, I don't know. Some people say Pelagius. And you said, I like Pelagius. Yeah. But it's Pelagius. It's Pelagius. Yeah. How many genes do humans have? Remember, we were— I'm so embarrassed still. Well— I was talking about individual ACGTs in the DNA strand, which is in the billions. But it was only 20-some thousand. Yeah, she said around 20 ,000. Yes, humans have approximately 20 ,000 to 25 ,000 protein-coding genes. Fuck. God, that was— I mean, what a factor I was off by. It's a low number, similar to that of many organisms, which is embarrassing for us.

2:06:53What I walked away with from this, and I've already been in a couple conversations, because it comes up all the time, like, oh, they found the gene for a blank. They found the gene. And I go, you know, I just had this expert on. I was like, almost nothing isn't polygenetic. That's right. Almost nothing is one gene. Exactly. Which is encouraging. It is. Yeah. It's like, it's hard to get some of this stuff. Yeah, I gave the example she gave about height. It's like 200 genes that you could be one standard deviation above, and that's going to result in seven feet tall. I know. But there are some. She's like sickle cell.

2:07:26I've had this great curiosity of how people keep getting taller. Like how are they getting so much taller? So many people that I look around, all their kids are always taller than them. Aaron's kid. I think about it all the time. Like weight is 6 '3 or 4". Yeah. And his ex-wife isn't tall. And Aaron's 5 '6". Yeah. But like where does that come from? Who had the gene? Well, it wasn't the gene. It wasn't that. The gene. I know. We're learning so much. It's the only thing I'm bummed I didn't have any boys because I would like to see, like, would I get a six foot five boy? Because I exceeded my father.

2:08:03He had exceeded his. That's true. Presumably I might have a weight on my hands. Well, the girls will probably be taller than Kristen. Yes. Yes. Although Delta's tracking much more Kristen-wise. Yeah. Yeah. But bigger than her at her age. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because, like, Lincoln's already taller than me, I think, or at least my height. She's probably your height now. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Delta's getting there. She's getting there. She wants to get there faster. So cute. I know. It's so cute. Yeah, like, she lost a tooth the other day, and she was ecstatic. I know. She called me bloody, still actively bleeding, ecstatic.

2:08:45She wants to get rid of those baby teeth. I know. She hates them. She did tell. She was like, I lost my tooth. And I had known that this was a big deal. Yeah. And then she brought it up again later. Did I tell you? I was like, yeah. You know, when she went to the dentist and they x-rayed her mouth, she started bawling when he said, it's going to be a while. And she was devastated. Yeah. I don't remember having any thoughts about my teeth. They probably just all fell out really quick. I know. I don't remember caring about that. But, yeah, I must have been on par. It's hard when everyone else is – it's happening and you get worried.

2:09:17Oh, another pronunciation. Retributively. Retributively. Oh, how many times did Second Chance attack his owner? I really got a kick out of the fact that his name was Second Chance. Have you? This American Life. Yeah. I did a long time ago, but I don't remember it. This American Life for a minute had a video show. But I watched that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's called, on This American Life, the story is called If By Chance We Meet Again. Mm. Very nice name. Which is very, such a good name. So elegant. Yeah, Ralph and Sandra Fisher, who run a show animal business in Texas, had a beloved Brahmin bull named Chance.

2:10:02Chance was the gentlest bull they'd ever seen, more like a pet dog than a bull. They loved him. Kids loved him. He had a long career in movies, on TV, performing at parties. And when he finally died, Ralph and Cindy were devastated. Around that time, scientists at Texas A &M University were looking for animal subjects for a cloning project. They already had some tissue from Chance because they treated him for an illness. So Ralph and Cindy offered up Chance's DNA for the experiment. Second Chance was born. And he was eerily just like Chance, except he wasn't, which they found out the hard way.

