Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - A review of Episode 1201 William Von Hippel

Episode Date: November 21, 2018

William is a behavior psychologist and has just written a new book called “The Social Leap”. He and Joe talk in depth about what makes us do what we do and the road from Monkey in the trees to humans now. Get your note pads lads it's a fact loaded conversation. Really fun to review. Enjoy my review folks! Please email me with any suggestions and questions for future shows :   [e-mail]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the JRE Review. This podcast reviews the Joe Rogan experience takes the best episodes and the most interesting parts of any podcast that Joe Rogan puts on and talks about it. He hit as many as I can, the ones that I've listened to I listen mostly all and like a lot of the fans do. I also have guests on often who are fans of YoRogun have been inspired by YoRogun and here talk about things that they've maybe incorporated into their lives to help then do things more effectively or they will like me just talk about a particular podcast that they heard and they enjoy. This podcast is not

affiliated with Joe Rogan, it's like the news is the current events, current events being Joe's podcast and news being this. All I do is just report on what I heard, interesting parts of it, questions I've had and I expand upon it. So I hope you enjoy it. This week has been pretty fantastic. There's been a lot of great guests and a lot of smart guests. So if you're anything like me, some of it gets confusing. It's hard to follow, especially if later in the week,

you've got people on like Eric Weinstein, they are Weinstein. It's so smart that a lot of the things that they say are just really tough to follow. So I just kind of, I like to pay attention to it, take some notes, write it down, try and figure it out. And you know, it just retains in my head a little better. So I hope this podcast helps for you guys too. This podcast this week was podcast 12 or 1

William Vaughn Hipple. Great name. Guarantee that guy had to be a scientist. William Vaughn Hipple. Wrote a new book called The Social Leap and the book basically is Who Are We and What Makes us happy? So, psychologists that's really delved into kind of like I guess paleontology or the study of humans and development from being monkeys and why we're the way we are and what we've come up to. So he starts talking to Joe saying that three million years ago we were monkeys, right? So we were monkeys as far as we know and we mostly lived up in trees right, so it was a completely different type of environment than we live in now and

later things changed we came out of the trees went into the grasslands and He's asking one why did we do this and two what were the changes and a big part of that is he's saying that when we lived in the trees we were great in the trees we were powerful we had groups to keep us safe things worked it's why a lot of monkeys still live in the trees in forests and and so on now because it works well for them. So why did we move into the grasslands? Because a lot of things have to change.

It's the change kind of like the way that we would stand, you know, our eyesight, the way our shoulders work, the way that we moved around. A lot of things have to change. so what was the reason for it? And as far as you can tell why, why did any of that happen? So later on in our development, William is saying that basically we have developed a strong throwing arm. So even though chimpanzees are much stronger than we are and they can just tear us apart which is what Joe is always talking about. They can't throw well so they will pick up an object with almost like two hands throw it and there's not very much accuracy right because their shoulders and body is really made just for like

climbing trees once they're on land they can't really walk well so everything for them with the way that they look, and the way that their heads move, it's the kind of gauge things up and down, as well as forward and backwards, whereas the modern version of us is far more linear. We look just kind of straightforward. We throw that way.

Our shoulders are different. We can throw far more effectively, and far more accurately. And he brings up interesting points with his kids like you know you have kids and they get in trouble throwing rocks at things or just you know breaking some windows with some stones or whatever obviously not a good thing to be doing in this society but there's a reason why they want to throw. This is in their genetics to kind of do this and And it's kind of like set up that way then they take a look at you know

Williams starts talking about what do monkeys know? What do they understand in terms of where we are. And it looks like fairness is one of the things that they understand. Fairness, just in objects, food, reward, also in their sexual selection, he talks about an experiment that was done where a monkey would be rewarded grapes,

and another one will be rewarded cucumbers for doing the same task. And eventually, the monkey getting cucumbers gets mad and throws the cucumber back at the scientist doing experiments. It's not that he doesn't like cucumbers as much as he knows the other monkey's getting grapes and he's getting frustrated, which is

a really cool way of looking at just what they understand. You would think they would just take the food and that would be the end of it. It talks a little bit about bonobos, being polyamorous, that type of monkey, a little bit sexually different than others. And there's, what that means, a lot of the males who have sex with a lot of the females, so they're talking about like, testicle size and all the rest of it. And a lot of times, it uses a pretty gross term where it's like the last banovo to have sex

with the female kind of washes everyone out washes the sperm out and then that creates their kids so then he talks about humans having Testicles that are naturally large compared to other monkeys and also like you know penis sizes much larger than all the other Great apes as well and It's kind of one of those things that he's saying is kind of bread selectively into us. Not, they're not 100% sure why.

In fact, when Joe went to Italy, and he was pointing that out on all the statues, saying all the statues of all these ancient warriors have pretty small dicks, why is that? And the guide said because if you're seen as having you know a huge dick and you put it in your statue then it's kind of like you're like a Viking style you, you're just like rough and angry here and you know, you're like a pirate. There's just no real kind of finesse and class to what you are I didn't really understand why they would have drawn that conclusion or what that was

