Athena (00:00:04): Have you been zombified by memes? Dave (00:00:06): Oh definitely. Athena (00:00:08): Yeah. Dave (00:00:08): Yeah. They've sucked many hours right out of my life, so Athena (00:00:12): I've been zombified by them by proxy because my kids they just will repeat over and over again at the dinner table, these, you know, chance and you know, songs that they listened to on the internet and then they just like, they can't stop. It just keeps happening over and over again. Dave (00:00:30): And, I have no idea what they're talking about half the time, so it's like Athena (00:00:34): Yeah me too. Dave (00:00:34): Like Gretta will show me something and I'll be like, I don't get it at all. And it's like, well, you'd have to have seen these seven other videos, and then it makes sense. I'm like, well, I haven't so. Athena (00:00:44): Welcome to the Zombified podcast, your source for fresh brains. I'm your host, Athena Aktipis, psychology professor at ASU and chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance. Dave (00:00:57): And I am your co-host Dave Lundberg-Kenrick, media outreach program manager at ASU and brain and meme enthusiast. Athena (00:01:05): Yeah, we're really into brains [Dave agrees] Dave (00:01:06): So we should make memes about brains. Athena (00:01:09): Oh yeah. We kind of do. We have like the whole, you know, hijack brains images. Dave (00:01:16): That's true, that's true Athena (00:01:16): As part of our brand or zombified brand. Yeah. So today we get to talk about memes and culture and imitation and how information spreads and how we evolve to take on information from others. Dave (00:01:34): So we're not just talking about like memes that people find on the internet, right? There's like other types of memes. Athena (00:01:39): Yeah. We're talking about the deep roots of memes in our human evolutionary history and how important cultural transmission is for humans regardless of if they are in modern technological societies or in traditional societies where they don't have smartphones. Dave (00:01:59): Wow, so... Athena (00:01:59): Yeah. So we talked with Lee Cronk, who is an anthropologist and an expert on both culture and evolution. Dave (00:02:07): Cool. And what is your favorite thing about today's episode? Athena (00:02:10): I love the stories that Lee tells about, um, tricking his kids. Dave (00:02:18): Alright [Dave laughs] Athena (00:02:18): That's my favorite part. Dave (00:02:21): Alright, I can't wait. Athena (00:02:21): So let's hear from this week's fresh brain, Lee Cronk. Intro (00:02:27): [Psychological by Lemi] Athena (00:03:06): Hey Lee! Lee (00:03:06): Hi. Athena (00:03:06): It's awesome to have you here on Zombified. Um, we know each other very well. Lee (00:03:11): Yes, that's true. Athena (00:03:11): We've known each other for, we figured it out at some point, but it's more than 10 years, right? Lee (00:03:16): Yeah, about 11. I mean, I think we first met about 15 years ago, about 11 we've been working together. Athena (00:03:22): Yeah, so would you introduce yourself for everyone who's with us, who doesn't know you as well as I do? Lee (00:03:27): Sure. So I'm Lee Cronk. I'm a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Um, what else do you need to know about me? Um, [Lee laughs] Athena (00:03:36): What kind of things are you interested in? Um, are you zombified by your dog? Lee (00:03:41): I am zombified by my dog. Um, my dog's name is Rufus. He's a, uh, a mix of a poodle and German shepherd and he's great and he's totally zombified me. Um, I didn't, we didn't have a dog. I never had a dog until I had Rufus. Uh, my son had the idea that it would be a great thing and it turns out he was right. Um, so yeah, I'm zombified by my dog for sure. Yeah. Athena (00:04:06): And what, what kind of things are you interested in academically? Lee (00:04:09): Academically, a lot of the work I do lately is on cooperation. I have a project called the Human Generosity Project that you're co-director of [Lee laughs] Athena (00:04:18): Imagine that! [Athena laughs] Lee (00:04:20): um, which is all about cooperation across human societies. Um, and uh, I've coauthored a book with my wife, Beth Leech, on cooperation called Meeting at Grand Central. So the focus of most of my work these days is on cooperation. Um, a big part of cooperation in humans is culture. Uh, we would not be able to, um, cooperate the way we do if we did not have so much culture. Um... Athena (00:04:45): And just like any kind of culture? Does culture in general make for cooperation, or does it have to be a certain kind of Lee (00:04:50): It has to be a certain kind of culture. So culture. So just to step back a little bit, culture means a lot of different things to different people. Um, it means in the popular parlance, it means things like a symphony, orchestras and operas and art. Athena (00:05:03): Yeah, so, are more cultured people more cooperative? ..No Lee (00:05:07): Yeah no. [Athena and Lee laugh] Because they're in, in the, and the way anthropologist's view it, there is no such thing as anybody who's more cultured than anybody else. Uh, all information that's gets transmitted from person to person, however it gets transmitted, whether it's highbrow or lowbrow or, uh, anything at all. Um, counts as culture, at least the way I define it. Athena (00:05:28): What about memes? Are memes as much culture as a symphony as like memes, like the internet things? Lee (00:05:32): Yeah the internet memes. Yeah [Athena confirms]. Um, well it's interesting, the word meme actually was coined by Richard Dawkins, a biologist, when he was looking for a word to talk about units of culture as units of information transmission. Um, and yes, uh Beethoven's 5th Symphony is a meme in that sense. It's a unit of information transmission. Um, and so is a picture of a cat saying "can I has a cheeseburger?" [Athena laughs] However it goes. Um, those are all units of information of transmission. So they all count as culture or culture traits or memes. Athena (00:06:04): Do you think they're all equal? Lee (00:06:06): Um, it is not for me to judge. [Athena laughs] No, seriously, the scientific stance is that it's not, that's not the job of the scientist. The job of the scientist is to explain something. In my case, I see my job as explaining behavior, human behavior. And so I wear one hat when I'm being a scientist in judging and deciding whether I have a good or a bad explanation of the behavior. But then I have another hat I wear when I do things in my own life, like pick music to play or what plays to go see or what movies to watch. Then yes, I judge just the way, the same way everybody does, that some are better than others, but my judgments may be different from yours and so on. And there's nothing, um, objective about those sorts of judgments. Athena (00:06:54): Yeah. I had this, uh, argument with my daughter who's 13 about memes. She, you know, talks about memes all the time [Lee confirms]. And.. Lee (00:07:04): They're huge, yeah Athena (00:07:04): And, and I said, you know, Avana, memes actually came from like my field of like evolutionary biology [Lee laughs] and behavior and all of that. And they, you know, they mean a unit of cultural transmission, and she's like, " No, mom, you are wrong." "That is not what memes are [Lee laughs]." "Let me show you what memes are." Um, so I went back and forth a little while, but now I think I've convinced her that I actually have some authority in this. Lee (00:07:34): Good Athena (00:07:34): In the meme realm [Lee laughs]. But she's pretty, she, I mean, she's still very skeptical of any authority I might have over the meme world Lee (00:07:42): Of course. Athena (00:07:42): that she is, um, living in. Lee (00:07:45): Did you say 13 or 14? Athena (00:07:46): 13, she's gonna be 14. Lee (00:07:46): Gonna be 14 soon. Athena (00:07:48): Yeah. Lee (00:07:48): Yeah. That's the age at which skepticism is towards anything parents say. It comes to the fore. Um, we had this funny, uh, my, uh, brother-in-law Scott and his wife, Julie, and their sons, Colin and Graham, were visiting, uh, not too long ago. It was over their spring break, and we had essentially the same conversation over dinner. Uh, it wasn't, it was essentially, um, about memes and somehow the topic came up of the meme, a meme. Originally, it meant something much, much broader. It wasn't this specific thing about the internet Athena (00:08:22): Yeah Lee (00:08:22): culture traits. Athena (00:08:23): Yeah. But those, I mean, the internet memes they're so good at replicating, right? Lee (00:08:28): Yes, yes, they're good memes. So the internet, when it was invented, emerged, however it came to into being, um, it created this amazing new forum in which information can be transferred. And so it can be transferred for all sorts of reasons, wonderful reasons and terrible reasons and silly reasons. And, uh, the proliferation of all kinds of memes, in the sense of culture traits, is just amazing on the internet. Um, I have an example of such a thing. Athena (00:09:01): Yeah, share it please [Lee agrees to share] Lee (00:09:01): Um, it's a kind of a little bit of a long story, but I know you like the story. So, I'm going to tell it. Athena (00:09:04): Oh, are you going to tell the story?? Lee (00:09:05): You think it's time? Athena (00:09:07): I think it's time. Yes. Yeah. Lee (00:09:07): You think they're ready for it, your podcast listeners, uh? So a long time ago before, so go back into the early days [Athena laughs]. Athena (00:09:14): Before the days of the internet [Athena jokes] Lee (00:09:16): [Athena laughs] Into the darkness of time. I was as a young anthropologist, this is in 1989. And, uh, my wife Beth and I, we were, um, big fans of David Letterman at the time. So we, this isn't the days of videotape. Athena (00:09:30): Yeah. Well, maybe you should also explain who David Letterman is. Lee (00:09:37): Oh, David