Hello and welcome to under the skin from luminary this week I spoke with Heather haying. and Bret Weinstein Heather is an evolutionary biologist and Brett served as a professor of biology at Evergreen State College. They host the dark horse podcast and their latest book. One hundred gaffers, guided to the twenty first century. Evolution and the challenges of modern life is out now under the skin, is apple pie, costly review, their helps us and we read them out. Sometimes this better put cost that we chose by It is all about. Like evolution, it's a subject, I'm pre interested in then I mean I don't mean just general evolution. I mean the way that we evolved and how it may be at odds with the way that we live. Now. That's, I guess the raison d'etre the author of the book and it's pretty good conversation, and I, of course you might have heard of brat because of some more controversial conversations he has in the online space at least one. We focus on his book that he wrote with Heather in this bit

It would be to Gretchen myth and what constitutes admit a myth, and if capitalism is a mess cause, you say: capitalism, the myth is a myth of our culture and they say no, it's not been random. I think I'm going to listen to the rest of us and all of my weekly and the scheme poker. So we have to say we subscribe to luminary an apple Picasso, download the luminary up, also meditation podcast could above the noise on luminary too, in this part We talk about just told you that stuff, Trying to achieve equality with the annihilation of Calgary is not successful. That's exactly right! We're in this era, where it turns out, they were never fucking on walks beneath the surface of people. We have more of the ideas that the finance on the welcome to Russell Brand, the ski

You're saying about myth suggests suggest that it is an important myth as story myth, as God myth template I suggest that it says to have an important component and that we do. We don't, as I to say, with, like I'm twelve step, stuff and twelve steps with regard to recover. it's like. We have a program of recovery like eat. Some there are abstract aspects, but they there are concrete steps. You do this, you do this, you do this. You do this. You do this and I say, like you you already have a program. You have a pro. Before you come into the program of recovery. Your is a sort of beliefs, some stationing except behaviors that are sometimes almost with the mastic play trigger to someone says this to me. I'm going to respond in this way makes me feel like this, I'm going to

and by doing that, it's like I'm on rails. You know like it, so radio is pre determined, even if not in that way, this neurologically often described about the time lapse between decisions and actions and all that stuff, and it just seems like de facto on rails. You know- and I I feel like that is the culture as a myth, the cultures, the cultural myth that we live within now I like in at least my understanding and I'm certainly willing to learn More- is that it's economically driven that if the, if every profit motive, then we can ignore other side effects and that that would say that other ideals have been accrued in order to support that tell us that, from agriculture onwards hell. This is good for this straw of society

eight, it's not really good, for everybody isn't good for everybody's diet to have monocultures, but it is good for this group and this group make all of the decisions, so it's good ultimately and only fit about that announcement cause. He certainly wasn't the question well we make an argument in the book for a model of how the mythology that guides us comes about. It's an evolutionary process and I think the way to describe it is through the following recognition. You cannot write

Yes, it's never been done. You can write a story and then, over time, selection modifies that if the story is way off right, it ceases to exist. It doesn't carry through time because those who listened to it do worse than those who don't to the extent that it has value that value get shaped and it can get shaped in many different ways, and so you have sectarian difference in all of the major belief systems and those sectarian differences may be adapted to different realities on the ground, different habitats. They can be differences of opinion over which parts of the myth are important and selection will sort out which one which a group had closest to right because they will flourish. But the point is, it is not in any vague sense that these myths are playing this important role in guiding us. That is why we have a brain that takes on myths

That is why our mind focuses upon them and what you're, describing as the mythology of capitalism, isn't a myth. It can't be a myth because it hasn't stood the test of time. This is all so new that we have no idea where the wisdom is, and this is the problem. We have to recognize that the novel stuff requires a kind of caution that things that are ancient do not now, in our circumstances, a different kind of caution that you have to use with things that are ancient. It may be things that were true that lead to human flourishing in the past are now out of place right. Things that were useful to believe may now be harmful, but these two kinds of precautions are very important in recognizing where we are, but at the very least we should look at the and the central narrative surrounding things like what we're calling capitalism here and say we don't know how

it plays out, we don't know what happens when we reduce all of these functions to things that one can source all a cart in the market. Right, we don't know the answer, but we have reason to be concerned so just to be clear. Humans have written all of our myths, but when we wrote them they weren't myths, you can't. You can't bring a story into the world that is already mythical. You are you're arguing. We argue in the book right credit. It requires the test of time, and and and basically being tried and I stayed in the environment in which it exists and if it lasts, it becomes mythical and your part part of what we need it is modern mess that are actually unifying, but precisely problem is that we cannot that no one can bring into the world a story that is brand new, and that is instant mess. It needs it needs to. Play in the world a little bit and the.