2:10:38But I looked up twice. It was twice. It was two goreins. But it was bad. I wonder where we're at now. I mean, that story was 12 years ago. I wonder if there's been subsequent. Do you think? Wow, yeah. I hope he's alive. First occurred on the bull's second birthday. I mean, two-year-olds, you know, tantrums. Yeah. Where Fisher barely escaped and a second more severe attack happened about a year later, resulting in significant injuries to Fisher, including a fractured spine. Ugh, fuck. I can't imagine how terrible it would be to be attacked by a bull. Oh, my God. The huge horns and that strong neck.

2:11:11You see, they pick up cars and stuff when they want. They're insanely strong. I don't think the eye thing would necessarily work for them. Maybe. If they were out cold. Yeah. I would try to get its horns lodged in the cage. Are you going to put your, do you think the fingers in your butt thing is going to work? Might as well. I mean, it's free.

2:11:32Always do that as you decide.

2:11:36Okay. The exact figures on the dyslexia numbers are, yeah, two to five times more likely to be in leadership roles compared to the general pop. It also says dyslexia affects roughly 10 to 15 percent of the general population. 25 to 35 percent of entrepreneurs were into surveys and 20 to 40 percent of self-made millionaires show signs of dyslexia. I think increasingly they're starting to look at if dyslexia is a thing or if it's just ADHD, by the way. Oh, go ahead. Okay. So, yeah. People with dyslexia are 2.4 times more likely to drop out of high school without proper intervention. They are also up to three times more likely to be identified with ADHD, as 35 to 45 percent of those with dyslexia also have ADHD.

2:12:22Boys are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia than girls. Which would be consistent with what our ADHD experts said, that boys get labeled ADHD at seven or eight years old and women at 36. Right. And so, yeah, that all kind of holds. Yeah. That's it. That's it for Catherine Page Harden. Oh, I liked it because it was a great philosophical question when I think of it in terms of myself. Without any testing, it would seem I am one of these packages she's talking about. Yeah, I would agree. And I also have other stuff to offer, and it's very interesting. Well, you haven't, you know, killed anyone that I know of.

2:13:06I haven't killed anyone, but I have had moments of aggression towards other men. Right. Other men have been hurt by me in battle. Rob, have you ever punched someone in the face? I don't think so. Me either. Yet. Yet. I'm not ruling it out. It doesn't seem fun. I have to be honest. Like, it doesn't seem even fun. Like, the, like, the, first of all, it seems like it hurts really bad. To the puncher. Like, to even on my hand, it seems like that would hurt really bad. Yes. Well, you know, I have broke my hand. Yeah. And I have knuckles that are submerged from it. So, yeah. But I'm, I try to make this case to other, you don't feel anything.

2:13:54Oh, right. There's no, there's no pain whatsoever. Yeah. The next day you might feel sore. But that's what's funny is I think when you're a boy, you're so afraid of how much it's going to hurt. And then come to find out it doesn't hurt at all. None of it hurts. Your brain goes straight to its primitive knows what to do state. The fun isn't the contact. It's the, oh, I'm not going to get hurt. That's what it is. Like, oh, I landed. Oh, I'm in charge. Oh, I'm not going to get hurt. That's like the elation in a fight is if you're in charge and control. Right. But it's also like justice. You know you're safe.

2:14:35Like kind of for I think. Yes, but I think once it kicks off, I think just all this primitive wiring happens. Right. And it's really just like, oh, I have to maintain the upper hand or I'm going to get really, really hurt. And so long as you're in control, there is this elation of like, oh, I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to win this. I'm not going to get hurt. But when people start fights. That's all pride and ego. Yeah, there's like, it can't be about that because they've decided, right? So like that is about. For sure. And when I have like stood up to the dickhead at the bar, I have this for sure charge of justice.

2:15:13Right, right, right, right. And pride of that I will. I'll be the one to handle this. I'll be the one to shut this down. Yeah. But then once the action starts, this full other mindset starts. All right. That's it. Crazy note to end it, but I guess it was apropos. It was. It was all part of it. Love you. Love you.