Letterman [Lee laughs] Athena (00:09:39): Just in case. Lee (00:09:39): Good point, David Letterman was a talk show host. Um, and uh Athena (00:09:44): It was the late show right? Lee (00:09:44): It was the late show on CBN. No, it was on NBC at that time, then he switched to CBS later. But yeah, at the time he was, uh, on Late at Night, but it was a irreverent program and so on and so forth. And it was one of our favorite shows. So he had an anniversary special, and we taped it like we taped all his shows. Athena (00:10:03): This was back in the days before live streaming? Lee (00:10:09): Yes, very much so [Athena laughs]. Very much so. No one had even thought of Athena (00:10:12): And streaming video [Lee confirms] and binge watching and all of that where you had to actually put it in a VHS tape and then program a VCR whatever that stands for [Lee confirms] Lee (00:10:22): Video cassette recorder, yeah [Athena laughs]. Athena (00:10:24): to record something if you wanted to watch it. Lee (00:10:27): I don't even know what VHS stands for- video, video something. Um, yes, that's what we had to do and we thought it was normal [Athena laughs]. Um, and in fact, we thought we were very lucky to have such cutting edge technology. Athena (00:10:39): Yes Lee (00:10:39): And so we take the program and watched it later cause my wife had a job that required her to work nights in the newspaper business. Do I have to explain what newspapers are? Athena (00:10:49): No, no, I think that's okay [Athena and Lee laugh]. Lee (00:10:52): Okay, umm, so we watched it, and as we were watching it, there was an ad for Nike hiking boots. Um, and lucky for us, we had just gotten back maybe a year before, for, from Kenya where we'd done field work, uh, with people, um, in rural Kenya who speak a language called Ma. Um, and the ad was shot with these same sorts of people, a group in Northern Kenya called the Samburu who speak the same language. And they had a bunch of them, uh, young men and young women running around in the Kenyan landscape with Nike hiking boots on. And at the end of the, uh, ad there's a man, a Samburu man, who turns to the camera and says something to the camera in Ma, and below his face appears to phrase, "Just Do It." That was the Nike slogan. Athena (00:11:40): Closed captioning for the caption Lee (00:11:42): Yeah, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, and that was their ad slogan at the time. Maybe it still is? I don't know. Athena (00:11:47): I think it is still. Yeah. "Just Do it". Yeah. Lee (00:11:47): That's 30 years, 30 years ago. But yeah, um Athena (00:11:50): That's a good meme, right? Lee (00:11:51): It is a good meme. Athena (00:11:52): That's lasted a long time, yeah. Lee (00:11:52): "Just Do It". It's great. But the fact is that, that's not what he was saying. So my wife and I were able to watch it and he spoke very quickly, but we were able to translate it. Uh, what he was actually saying was, "I don't want these. Give me big shoes" Um Athena (00:12:08): So they were too small? [Lee confirms] Lee (00:12:08): They were too small apparently. Apparently, they had figured out that it was not- the translating of "Just Do It" in Ma, was, wasn't really feasible. It doesn't make sense. So they thought they might make a joke about, um, you know, "Hey, these shoes don't fit. I need bigger ones." So we were like that, but they decided to throw that out the window and just use his face, his voice with "Just Do It". So, um, because my wife was in the newspaper business at the time. She thought this was hilarious. Um, so she Athena (00:12:35): So, so basically, the marketing department was just like, Oh, we have video of Lee (00:12:39): Yes, exactly. Athena (00:12:39): a Samburu man saying something while wearing Nike shoes. So we're just going to pretend that he's saying "Just Do It" even though he really is saying he doesn't like the shoes. Lee (00:12:49): Nobody will know. Who, nobody, speaks this language. Athena (00:12:52): Except for Lee Cronk, anthropologist! [Athena laughs] Lee (00:12:56): Yeah. [Lee laughs] So that's the, so she was working at a paper that was owned by the same large company, Gannett that owned USA Today. Uh, she knew somebody at USA today. She called them up. This is before email, so she's definitely using the telephone and, um, told them about the story. They thought it was funny. Uh, they interviewed me, put it on the front page of USA today, so it got picked up by USA today. Um, everybody seemed to find it very entertaining that at this, this huge corporation would, you know, stumble in this way. So it got picked up, uh, by a lot of different news outlets, Time Magazine, New York Times, Forbes, um, all over the place for about a week, a lot of attention for about a week. Um, and it was mentioned, I guess the most high profile was, I was interviewed by Entertainment Tonight for that, so I got on TV, um, and Johnny Carson, Athena (00:13:49): You need to explain who that is [Athena laughs]. Lee (00:13:53): So now I'll explain who Johnny Carson was. So Johnny Carson at that time was the king of late night talk shows. Uh, he had been for a long time at that point, but he was a huge name. He was the Tonight Show host. Um, and, so Jimmy Fallon I think is today's Tonight Show host. Um, so he was the precursor to Jimmy Fallon, to Jay Leno, and so on and so forth. So he mentioned it in his monologue. So that was a big deal. Athena (00:14:17): But he didn't say your name. Lee (00:14:17): He didn't mention, he didn't mention my name, just I was a guy, a guy who speaks the language yeah. [Athena laughs] Um, so at that point it was, you know, it had its moment, and then it faded because there was no reason to keep it going and no way to keep it going. Athena (00:14:31): But there was a meme that spread quite a lot, rapidly [Lee confirms] Lee (00:14:35): Yeah, it spread Athena (00:14:35): It's funny cause it's like a meta-meme Lee (00:14:38): Through primitive memes, yeah. [Athena laughs] Athena (00:14:38): It was, it was a meme about a meme, right, because "Just Do It" is a meme? And then it was like they were pretending that someone in this other society, this other culture had said that meme, but really it wasn't. So it was almost like a meta-meme about the meme [Lee agrees] and not actually [Lee laughs]. I don't know. It, it's interesting. Lee (00:14:57): Yes. There's a lot of meta levels there. Athena (00:14:59): Yeah, right. Lee (00:14:59): Um Athena (00:15:00): So it died for a while? Lee (00:15:01): It died until, um, you know Athena (00:15:04): Until the internet! [Athena laughs] Lee (00:15:05): 1989 and then then the internet came along. And so in the early nineties, sometime, maybe 93, 94, I started getting emails from people cause emails existed. Finally, such a relief. Um, we got emails and I'd get emails from people saying, ah, I read about this online, is this really true? And, uh, what had happened is that somebody had taken the story from Forbes magazine, and they had posted it on a website, um, and they'd taken the date off it. So they had made it a sort of a eternal meme by making it seem eternally fresh, as if this had just just happened. So I got in the habit of replying to these emails saying, "Yes, in fact that had just happened. " That had happened, but it had happened in 1989, which was, you know, five, 10, whatever years ago. And, um, uh, my interpretation of that is that there was essentially a mutation in the meme, the meme mutated slightly by dropping its date. Um, somebody had done that deliberately, I suppose, and that had allowed it to gain, um, many, many more viewers and much more attention. Athena (00:16:11): Hmm. So that suggests that like sometimes there can be some sort of a tag maybe on a meme that like if it's a time tag or maybe a spatial tag or something Lee (00:16:22): Yes. Athena (00:16:22): That like limits the scope of its relevance. And if you take those off, then it becomes relevant. Lee (00:16:27): Becomes wide-spread, eternal. Athena (00:16:28): Yeah. Lee (00:16:29): Yeah. I'm not saying this is eternal [Athena laughs]. That's an example of the importance of this particular meeting. That's certainly not true. But yeah, I think that's true. Um, if you make it so that it's something that's true in general rather than true in a specific context, you might be able to extend its lifespan. I mean, get more people to pay attention to it and spread it. Athena (00:16:50): You think there are other examples of that kind of? Lee (00:16:50): That's a good question. Um, there was a, um, going back into my, the lecture notes in my brain. Um, there was a, uh, another primitive technology, a chain letter, uh, that's called the St. Jude letter. And the reason I know about this is because it was written up by, um, Richard Dawkins, the originator of the word 'meme', and a collaborator of his named Oliver Goodmoth. As an example of a meme of a, of a, essentially a virus meme, a meme that went viral, but it was before the days of the internet. Athena (00:17:29): Yeah, because, as a mechanism for replicating itself and spreading into other brains [Lee confirms]. Lee (00:17:32): Right. And they described the letter and essentially it was, you know, you will have good luck if you copied this letter over 10 times and mail it to 10 friends. But if you don't do that, you'll have bad luck. And in the write up of this thing, they do describe some changes that were made to the letter that enhanced its attractiveness. Um, I think making dire predictions about the fate of people who failed to pass the letter on was one thing that enhanced its popularity. It's like, well, you know, you don't want to tempt to fate and not spread the letter on, as such terrible things are happening to people who don't spread the letter. Athena (00:18:06): Right. Lee (00:18:06): Um, so yeah, there's ways you can tweak things to make them more popular. Athena (00:18:11): Mhm, interesting. Yeah. Lee (00:18:11): Yeah, sure. And zombify people in the process. Athena (00:18:13): That's right. So shall we talk a little bit about culture in general Lee (00:18:18): Sure. Athena (00:18:18): And zombification. So, um, how does culture relate to this whole idea of zombification that you know, your brain can, or your whole organism can get under the influence of forces that are not necessarily your own goals? Lee (00:18:35): Your own goals, right. Um, I think it's very relevant. Um, so if you think about it, what is culture for? Culture, culture is information we get from other people, and why did we bother to pay attention to that information? Because it makes life easier. And the reason why we do that or why we've been evolved to do that and why that's adaptive is because, um, our brains are delicious as they may be [Athena laughs]. They are, uh, of limited capacity. We can only think so much. We can only accommodate so much information and so much cogitation and um, so sometimes, uh, sort of letting our guard down and allowing these culture traits to come in from other people and allowing them to guide our behavior might make a lot of sense. Athena (00:19:18): Okay. Do you have an example? Lee (00:19:20): Yeahh, so, so say you're new to a place, you're traveling and you arrive in some new place, uh, and they do think somewhat differently. Um, that's a good idea probably to, you know, when in Rome do as the Romans do. Um, or as the Messiah say. Um, if you go to a land where people eat feces, eat them yourself. Athena (00:19:42): Oh, that's gross. Lee (00:19:42): It's disgusting, but you know, um, yep. Athena (00:19:45): basically eat, eat shit, if Lee (00:19:46): Yep, if you have, if that's what the people there do, maybe.. Athena (00:19:48): maybe there just, yeah, maybe they're just saying you should get the local microbiome. Lee (00:19:53): Yes. That's probably what it is [Athena laughs].Their ahead of their time, in microbiome understanding. Um, but yeah, they may know something you don't know, and this has been shown. Athena (00:20:03): Yeah, like the health benefits of fecal transplant sometimes. Yes. Lee (00:20:06): Like, exactly, maybe they know something about that we don't know [Athena laughs]. So since you're new there and you don't know the way the lay of the land, you don't know what's good to eat, what's bad to eat, you don't know what the deal is. Maybe you should go ahead and just imitate what the folks there are doing locally. And that's actually been demonstrated to occur in lots of species. There's a lot of imitation of the behavior of the locals in various contexts across many species, especially food acquisition and mate preferences. Um, there's some studies with guppies, guppies, they have much more, they're much more cognitively challenged than we are [Athena laughs]. Their brains are tiny and sure enough, if they are introduced to a new tank, new fish tank, uh, then they don't know where the food is. They'll follow the fish who are already there to the food, even if that's not actually the optimal way to get there, but they don't know what the optimal way to get there is, the shortest route. So they follow the fish that are already there. They're, they're just picking up on the information that's available in the environment, thanks to the fish that are already there, and humans do the same kind of thing. There's an experiment that is basically a human equivalent of that Guppy experiment where they had people come in and they were doing, ostensibly they were told that they were going to do an experiment at a table. It involved putting a puzzle together. In fact, what they were doing is taking them to this table via a somewhat circuitous route, a long route. Um, and then they saw whether or not when they were given an opportunity to go back to that same table, did they go ahead keep taking that long route like the guppies did in the tank or did they take a short route that was obviously there and more efficient? Most people took the long route. They took the route that they sort of been taught tacitly to take, simply because it's cognitively easier. Just you're familiar with it. It's what the person did originally. So they were wondering whether they, people might've thought that there was a reason to take that route. So they did a follow-up experiment where they made it very clear that there was no reason to take that route by making it, a deliberate detour, so that, uh, the person running the experiment could put a poster back on a bulletin board so that it was clear that that wasn't a special route. There was nothing especially good about it. It was just to put the bulletin report back in place, and people still followed with the long route. Athena (00:22:27): So do we sorta like use other people's brains as a crutch? Lee (00:22:29): Yes. Athena (00:22:30): Or like others in the same species as we do, so we don't have to use our own brains. Lee (00:22:33): Yes we do. It is in a sense to some degree that is adaptive because again, maybe those folks know something you don't know. So again, there's, there's, there's a mate choice copying been shown across many species that if you can make it appear that members of one sex, usually the females find particular kinds of males more attractive, that other females will pick up on that and behave accordingly and find those males. Athena (00:22:58): Are you talking about college? Lee (00:23:00): Indeed. I guess that happens in college [Athena and Lee laugh]. It also happens with fruit flies. Um, if you attach Athena (00:23:06): Does it happen with fruit flies in college? Lee (00:23:08): In college, probably does. Get a bunch of bananas in a dorm room, we'll have the same thing happening [Athena laughs]. Um, yeah, they attach, there was a recent experiment, they took male fruit flies and they attached a little, uh, special markers to them, so they would look distinctive, little pink balls or little green balls, and made it look as if they were mating with a female fruit fly. And when female fruit flies were exposed to this, they became attracted to males who had those same characteristics of the pink and blue balls. Athena (00:23:35): They were looking for the ballers. Lee (00:23:36): Yes. Yes they are [Lee chuckles]. They are looking for the ballers. Um, so fruit flies do it. Guppies do it. Birds do it. Bees, I don't, I don't think bees do it [Athena and Lee laugh]. Athena (00:23:47): Are we singing a song now? [Lee laughs] Lee (00:23:50): Like humans do it. Humans also have been shown that if you just give slight hints that, maybe, other women say find particular guys attractive. Those guys get higher ratings. Athena (00:24:01): Don't some guys like specifically do this where they like cultivate friendships with women who are attractive just so they can go around with them. And then Lee (00:24:09): Yeah. I've heard that, I've heard that, yeah. Athena (00:24:11): Yeah. Lee (00:24:11): Yes, and I've seen it in movies and TV shows and so on and so forth [Athena laughs]. But the reason why that would work is because again, it's, it's, uh, taking advantage of the fact that we have these sort of cognitive shortcuts of using information that's already out there in the environment. Cause it's, it's often cheaper, easier, and a better bet than trying to get your own information. Learning individually can be very expensive compared to learning socially, picking up what other people are doing Athena (00:24:37): Yeah, that can potentially be a big problem in the mating domain. If it's like, " Oh, somebody else has already chosen this person as a mate. That must mean they're a good one then." Lee (00:24:45): Yeah, it could be. Yes, that could lead to conflict [Athena and Lee laugh]. Yeah, that could lead to conflict, but it doesn't have to be so explicit, as that they have chosen them as a mate. It can just be an indication that they find them attractive. Athena (00:24:59): Hmm, okay. Lee (00:24:59): So there's one experiment where there's just mugshots, and they slapped, you know, you know, full frontal mugshots and profile mugshots next to each other. And in some of them, the, the profile mugshots, there are women who appear to be smiling at mugshots of men. And it's actually quite clear that they were not in the same room when the pictures were taken and that they're not actually smiling at these guys. Athena (00:25:20): So it's just a perceptual thing? Lee (00:25:21): It's just, uh, yeah, Athena (00:25:21): Interesting Lee (00:25:21): just it triggers this little part of the brain that apparently says, well, apparently that guy is attracted to her. So Athena (00:25:27): And they weren't like mugshots like when the guys were getting you know checked into jail? Lee (00:25:32): No. Not criminal mugshots [Athena laughs], just like the same kind of mugshot you get when you have a drivers license taken. Um, and that's all it takes. Just a little hint. So it wouldn't have to be, so say you've got a guy who has read this literature and thinks he has an attractive female friend, that he's not actually involved with romantically, takes her to a bar, say, um, all she has to do is be with him. She doesn't have to appear to be involved with him. Athena (00:25:58): Right, that's interesting. Lee (00:25:58): to increase his attractiveness. Um, that's it. That's, that's enough. So it doesn't have to lead to a conflictual situation, but it could. Athena (00:26:06): Right, right. So this aspect of like, paying attention to what others do and copying them, imitating them, that can, can be like a cognitive shortcut that causes, uh Lee (00:26:17): That's a cognitive shortcut, yeah, yeah. Athena (00:26:17): To rely on other people's brains. But there's like, so when does it go from just imitation to culture? Like, you know, what's that transition? Lee (00:26:27): Ah. Well, at a very, so there's different ways of transmitting culture. So an imitation is a very