But it was a different time and that's how I was explained to him Then Bill moves well, William Bill, whatever he wants to be called, moves on to saying about two million years ago, suddenly we have fire, right? So we're able to cook food. We now can get to nutrients quicker with less energy, we don't have the forage as much. Breaking down meat, that's raw, or just eating grain and things, takes a lot more energy. or just eating grain and things, takes a lot more energy. So that really slows us down. Whereas with fire, you can break down nutrition, you're kind of cooking the proteins,

they take the nature, and you can get to the calories quicker. So during this time, the brain doubles in size. Now, it's still not as big as ours, but it's a lot bigger than it was. And also, you see this because our small intestine is a lot shorter than other apes because we don't require as much of it to get the nutrition out. So we've got smaller intestines, larger brains, which is kind of indicative of a creature that's found a better food source and in our sense the same food source which is able to like cook everything down, we're basically pre-digesting

it in some sense. Also we started to make really good sharp tools and by doing that it also suggests kind of like the division of labor because there's different stages to the toolmaking. So somebody might just like bash out a rock or a flint and get something fairly sharp and then someone else that's more skilled in just chipping it into a really symmetrical fine piece of equipment would then later do that. So that was pretty fascinating. And they also have noticed that elephants were being killed, which is pretty significant because they're so massive, that that shows that people working together

in pretty significant numbers in order to take these things down. He talks a little bit about chimps having a partial of mind. I think he's what he called it. They don't believe that other chimps can believe in different things, so for example if a chimp parent is showing their chimp kid something like how to break open a seed with a stone. They don't really understand the kid doesn't know. They just hit the thing in front of the kid, the baby monkey, and the monkey eventually with a lot of practice figures it out. But for humans, we know what makes us quite a lot different is we understand that they won't know it.

So we show them in different ways until they learn through practice that they will do it that way, and that's how humans are kind of better at passing on knowledge in that sense. So Joe was saying that he understands that some chimps have reached the stone age from what he said, like they're using tools, but what William was saying is not really in a sense Yes, but not really because they still struggle with passing that knowledge on and the knowledge is very limited So humans can understand what our young don't understand. Whereas the monkeys don't really so humans copy things exactly Even though some things seem redundant Right, so chips will skip that, chips well, because they see it as a useless part of the operation, whereas other humans will just do exactly what the person before did and copy that over time

because that person is alive and doing things. It's kind of complicated and I don't really understand all of it, but again, it's one of these podcasts where you got to spend some time and you got to really listen, but it was super fascinating, right? And, you know, he's talking about how these things, these traits were really important.

You had to have value within your group. You had to learn the skills of the people that were around you and the creatures that were around you because really back then there was no law enforcement. If you wouldn't annoying people in your tribe, they could just kill you for being a pain in the ass. I mean it was simple as that. They move on to something that Joe finds very interesting. Animals like to get high. The William talked about how elephants will eat over ripen fruit, and then Joe starts talking about how jaguars will get high on DMT, and they eat some sort of roots or bark, or something that has a lot of DMT in, and they get very high that way. Then he brings up Iwasca, which will him never hurt off with M-A-O inhibitors, mono-amino oxidase, stops the process of breaking down DMT and that's what you have in the drinks like Iwasca.

That's why you get kind of a different effect because your body can't break it down quite as quickly. And it just talks about like how some animals would do this. Like jaguar was have been seen to be very high. You can watch videos without YouTube. It's pretty funny. Definitely worth checking out. And then he gets into quite a fascinating part

of his knowledge, which is the genetics of you, the fine you. So your parents don't have a lot to do with this, with who you become. You're mostly set at birth. Joe struggled with that a little bit because like any parent who tries hard to be a good parent, he probably has pride in the fact that, you know, he's working hard to make sure his kids don't get fucked up. And I struggled with this a little bit too because, you know, if you come from a tough home, then you know how difficult that can kind of define your

life. So really, I wasn't 100% sure what point he was making. More so, I just didn't understand it, but at the same point, he's working with people that are the forefront of this. They're trying to find the right answers, not necessarily biased answers. He seemed super trustworthy as an investigator and scientist. So maybe there is something to it. Maybe when we all get mad at our parents or upbringing or circumstances in life, maybe they're not anywhere as important as we think and we have all the tools already mapped out.

In any issues we have, we were always going to have them. So it's important to just find your solution to kind of get out of those things. Maybe that's true, who knows? They move on to the mapping of genes and how complicated they are. Joe brings up an important point, the computers against smart or everyday, through every day and eventually a computer could be so advanced that it could just map all of the genes and all of the things that they do combined with all of the others. And then you can use CRISPR to start making human beings better in that sense. Which is cool. I mean, that's very possible. So Bill talks a little bit about how, you know, the idea of his book helps give you some

insight to your own behavior. That's kind of like the point of it. And, you know, Joe repeats how important that is and explains that, you know, he tries not to be so attached to ideas. He wants to learn and listen. He has his ideas, but he doesn't necessarily want to fight for them. He's just kind of like, that's my idea until I find something a little bit that sounds more correct. And then they talk some about spicy foods and why they exist and how you get more chilies and spices

that further you move to the equator. And William is saying it's basically because there's more pathogens. You know, if you're a Sweden, there might just be a couple of pathogens. But if you go to the equator, there's going to be a lot of different diseases wiping you out. So there'll be salt and pepper and chilies, the spices and curries and garlic and all these different things and it's the help kind of sterilize your food and your stomach with antibacterial properties and then ends up talking about alcohol and how it was very important for our ancestors to develop because it sterilizes the water which was a real issue

times at this interior and if you've got live stock around and things like that, a lot of the water supplies get poisoned, so you wanted to be alcoholic. Anyway, it was a fantastic conversation, a really good podcast, absolutely fascinating. Would I recommend taking out a pen and paper for it? Hey, if you wanna learn about a lot of this stuff, it wouldn't be about ideas, so check it out,

and thank you guys so much for tuning in. Cheers. before it. Hey, if you want to learn about a lot of this stuff, it wouldn't be about ideas. So check it out and thank you guys so much for tuning in. Cheers!