the so hyper novel and changing so fast, and we are all simultaneously global and each our own little bunker that it is very hard to find the unifying mats. For today. I think the problem is that things that are written, look superficially alike right. A myth may come to you in the form of a book right. which suggests an author, but you can make the same error with respect to things like genes or genomes. Genomes accumulate things of value and they jettison things that have turned out to be costly and they become capable of the things that they do over time. Through this process,

of filtering and the creation of a meaningful a useful myth? Is that same process. So you know the earth, the Lord of the rings male timidly turn out to be the basis of myth right. It's an excellent narrative and it contains ancient pieces of method. It uses them and adapt them to different circumstances and whether that turns out to be useful is something we will find out. But but the idea that, just because it comes in the form of a book that it has an author isn't inherently right and in fact we need to think about these things as I basically created through a process of sculpting or filtering rather than author. If it is suggesting feel that you are, but there is a myth survives, it is

for an effective and successful myth, could that be argued in favour of a ram religions that they are successful, miss or do you not think we have the correct scale due to our individual and even cultural limitations. Temporarily I mean to make such an assessment. They perhaps a myth could be successful. Forget you this far by not further, are you suggesting that the myths, some of the myths we have it's like getting to say like and if some bit like- and you know like a Nava, I guess he's an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins would attack in particular meaning, monotheism and or the idea of God. Full stop without perhaps

observing that there is there that the efficacy of those myths and religions are an ambiguously adaptations right, the abrahamic religions being one excellent example. These are myths that have been passed through time because they facilitated the well being of the people who held these belief systems. The fact that they're within each of these traditions is lot of disagreement over how to interpret these texts is again very much like the variation that we see within creatures between populations. So What I can say is ever canary biology has been very slow to wake up to this fact, and this is

one of the central points that we make in the book is that if you do not understand human beings as a very special kind of creature, one in which the genome has been favored to offload most of the work of adjusting our behavior to the software layer rather than being programmed at birth, we argue that we are the blank slate selection has ever produced and that there's a very good reason for that and a half do with the fact that you can be loaded with a different software program depending upon where and when in time you live and those software programs come about through an evolutionary process that is not haphazard. It is a process that allows us to switch which niche we inhabit. So your ancestors may have been hunters of Marie, in mammals and you may move inland and switch to terrestrial most are you may innovate far?

and this is a process that one has to do well right. You can't go through a general. She and starved to death and reboot, you have to get through every moment in time to the next one, and so that process, whereby we bootstrap new software, is the most important phenomenon to understand. If you want to see what human beings are and why we function the way that we do just to get back to your that the statement to which Brett was responding Yes, the abrahamic religions absolutely have been adaptive and are, we would argue at the level of myth, has been success. for humans, are they sufficient to move us forward now in the twenty first century? Probably not Do they have pieces in them that are made not necessary, because not all humans in employ them but valuable to many people. Absolutely many! Any parts of them retain their value, but

Almost we can say about almost all of our interests Ex religious or secular. The american constitution is another example of something that is so extraordinary. And yet also not fully up to the challenges of the twenty first century? We cannot expect any ancient text. to fully tell us what it is that we need to be doing now, because no one from times could have foreseen what we're living right now. Given me, the temperature sections that view operate within? Is it possible that all of these myths are kind of like come in a sense, quite restrictive, might my me. My concurrent question is that the fact that there appear to be Brand new truths are universally expressed if bearing certain cultural inflections could suggest a kind of a type of universe, type of universe, with some reference outside of time and space that is expressing itself

through fall now, I know that's not the way you guys see things aside like, and I will. then, if how we would bring together The idea that you know that perennial is in could be seen to suggest universalism, and I suppose you were to look at if we can to hunt mammals and adapt to agriculture that there some things of robust and able to withstand novelty that apps woke? You know that there must be a kind of his son templates. Illogical templates that that would imprint, probably not but but but the the kind of simultaneous opposing question, which is a weird way to give you questions, or I recognize that two opposing forces simultaneously. This set of questions because, on one hand of saying, is there some of perfect God like thing expressing itself in a kind of CS, Louis WI, FI telling us don't do that to do that. That's right! That's wrong! Don't do that! This inner sums of code implied through creed.

It is also possible that you know well, so actual the that all of this is the ALA entire scale and spectrum of time is so. If a collective subjective experience that is taking place in such a sofa, my new tiny little speck of time and space that all the things that we are tribute, values too, not just so this all taints on the palate of chaos you're injurious conversation drawing ever luminary an apple pockets for the rest of our discussion and for all the latest episodes of under the skin and by God there's enough of them hundreds and at any given moment any further. The throne the five all aluminum, some great ones, coming up in some great ones already done