sort of basic and simple one. Um, there are others that are actually even more basic and more simple. Um, I don't wanna get too technical, but there's one, called goal emulation, that is just, um, uh, our, our, uh, the most simple one is stimulus enhancement where the only information that's being transmitted from one individual of a species to another is that something's interesting. Um, that, you know, "somebody of my species finds this thing interesting. I'll check it out too." Athena (00:27:00): Okay. Lee (00:27:00): So very little information is being transferred, but as long as a little bit of transfer is happening, then that counts as a little bit of culture. So really, really minimal culture. Imitation is more sophisticated than that because you're, you're, if you're truly imitating, you're imitating the motions they're going through, you know, and there's a lot of, there's some interesting literature on how humans are. We talk about "aping". Uh, it really should be called "humaning" because we, we ate much better than apes do. Um, there've been experiments Athena (00:27:30): So we're, we're out-aping apes is what you're saying? Lee (00:27:33): We're out-aping apes. At least when we copy each other, we are. Athena (00:27:37): But we're actually, technically Lee (00:27:37): We are actually apes, true. Yeah Athena (00:27:39): But still the, we shouldn't be using the term aping for something that is specific to. Lee (00:27:46): Yeah, it's really more of a human thing. Athena (00:27:46): Yeah Lee (00:27:47): So we over copy. If you, if you show people how to accomplish a task and you include extra steps that aren't really necessary, they will typically include those steps too. Even though they're not efficacious in any way, they don't really do anything because who knows, they don't know exactly how the mechanism works. They don't know what's effective and what's not. So why not, you know, it's not costing anything. So they over copy and some experiments with chimpanzees years ago indicated that they over copy a lot less. They're much more focused on the goal. They figure out how to get the goal, how to get the food reward and they don't over copy it so much as people do. Athena (00:28:22): And is that because they're, you know, able to understand the goal more, or you know, is it because humans are like more worried about not following the norms of what they're supposed to do? Lee (00:28:35): There's, I think, I haven't, that literature is something I haven't read for a while, but I think there's some ambiguity there about whether the humans are, yeah, worried, worried about the, maybe the observer might judge them poorly if they're not imitating completely inaccurately, whereas chimps wouldn't care about that. Um, there's some questions there about exactly why humans are over copying. The theory anyways, humans over copy because by and large it's so adaptive to just go ahead and copy. Go ahead and allow yourself to be Zombified in a sense just a little bit by the culture traits that um, we've become adapted to do that, that it's a human predisposition to over copy, um, because usually it's adaptive, but there is some ambiguity in the literature about exactly why we over copy. Athena (00:29:24): And I mean, certainly there must be some situations where it's a vulnerability too, right? Lee (00:29:28): Oh certainly Athena (00:29:29): It's not like, it's just always a good thing that we copy others and sometimes for no real reason other than that other people are doing it. Lee (00:29:37): Right, well you know, moms always say, when a kid says they did X, Y, or Z thing because Joey was doing it, you know, would you jump off a cliff if Joey was doing it? Of course not. Athena (00:29:47): That's a creative line. Lee (00:29:49): [Athena and Lee laugh] So, yeah, absolutely. There's, there's a lot of situations in which you want to be careful and not, so there's a, uh, somebody you know, Rob Kurzban, suggested in publication a while back that there ought to be sort of a balance between gullibility and skepticism that, that uh, there's a payoff to being gullible towards certain kinds of culture traits, but also a value in being skeptical about other kinds. And we gotta have a mix of strategies, where in some cases we're skeptical. Say if somebody is trying to establish a hierarchy and claiming that they have some reason to, uh, to give us instructions or something that might be to our detriment, be skeptical. Uh, but if the goal is, if say the example he offers is technology. If you come across a technology and it seems to be working, then you run with it. You use it. Don't be skeptical about it. It seems to be working. Uh, one that I like, the example I like, is social, what I call social coordination conventions, which is any sort of a, a culture trait that helps us get our act together to coordinate our behaviors. Athena (00:30:49): Just as an aside though, probably shouldn't imitate Rob Kurzban's behavior. Lee (00:30:53): Okay maybe not, maybe not. Athena (00:30:53): Just want to make sure to get that out there for those of you who know Lee (00:30:58): Maybe not. Maybe not .Be careful. Be skeptical. Athena (00:31:01): Yes. Yes. That's right. Okay. Please do that Lee (00:31:03): But uh, I want to give credit where credit's due, and I thought, his language, and gullibility skepticism was nice [Athena agrees]. Um, cause it, you know, easy words that we all can tie into. Um, so social coordination conventions, my example of the most extreme type would be language because language can be used for many things once it gets going, but it's sort of original purpose as far as I know, and as far as people who studied it know, was coordinating behavior, getting people on the same page, sharing information so that we can act together, act in concert to accomplish common goals. Athena (00:31:36): Is that pretty much like the accepted ideas of what language evolved for? Lee (00:31:42): I think it's pretty widely accepted. It would have to. In order for language to evolve, originally, it would have had to have been a kind of a win-win proposition. Again, once, once you get language established, you can use it for many things, not always win win. You can use it to rip people off. But in order to get it off the ground to, to differentiate language from animal signaling systems, I think, and a other thousand people have argued the same thing. Um, I'm thinking in particular linguist named Derek Bickerton whose argued about this in a book called Adam's Tongue. Um, that, yeah, would have had to be a win win thing where the goal was to coordinate behavior. Athena (00:32:19): Because you have to have both the sender evolving to make the sounds and the receiver evolving to understand it, and so. Lee (00:32:25): Understand it and believe it and buy into it. Yeah. So, he thinks that. There's some evidence that way long ago in human evolution, our ancestors were not so much hunters of scavengers and that we were, uh, aggressive scavengers that we would, um Athena (00:32:39): Are we talking about zombies now? Lee (00:32:41): Well, it would be a kind of zombie-like behavior in a sense [Athena laughs], because the idea would be that there would be kills and large animals killed by other species and that our ancestors would have coordinated their efforts to chase those animals off and then get the meat and so on from that, those dead animals, rather than doing the hunting themselves. There's some good evidence to that to back that up. So his argument is that the sort of original thing that separated language from animal signaling was a cooperative sort of signal of win-win signal saying, "Hey, you know, there is an opportunity here. Let's coordinate. Let's go for it." Athena (00:33:14): So it's almost like you have to have trust sort of before language can even get off the ground? Lee (00:33:18): Yes. So these would have been, you know, small groups of closely related individuals. So that is plausible. Yeah. I think anyway. So, you know, if you're learning a foreign language, um, you are totally gullible to its rules, right. You don't, somebody who is a native Spanish speaker tells you that this thing I'm sitting in is called a silla, a chair. Then you don't argue with them. You don't, you know, say, well I don't think that's a really very good word for that, let me call it this instead. You go with it. You go with the flow because, well, your goal in learning the language is to be able to interact with Spanish speakers. And you're not going to argue about the rules of the language, what the words mean. You just go for it. Athena (00:33:58): So you can get people in trouble when they are learning a language? Lee (00:33:59): You can, you can, that's fine. Yes [Athena and Lee laugh]. That can be fun. You can take advantage of it, um, by teaching them things that are funny sounding when foreigners say them. Yes, yes. I've had that done to me, and I've done it to other people too. Athena (00:34:10): Oh yeah, You have some good stories about that? Lee (00:34:10): You have some stories? Athena (00:34:16): Uh, no, but [Athena laughs] Lee (00:34:16): Oh no, I don't have any really great stories about it. Of course it may have been pulled on me, and I didn't even know it was happening, you know, could be entertainment value [Athena laughs]. Um, but yeah, it's, that can be funny. Athena (00:34:29): Yeah. So back to the sort of question of like, when we can be zombified by culture in a way that is like not in our benefit, like when others can get us to do things that we might not actually decide to do willingly. How does culture sort of figure into that space? Lee (00:34:49): Right. Well, one way to do it, and so a funny example would be somebody, you know, taking advantage of uh, uh, language learners ignorance by teaching you to say incorrect things that are, that come off as funny to me as a speaker. So that'd be pretty innocuous. But if you think about, um, uh, you could, you know, use, um, people's predilections to be cooperative, to coordinate their behavior with others, to be kind to others, to be generous to others, to um, uh, take advantage of that and con them out of their money. Um, there's a lot of examples of people setting up cons to take advantage of generosity, um, and that, that tendency to be generous. Um, there's many, many opportunities to exploit people's gullibility, unfortunately. Um, but, uh, culture, clearly the human beings are such a successful species, in large part because of culture. Culture enables many, many things. Uh, in my view, the most important thing is it really, really enhances cooperation and that enhances our ability to do a variety of other things, like use our environment to our advantage. So we're very, very successful as a species and culture is a huge part of that, but it comes with a potential cost. This uh potential cost that you, you might learn things that are bad for you. Um, and you might be zombified by, um, the, you know, it could be something that's spread, uh, not deliberately, um, say a drug addiction. Um, or it could be deliberately say, you know, the tobacco companies that encouraged tobacco consumption, even though they knew that there were problems with tobacco consumption, that it was addictive and leading to cancer and other diseases. Um, so they're taking advantage of our vulnerability to culture and our predilection to get addicted to things to use us. Athena (00:36:45): Yeah. So it sounds like there's kind of this tension with culture that on one hand it can really help people, you know, solve coordination problems and, um, be ultimately more cooperative, but then at the same time it can kind of increase your vulnerability to getting exploited. Lee (00:37:05): Yes. Yes. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Uh, and I don't know any easy way to avoid that other than, uh, learning to be skeptical. Um, that's a lot of what we learn when we grow up I think is our people teach us not to believe everything you hear. Athena (00:37:22): So Lee, how do parents help their kids learn about the kinds of things that people might try to pull over their eyes? You know, how do parents teach their kids to be skeptical? Lee (00:37:37): Well, I think sometimes they do it deliberately through, you know, just saying, you know, don't believe everything you hear or read. Uh, but there are more subtle ways to do it. Um, that might be adaptive. Athena (00:37:51): Like what kind of things might parents tell their kids? Lee (00:37:51): Well, so, you know, parents tell their kids all kinds of things that, that the parents know aren't really true. A Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, that kind of thing. And uh, you know, I do think that that in the long run, kids learned that those things aren't true. Sorry kids, if you're listening in here that anybody, any little kids stop listening here, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aren't real. Those are your parents [Athena laughs]. Um, and uh, I think that in the long run that, that may teach kids to be a little bit skeptical about things and say, you know, it's these things I believed before, I don't believe that anymore. Athena (00:38:25): Yeah Um, have you ever told your kids something that wasn't true? Lee (00:38:27): Oh gee, other than those two things? From time to time, uh, yeah, I've, I'm kind of known in my as the guy you can't believe anything he says. Um, because I've always enjoyed telling, kind of deadpan made up things and seeing who will believe them. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Athena (00:38:48): Ooh, a couple of examples [Athena laughs]. Lee (00:38:49): Yeah. Well, I'll start with one I don't, you may not be familiar with. Actually we were, we were driving I think to JFK airport, and to get to JFK airport from New Jersey, you pass by Coney Island. And I, it's always helpful if you start off with something that's actually true. Athena (00:39:05): Okay, alright. Lee (00:39:05): So we're passing by Coney Island, and I point out that, Coney, it's named Coney Island because a Coney is a rabbit. It's an old fashioned word for a rabbit. Athena (00:39:13): Oh, I didn't know that. Lee (00:39:13): And there were rabbits there. Yeah. Yeah. Coney was a rabbit. Um, and uh, so I said, because there were a lot of rabbits there, in fact, and this is where the falsehood begins. In fact, the original Coney dogs were made of rabbit meat. Athena (00:39:27): That's gross [Athena and Lee laugh] Lee (00:39:27): They had so many rabbits there. You've eaten a rabbit. Come on. Athena (00:39:31): That's true. But Lee (00:39:33): You don't like the idea of a rabbit hot dog? [Athena laughs] There were so many rabbits on the islands they had to do something with them, so they, they caught them, they hunted them, and they made them into hot dogs. And these were the original Coney dogs. And my kids were in the backseat listening to all this stuff, and they believed that for a while. And then they realized who was saying it, and they, by that time, they, they come to realize that you can't really believe these stories that daddy was making up. Athena (00:39:56): How old were they at that time? Lee (00:39:56): Oh, you know, uh, maybe around 10. Athena (00:40:00): So that was past the age of Ascension? Lee (00:40:04): That was, no, the age of Ascension was 14. Athena (00:40:05): Okay. All right, well can you explain, why the, yeah.. Lee (00:40:10): The age of Ascension? Yes. Well. So long ago when my daughter, so I have two kids, Lauren and Cooper, and when Lauren was maybe five years old, uh, we had a habit, we would, you know, tuck her in bed and sometimes she asks us to tell us, tell her bedtime story. So she asked me one night, you know, daddy, please tell me a story. And um, I said, well, I'm just so tired tonight. I don't think I have the energy to come up with a story. But you know, there is something that mommy and I have been meaning to tell you about. And she said, what? And I said, well, you know, we're not really from this planet. We're actually from a planet called Zandar. And we were sent here on a mission to study the planet here on Earth. And when you reach the age of 14, which is the Zandizian age of Ascension, [Athena laughs] the mother ship will return, and we will go back to Zandar. Where, where you will take your rightful place on the throne as a princess of Zandar. Athena (00:41:03): So you were like, uh, Zandizian Royal family, slash, anthropologist? Lee (00:41:09): Slash anthropologists, on Earth. Yes, yes Athena (00:41:10): Yes. Are you going to go back to Zandar and like publish some sweet papers about Earthlings? Lee (00:41:15): Yeah. I was going to have such a great career [Athena laughs]. Um, yeah. You know, that happens a lot. Um, and uh, I think this was part informed, there, there was a program on TV as a time, uh, Third Rock From the Sun. I think that was feeding into my thinking. Athena (00:41:31): I mean that would be a pretty good like conceit for a movie that like you have an anthropologist from another planet who's coming to study humans, and they actually get a professor job as an anthropologist. Lee (00:41:44): As an anthropologist [Athena and Lee laugh]. Really good cover. Athena (00:41:48): Yeah. Lee (00:41:48): Um, yeah, that would be great idea. Let's, let's write that up. That's great. Do a treatment. Um, so she thought that was pretty funny. Um, and I thought it would end right there. I thought that nothing would come to this story. Uh, but then my wife went in, uh, to, to tuck her in and Lauren says, mommy, daddy says we're not from this planet. We're from Zandar. And, a, the interesting thing is that I had not said anything to my wife about this at all, but her reaction was perfect. She said "He wasn't supposed to tell you." And, that made it a thing. That made it, uh, her favorite bedtime story was, would be stories about Zandar. And, uh, when my son came along, uh, soon thereafter he got into the Zandar act. Um, and they would ask for stories about Zandar, but I, they picked up pretty quickly. Um, and in fact, when we went, she was in first grade, um, maybe a year, year and a half after this started, we went and had a teacher conference with her first grade teacher [Athena laughs]. Athena (00:42:49): Busted! [Athena and Lee laugh] Lee (00:42:49): And, the first thing she says to us, so I understand you're from the planet Zandar [Athena laughs]. Um, and, uh, so she, Lauren had been talking about it. Oh. And then another little kid in first grade asked my wife when she was there for some event, Lauren keeps saying she's from the planet Zandar is she really from there? And my wife's reaction was, you know, now she's not supposed to talk about that [Athena and Lee laugh]. Athena (00:43:13): So. So did they like know that it wasn't true? Lee (00:43:17): Yeah. They did. Athena (00:43:17): But kind of like kids sort of suspect maybe Santa Claus is their parent? Lee (00:43:21): Yes, yes. Athena (00:43:22): Okay. Lee (00:43:22): So they picked up pretty quickly on the fact. So a big giveaway was the fact that they would ask me to make up a story. I'd make up a story describing Zandar in various ways, and then she would ask my wife to do it and they'd be in conflict [Athena laughs]. They wouldn't be the same cause we never got together and got our act together. And uh, you know, we'd cover it up with some excuse like, oh, that's on this part of the planet, but on the other part of the planet is. Um, so they picked up pretty quickly that it was just a bunch of stuff that daddy and mommy were making up. Uh, but I think that did imbue with him at least. So at a minimum, it imbued in my kids a skepticism about things that I say [Athena laughs]. They never know whether I'm making something up or not. And there there've been times when I'm saying something that's completely and totally true and they're like, no, I don't believe it because there's this built in skepticism. Right. It's possible to overdo it. Um, but I think, you know, maybe the, if there is a positive thing that came out of that, that they might be, you know, skeptical about things other folks say and whether they're true or not. Athena (00:44:24): Do you think parents do that deliberately or did you do that deliberately? Lee (00:44:28): No, no. Athena (00:44:28): It's just what you do to entertain yourself? Lee (00:44:32): It's just. I do it to entertain myself. I did it when I was younger too, even before I had kids. I just sort of, if use, because um, early in life, I kind of got a reputation as a kind of a know it all. I read a lot, had good memory and I, I didn't hide that in those things and it's kind of obnoxious. But um, yeah. And so I kind of took advantage of that. And like, people think I know a lot of stuff [Athena laughs], so what if I just make this crazy thing up, put it out there and see if they buy it. Um, and uh, yeah, it's fun. I recommend it [Athena and Lee laugh]. Athena (00:45:07): Do you think it's fun like because you're actually doing something helpful for people or just because you're fucking with them? Lee (00:45:14): No. Just fucking with them [Athena and Lee laugh]. Just, it's fun, but it only works. It's only fun if you, you know, at some point reveal to them that you're just yanking their chain because then then you get to laugh. Everybody gets to laugh about it. Um, and so, um, it's not fun if you just say something that's outlandishly untrue and yet people buy it and then you just walk away, you know, you gotta, you know, get some reaction out of it. Athena (00:45:42): Uh huh. It seems like this might have some relevance to our current information, misinformation issue. Lee (00:45:52): You know. Yes. Um Athena (00:45:52): If you're going to say a bunch of stuff that's not true, then you better explain it later and get a laugh out of it, instead of just letting it just proliferate on the internet [Athena and Lee laughs]. Lee (00:46:01): Just go out there, yeah, claim that it's true no matter what it is. Yeah, yeah. So the, I think the skepticism towards information and you know, this, things being said by various people and being spread through social media and traditional media, that's all culture. It's all culture traits being spread out there. And uh, um, unfortunately right now there's quite a bit of it it's, that's not true. Um Athena (00:46:24): Yeah. Well and people spread information not like based on the likelihood that it's true. Right. They spread it based on other... Lee (00:46:32): Yeah. Yeah. Is it interesting and will it be of interest to other people? Athena (00:46:36): Yeah. Lee (00:46:37): Yeah. So negative, shocking things. Negative things often are more interest to people. The idea that there's a lot of evidence that people are more interested in, in negative things. Um, and that that grabs, so that's newspapers and media of various kinds are more likely to cover negative things, bad things that happen than good things. And that is unfortunate, in the sense that it creates a distorted view of what the world is really like. That it's more full of negative things than good things. Athena (00:47:04): Yeah. Lee (00:47:05): But it makes a lot of sense adaptively because those, those negative things could, if we ignore them, um, we might pay a high cost, but if we ignore good things and just take them for granted, there's not necessarily a high cost to that. Athena (00:47:18): Yeah. Did I ever tell you the story about, um, in my evolutionary psychology class, I had people play this meme game where they had to write, um, uh, a meme, a few sentences of something on a note card. And then, um, they would walk around with that note card and say their meme to people who they bump into. And then all they had to do was if they heard a meme that they like better than there is to cross theirs out and write the meme of the other person. Lee (00:47:50): Right. And it could be anything? Athena (00:47:52): It could be anything. Lee (00:47:52): Any phrase? Any statements? Athena (00:47:53): Yeah. I mean, I asked them to like, not be really offensive just because I didn't think that would be a positive thing for the class. Um, but yeah, it could be. It could be anything Lee (00:48:03): But it's going to be words? It's going to be a fairly short string of words? Athena (00:48:05): Yeah, exactly. And so, um, I had them do this and then, you know, walk around the room and, you know, they just bump into people and say their meme and then cross it out if they want. And, um, then I looked at which means spread the most. And the one that was the most successful was, um, the human nature essay is worth 30% of your grade [Lee laughs]. And the thing is it was totally not true. Lee (00:48:33): It was not true. [Lee laughs] Athena (00:48:34): It was not true. Yeah. Yeah. And um, the guy who, um, wrote that, he knew that it wasn't true, but he thought, it would Lee (00:48:43): It would attract attention Athena (00:48:45): Yeah! And Lee (00:48:46): Because it would make people worry about their essay more? Athena (00:48:46): And yeah, and some of the people, so we talked about it later and some of the people who wrote it, you know, crossed theirs out and wrote that one, did it, cause they thought maybe it's true, and others realize it wasn't true, but thought that other people might think it's true Lee (00:49:04): And find it interesting. Athena (00:49:06): Yeah. And so- Lee (00:49:07): But that memes didn't all have to do with things in the class. It could be anything? Athena (00:49:10): It could be anything. Lee (00:49:10): The sun is purple or whatever... yeah. Athena (00:49:10): Yeah. But you know, this guy chose something that was very relevant to the class. Right? Lee (00:49:18): Very smart. Athena (00:49:18): Yeah. Lee (00:49:18): Yeah. That's great. I have to do, I'm teaching a class on evolution and culture in the Fall. I have to do that. Athena (00:49:23): Yeah. It's super easy. You just need a pile of notecards, and it scales up or down. You can do it with eight people, or you can do it with 200. Yeah. Lee (00:49:30): That's great. Yeah. Athena (00:49:33): Fun game. Um, so I have to ask like big picture, we've got this whole zombification via culture. Culture can, you know, manipulate us to sometimes do things that are not in our best interest, but we're vulnerable to that because ultimately there's some sort of payoff or benefit, right [Lee confirms]. To being able to be influenced and kind of in a way zombified by like the collective in a way. Right. You can do things that are, that you can't do as a group. Right. Lee (00:50:04): Yes, as, uh, individuals, we're pretty powerless, but when we can get our act together with other people, we can do a lot of stuff. Athena (00:50:10): Yeah. So what if we take this whole idea of like, you know, zombification via culture, or our susceptibility to being zombified by culture, and we like ramp that up like a lot. So we're way more. Lee (00:50:26): We're super vulnerable. Athena (00:50:27): Yeah, we're way more malleable, way more influence-able by culture. Like what is the, you know, zombie apocalypse of that? Like what is the situation that happens in the world, if people become way more vulnerable? Lee (00:50:42): If we're just totally gullible to any, any nutty thing that comes along then, then all kinds of things. Uh, you could, for instance, have people refuse to vaccinate their children. That would be a thing. If enough people did that, then we would have rampant diseases that we've gotten rid of, or we thought we got rid of. Um, uh, it could be, you know, if we're just really completely vulnerable, it could be, you know, the way towards health is to, uh, eat things that aren't actually food. There've been, there have been isolated cases of cults who thought that the way towards, you know, redemption and salvation is to all kill themselves. Athena (00:51:19): Right. Lee (00:51:19): Um, Heaven's Gate cults comes to mind. Remember that one from way back in the nineties, eighties? Um, so people, some people, some of the time are sufficiently vulnerable to these things that are being taught that they do really, really maladaptive things. Athena (00:51:36): So it's a kind of apocalypse? They're like they're like mini apocalypses of this happening all the time is kind of what you're saying? Lee (00:51:41): Occasionally, occasionally. Lee (00:51:44): Most, I think that they're, they're limited in scope because you know, very few people have whatever it takes psychologically to fall into those groups that, that will do things like commit mass suicide. Um, uh, but some people do, but again, again, they don't spread very far because most of us see something like that and are not drawn to it, but we're repulsed by it. So our, fortunately for us, the idea of a zombie apocalypse caused by cultural traits is to my mind, pretty far fetched. Lucky for that. Because we do have this built in skepticism. Even though we're all vulnerable, we have a lot of skepticism. Athena (00:52:25): Could it lead to like really bad fashion choices? Lee (00:52:28): It indeed it frequently does [Athena and Lee laugh]. This is what, uh, my wife and her friends called fashion victimhood, that people are victims of fashions cause they, they're following the fashion, but then they're going to look back in 10 years and say, what were we thinking? Why did, why did we think that was a good idea to wear those clothes? [Athena and Lee laugh] Uh, but at the moment it seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, the cost is low. You know, the clothes typically don't cost that much and it. Athena (00:52:56): Well, it depends on what kind of clothes you buy. Lee (00:52:56): Depends, depends on what kind of clothes you're buying, but run of the mill clothes that most people wear. Um, and you know, the, in the moment, the, the benefit may be that you're connecting with your friends that you're all following these trends and you'll all think you're doing very, very well with this. It's only later that you look back and think that that was a silly thing to wear. Athena (00:53:16): So back to like the more sort of serious version of the like cultural zombification apocalypse. We started by talking about the internet and how it's of like changed the landscape of this. And you know, your whole story about like the Nike "Just Do It". It's like actually literally about a meme that died and then was like resurrected and became undead like because of the internet. Lee (00:53:41): Resurrected, zombified meme. Yeah, yeah, very much. You can talk about those. The zombie resurrection of dead memes [Athena laughs]. Um, Yeah. So, so one way to think about the internet would be in light of, uh, what some people call mismatch theory, the idea that, you know, we evolved in past environments and if you take an organism out of the environments in which it evolved and put it in a novel environment, it won't necessarily respond too adaptively. So now we're in this environment where we have these, this opportunity to spread huge amounts of information very, very widely, very rapidly, but we don't necessarily have sufficient sophistication about that information or skepticism about its sources to be able to handle that, um, adaptively. Athena (00:54:28): Yeah. Lee (00:54:28): So you can take advantage of that. You can, you can be, say, a foreign power and hire people to spread memes on social media to influence a political election in another country. That could happen. I'm just making things up. Athena (00:54:42): You're just making shit up, like you do. Lee (00:54:43): I'm just makin' shit up right now, like I do. Lee (00:54:46): I don't know where I got that [Athena laughs]. Um, but yeah, that, those kind of things and the people that are vulnerable to that because there's a certain assumption. My, my dad told me a story about his mom. So his mom, my grandma, was a wonderful woman. Uh, but, um, she had a certain gullibility. She believed that, this is way before the internet, um, that you, if something wasn't true, you couldn't print it. So that in advertisements Athena (00:55:13): Oh woww. Lee (00:55:13): Like an advertisement and things like that, if it wasn't true, you couldn't print it. And he was, tried, you know, actually you can, as long as nobody calls you on it, nobody sues you over it. You can print all kinds of stuff. That's not true. Athena (00:55:25): Right. Lee (00:55:26): Um, and so that didn't make her totally gullible person. She was very, very aware for instance, of, um, what was healthy and what was not healthy to eat. She was sort of a very early health food person and, uh, very insistent on, you know, whole grains and, um, fresh vegetables and all those things that we now embrace. But at the time people were embracing, you know, what she called pasty white stuff, the Wonderbread not super healthy bread and you know, canned foods and things like that. Um, so it didn't turn her into a super gullible person, but it might, my dad, as a young man was struck by the fact that she thought that there was a sort of a built in honesty to the system and it's not really true. Athena (00:56:07): Yeah. So I mean it's almost like as we were talking about earlier, the whole act of communicating kind of presupposes some trust or some shared interest, right? Like the evolution originally of communication language at least.. Lee (00:56:24): Yeah, absolutely. Athena (00:56:24): Is kind of built on that. But then somehow we have to get a layer of skepticism that's appropriate. Lee (00:56:31): On top of that Athena (00:56:31): That's on top of that. Yeah. Lee (00:56:33): Yeah. Because you know, in, in the environments in which our ancestors lived, I suppose there would have been, you know, the, the language originated in a context of, you know, small scale communities. Kinship based communities where there's a lot of trust and reason to trust where trusting is a pretty safe thing to do. Then skepticism might sort of have its origins in dealing with people who are outside that community and where you're dealing with somebody who doesn't share the words or the, you know, the language you have. And then, then I could imagine that that might be a, an evolutionary starting point for, for skepticism, but that's extremely speculative on my part. Um, but people do tend to be, um, you know, more skeptical about what folks who come from another place who are, you know, in a sense playing a different game. They play by different rules. There's some skepticism about what they're doing. Maybe they're playing a different game, and I don't want to play that game. Athena (00:57:31): Yeah. So do you think this whole skepticism thing is something that people just sort of differ in, um.. Lee (00:57:41): Individual to individual? Athena (00:57:42): Yeah. Is it, and is it something that's like learned, like, do you think your kids are like more skeptical because of the Zandar thing? Lee (00:57:54): It may be, it may be. They may also pick up on the fact that I'm sort of maybe hyper skeptical about claims by sort of people in authority. I've always been that way, and I don't know that I was ever taught that. I think that, I don't really know if there's any literature on this about individual variations in sort of inherent skepticism as a character trait of people. But just anecdotally, it seems to me like that seems to be true. There seemed to be people who are, you know, pretty accepting, um, and other people who are a lot, you know, this built in skeptics about things. And I would imagine life experience plays into that. Um, but I don't know that there's a great literature on that. Athena (00:58:30): I wonder if people who are more skeptical by nature are also like, you know, mess with people more like you do. Lee (00:58:37): That may be true [Athena and Lee laugh]. Athena (00:58:39): It's like, come on everybody, let's be a little more skeptical Lee (00:58:43): Yeah let's don't, don't believe all this stuff people say. Cause sometimes they're just making it up. Athena (00:58:46): I mean it makes me wonder if maybe, I mean, I think that it's of course well intentioned to be like, let's only teach, you know, people, things that we know to be true, but that maybe actually having a little bit more the sort of, you know, critical thinking, letting kids figure out for themselves, or maybe not for themselves, but giving them the tools to figure out what's true and what's not. Or evaluate arguments or be like, you know, is this a ridiculous idea or, you know, is it something that, um, you know, is at least worthy of further discussion and investigation Lee (00:59:26): Sort of critical judgment and evaluation. Athena (00:59:28): Yeah. Lee (00:59:28): It's a good skill to have. Athena (00:59:29): Yeah. But I mean it sounds like with your kids, you mostly did that through like telling them wild stories. Lee (00:59:35): Yeah. I don't think, I uh, don't remember making an explicit lesson. Um, I don't think that would've gone over as well because, uh, you know, if you sit your kids down and tried to give them explicit lessons about here's the way things work, they might give you some resistance to that. Part, because it's boring. Athena (00:59:53): Yeah. So maybe a way to teach people to be a little more skeptical of things that are, you know, just outlandish is to kind of fuck with them a little bit in general. Lee (01:00:06): Maybe [Athena and Lee laugh]. I hadn't really thought about it that way. I hadn't really thought about it that way, uh, but, uh, but yeah, maybe so. Umm... Athena (01:00:15): Yeah. And kind of leverage that imagination too of like, you know. I mean it's probably way more fun for you also. Lee (01:00:22): Yes, absolutely. Athena (01:00:22): Then sitting down and being like, okay, let's talk about how advertisements get made and how, you know, how Lee (01:00:29): How they may be misleading sometimes. Athena (01:00:30): That would be kind of a boring conversation to have. Lee (01:00:33): Yeah, it has, there's one arena in which I have, I have, I've restrained myself from the temptation to spin tales, Athena (01:00:43): Okay. Lee (01:00:43): Which is in my teaching. Athena (01:00:43): That seems wise [Athena laughs]. Lee (01:00:45): Um, yeah, there, there is one case. I run little survey in-class experiments in one of my classes, a class on cooperation and there, in the, in that class I do actually do with follow the example of the psychologists and in one of the experiments deceived them. Um, I lead them to believe that they have been put in two different groups based on their aesthetic judgments of landscape photographs. In fact, I, I don't have any idea what their judgments are. Athena (01:01:14): Yeah. Lee (01:01:14): But this is based on a classic experiment. And um, so in that case, I do deliberately mislead them. And so I do kind of get that, that happy moment where I get to tell them that everything I just told you was not true. And I get that. Athena (01:01:29): You're smiling a lot right now [Athena and Lee laugh]. Lee (01:01:32): It's a fun little moment. Um, but I tell them, I don't let it go. I tell them I don't just make stuff up in class. In general Athena (01:01:40): But then it brings up the question like, you know, if you're an educator, like is there space? Should there be space for Lee (01:01:48): Well, there's fiction. I mean, you know, there, there is this category of, of uh, I don't know what you call it, sort of a knowledge claim that takes the form of fiction and we love it. We're, we're, I'm a total sucker for fiction. I love fiction, whether it's written or movie or TV show. Um, and I know it's all not true. You know, it's, none of it's true, but that's not what it, it has a truth value that's not, um, literal. It has truth value in terms of capturing something about the human experience or, or something like that. Um, that's why we read it. So we have this sort of niche carved out for, uh, an arena in which you can tell outlandish falsehoods and yet you can be paid very well for it [Athena laughs]. And people know, that people know it's false. Athena (01:02:32): Sure. Yeah. Lee (01:02:33): And they love it. Athena (01:02:33): Yeah. But, but there still remains like, you know, like in the sciences and, you know, social sciences and all of that where, um, the ability to think critically and be skeptical is super important. You know, should there be some space for actually, I don't know Lee (01:02:59): Being gullible? Athena (01:03:00): Not, not being gullible, but like as an educator teaching people how to not be gullible through like more playful stuff. I don't know. Lee (01:03:06): Oh sure, yeah, absolutely. Athena (01:03:06): I'm just totally, you know, throwing that out there. Like what would that look like? Lee (01:03:10): No. I think so. I don't know exactly what that would look like, but, uh, I like the idea in principle. Yeah. I think pedagogically that could be a great thing. Um, if you could come up with a neat, fun, interactive curriculum, you know, here's some things, how do we know whether, you know, how do we know that Coney dogs weren't originally made out of rabbit meat? Why? Why does that seem implausible to us? Athena (01:03:32): Or today in class we're going to play two, two truths and a lie. Lee (01:03:36): Yeah, that's right. Athena (01:03:36): I'm going to show you three things and one of them is not true, which one is the lie? Lee (01:03:43): Yeah. That could be the starting point. Yeah, that'd be, that could be a lot of fun. Yeah, I like that idea. Yeah. Athena (01:03:48): So are there any, um, tips or ideas that you would offer for like how to keep yourself from being unwittingly zombified by culture in a way that's not in your best interest? Lee (01:04:04): Uh, that's a tough one. Um, I guess, you know, be a student, be skeptical and, and uh, think about where the information is coming from. Uh, if information is coming to you, sort of, um, not deliberately, it's just sort of, you know, when you arrive in a foreign country, um, a lot of what you're picking up on is just how things are arranged and, you know, picking up on how people are doing things the, the local scripts. One nice metaphor for this is, uh, the idea of a script that kind of the, all the world's a stage metaphor. People follow scripts, um, and they don't necessarily know they're doing it. But as you grow up, you learn the scripts for how to act in a restaurant, how to act in a movie theater. Athena (01:04:41): Yeah, some people never learn those. Lee (01:04:41): Some people don't learn those yeah, or some people think that the script in the movie theater is to talk and it's not. Athena (01:04:46): Well, and some people think the script for everywhere is to be on your phone. Lee (01:04:50): Yes, there's also that. Yeah. Um, but you pick up on those things. So if that's coming to you, not through anybody's deliberate action, it's more likely to be accurate than if somebody deliberately giving it to you because they might have a, an agenda that you're not aware of. So I would say be more skeptical if somebody is giving you information and it's possible they have an agenda that's not yours. Um, politicians come to mind. Uh, Bible pounding preachers come to mind, um, especially if they're asking for donations. Um, so yeah, some of these situations are fairly obvious, but, uh, uh, again, there's a range of variation in skepticism and gullibility across the population. And the, the, the, the number of people who buy into these things doesn't need to be huge for them to be successful. Athena (01:05:35): Yeah. Well, and I mean sometimes it can be really tricky too because you know, you might be in a situation where someone is approaching you to have an interaction and it could potentially be a great positive interaction, but it might also be a situation where someone is trying to exploit you. Lee (01:05:51): Right, and you throw up barriers. So that happened to me I remember. Um, so I spent a lot of time in East Africa, um, doing field work and, um, inevitably there's folks, especially in the big cities like Nairobi. Nairobi has quite a few con artists. Um, it's, it's a little bit of a business there because they get a lot of tourists and the tourists are naive about how things work there. Um, and so as you live there for a while. You, especially if it's clear that you're an outsider, which it's quite clear that I'm not native to Kenya. Um, you build up a resistance to being approached by strangers because you figure they have an agenda, especially in these big city contexts. Um, and so my son and I were traveling to Tanzania actually, oh, probably seven, eight years ago. Um, and, uh, the guy was getting on the plane with us in Amsterdam, I think it was, and he was a Kenyan and he approached us and started talking. And, um, I was skeptical, uh, much of my skepticism about, you know, we were about to land in Nairobi, you know, eight hour flight and we'd be in Nairobi. So like my skepticism is building up. It turns out that he was a terrific guy. He was a graduate student at UCLA in History, I think, and he had been drawn to the fact that my son was reading a book bird, a bird book, a guide to birds in East Africa because it turns out that he had worked as a guide on birding safaris and he knew every bird in East Africa backwards and forwards. Athena (01:07:20): Woww Lee (01:07:20): And so once we sort of let down our guard, and they had a terrific conversation about birding and, and, uh, the amazing birds you can see in East Africa. So yeah. Is it the skepticism that I came to that relationship with turned out to be totally inappropriate. Athena (01:07:36): Yeah. But then once you have exchanged more information that became clear, right? Lee (01:07:41): Became clear that he was, you know, not ultimately looking to get anything out of us whatsoever. Just wanted to talk about birds. Athena (01:07:46): Yeah. So I guess maybe there's sort of a lesson there that if a situation is ambiguous, as long as you're not under any immediate threat, you can just get more information, Lee (01:07:56): Yeah, get more information and see where it goes. Yeah. And don't, yeah, I was overly guarded. Um, it was a reaction built up over a long period of time. And you know, in that context it was inappropriate. Athena (01:08:07): Yeah. But then you continued, and you ended up having a great conversation about birds, which is one of the things that you're really into into. Lee (01:08:15): I'm into birds but my son was especially into birds, big birds. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Um, be open and, but, but, but you know, have a little bit of skepticism in the background just in case. Athena (01:08:26): Yeah. Well that makes a lot of sense. Lee (01:08:27): Yeah. Athena (01:08:28): Yeah. Lee, thanks so much. Lee (01:08:30): Sure, sure. Thanks for having me. It was fun. Outro (01:08:37): [Psychological by Lemi] Athena (01:09:48): Zombified is a production of ASU and the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance. Thank you to the Department of Psychology, the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative, and the President's Office at ASU, the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, and all the brains that helped make this podcast including Tal Rom who does our awesome sound, Neil Smith, our amazing illustrator, and Lemi, the creator of our theme song, "Psychological". Thank you also to the Z team, uh, graduate students, undergraduates, and others who help to make the podcast happen. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram - we're @zombifiedpod or Zombified Podcast on Facebook. Our website is zombified.org and you can also support us. We are an all educational, no ads podcast, so if you can go on Patreon and become a patron, just $1 a month will help support us in making this podcast. You can also buy our merchandise. We have awesome stickers and tee shirts. You can find them on our website. zombified.org. Athena (01:10:53): At the end of every episode I share my brains. And today I wanted to share a little bit about why I chose the title for this episode, The Age of Ascension. So as you will recall, Lee tells a story about how he told his kids that they were from the planet Zandar and that when they were 14, they would reach the age of Ascension where they would go back to Zandar and take their rightful place as royalty on Zandar. So, um, so on one level, the title came from that story. But the title is also for me about how when we reach a certain age, we kind of ascend to a place where we can get a new perspective and we're not necessarily bound by the information that we have just gotten from our parents or just from the environment that we grew up in. Um, so when we reach that age, I think we're, we become less vulnerable to potentially being manipulated or affected by the environment that we grew up in. It's sort of like you get to a certain point, you know, maybe around 14, um, when all of the things that your parents have told you, um, maybe you don't take them quite as seriously anymore, there's a lot of conflict often that happens around adolescence about if kids actually want to keep doing what their parents say or accept their parent's ideas or norms or values. So yeah. So for me the title Age of Ascension was kind of a play on that, um, that, you know, this age when one becomes much more skeptical about the things that one has learned from one's parents and um, sort of previous generations and start when you start to think for yourself a little bit. Thank you for listening to Zombified: your source for fresh brains. Outro (01:13:04): [Psychological by Lemi]