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Where Did Human Intelligence Come From? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
0:16
Speaker 1: stuff you should know, the brainiac condition. That's right. I
0:23
Speaker 1: was trying to think of something and I was truly blank.
0:26
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's how appropriate. It totally Chuck, because we
0:30
Speaker 1: are talking today about human intelligence in the origin of
0:33
Speaker 1: human intelligence, and it just seems super stuff you should
0:36
Speaker 1: know me for us to not be able to come
0:38
Speaker 1: up with a decent joke, you know, well Ed did
0:43
Speaker 1: that for us, actually, because I did want to shut out.
0:45
Speaker 1: We usually don't mention like section titles and stuff like
0:49
Speaker 1: that that's actually in our notes, but Ed drops because
0:53
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's for our eyes. But Ed dropped
0:54
Speaker 1: to Simpson's reference in his section title one of the
1:00
Speaker 1: great Simpsons references chimpan A to Chimpanzee was so great.
1:05
Speaker 1: That was from the Planet of the Apes musical, right,
1:09
Speaker 1: that's right. And I just I like to think is
1:10
Speaker 1: that as a little gift from Ed to us? Yeah,
1:12
Speaker 1: it definitely was, and it was well received too, So
1:15
Speaker 1: thanks ed Um and the reason Ed created a section
1:19
Speaker 1: called chimpaneze to chimpanzees because we're gonna talk about the
1:23
Speaker 1: lineage of humanity like where humans came from UM And
1:28
Speaker 1: despite that hilarious and clever um section title, we did
1:32
Speaker 1: not actually evolve from chimpanzees, but we do share a
1:36
Speaker 1: common ancestor from chimpanzee. So chimps and humans split off
1:40
Speaker 1: from a shared ancestor about six to eight million years
1:43
Speaker 1: ago UM, and that really kicked off a long line,
1:48
Speaker 1: very long process um of evolution where intelligence started to
1:55
Speaker 1: develop fairly early on. It just was really slow to start,
2:00
Speaker 1: and then over time it kind of picked up speed. Yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: you found this some kind of cool statistic. There's a
2:06
Speaker 1: researcher writer named Richard Leakey and H Richard, and I
2:12
Speaker 1: think most people agree. They posit that there was what's
2:16
Speaker 1: called a big bang of human culture around the Upper
2:20
Speaker 1: Paleolithic time period where things were, like you said, slow
2:25
Speaker 1: going for so long, and things were measured in in
2:30
Speaker 1: eras before that, very very slowly over like hundreds of millennia,
2:35
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, like sixty two thirty
2:39
Speaker 1: thousand years ago or so, things started to really ramp
2:42
Speaker 1: up in terms of innovation and intelligence. And uh, just
2:48
Speaker 1: really moving the ball forward to use a football metaphor,
2:52
Speaker 1: and we're talking about you know, clothing and uh, social
2:56
Speaker 1: structure and in art and creativity and stuff like that.
2:59
Speaker 1: So it's kind of cool to think, and you know,
3:02
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about why that might have happened,
3:04
Speaker 1: but uh, the fact that that did happen got us
3:08
Speaker 1: on the moon in short order over the last few
3:11
Speaker 1: thousand years. It's kind of like if you look at
3:13
Speaker 1: the development of intelligence as a train that's starting from
3:16
Speaker 1: a stop, it starts out with kind of a chuck
3:20
Speaker 1: good chug good chug chug chugga chug a chuga, and
3:23
Speaker 1: then that um, that Upper Paleolithic Revolution, the big bang
3:27
Speaker 1: of culture. That's the cho choo part that really punctuates
3:32
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I was thinking more along the lines
3:35
Speaker 1: of it like a Japanese bullet train. But sure, I
3:38
Speaker 1: don't think we're OK. We still do some really stupid stuff.
3:42
Speaker 1: So we can also create a bullet train. We can,
3:46
Speaker 1: but we just can't be the bullet train intellectual. Oh man,
3:50
Speaker 1: mind blown. So chuck. The fact that thirty to sixty
3:53
Speaker 1: thousand years ago there was that Upper Paleolithic Revolution where
3:58
Speaker 1: humanity just suddenly blossom into what we recognize today as humanity.
4:03
Speaker 1: It's really tempting to think that human intelligence just was
4:07
Speaker 1: suddenly born all of a sudden, like geologically speaking, overnight
4:12
Speaker 1: at that time. But that's just not the case. Um.
4:16
Speaker 1: It seems like something definitely happened there, like some wire
4:20
Speaker 1: connected with another wire that really made a big difference.
4:23
Speaker 1: But instead, again, it was this part of this very
4:26
Speaker 1: long line of seemingly random and unconnected um developments in
4:33
Speaker 1: the in the history of humanity. And I guess our
4:36
Speaker 1: our genus Homo um that led to that point and
4:40
Speaker 1: actually led to that point today, because we're still evolving
4:43
Speaker 1: and developing. Yeah, I guess uh. If you look at
4:46
Speaker 1: it on a timeline, it looks like a mechanic came
4:50
Speaker 1: along and said, well, here's your problem. You forgot to
4:53
Speaker 1: plug you forgot to plug it in. That's right, you
4:56
Speaker 1: gotta plug these two wires together and then you're all
4:58
Speaker 1: set totally. But we like to talk about Homo sapiens
5:04
Speaker 1: in in terms of human intelligence for good reason. Homo sapiens,
5:10
Speaker 1: that is to say, us a k a. Modern humans
5:13
Speaker 1: evolved about three hundred thousand years ago, um. But we
5:17
Speaker 1: are just one of a collection of uh in in
5:22
Speaker 1: this big lovely family called the Hominem's yeah, cominens comin
5:27
Speaker 1: in Yeah, I think it's at ms. Yeah. So the
5:30
Speaker 1: hominins are everybody that um that started off branching from
5:35
Speaker 1: that common ancestor with chimps. That's the hominin line, and
5:39
Speaker 1: humans in our genus Homo that Homo sapiens are a
5:42
Speaker 1: part of, is just part of that hominin. There are
5:44
Speaker 1: other entirely different genus or genie i that make up
5:48
Speaker 1: the hominin line, right, that's right, And we should point
5:52
Speaker 1: out that sapiens actually is taken from the Latin word
5:54
Speaker 1: for knowledge, so it kind of all makes sense. It does.
5:57
Speaker 1: So the whole thing starts out it seems like as
5:59
Speaker 1: far back because we can tell um something again, like
6:02
Speaker 1: somewhere around six or so million years ago, there was
6:06
Speaker 1: a group of homonyms called Artipithecus um who basically walked upright.
6:11
Speaker 1: But that was essentially the big difference between them and chimpanzees.
6:16
Speaker 1: But as we'll see, that was a really really big difference, right, Yeah,
6:21
Speaker 1: I mean we'll we'll get into this in more detail,
6:23
Speaker 1: but obviously if you're walking up right, then you have
6:26
Speaker 1: a very important thing at your disposal, which is use
6:28
Speaker 1: of your hands. Right, So then, um, you've got Australopithecus uh,
6:33
Speaker 1: and some a few other different kinds of branches that
6:36
Speaker 1: kind of branch off. It's a really tangled, convoluted family tree, um,
6:41
Speaker 1: where some kind of lead to blind alleys, others lead
6:44
Speaker 1: to others. But um, they think that Australopithecus is was
6:48
Speaker 1: a really big, long lasting group that was a little
6:51
Speaker 1: more human, definitely more human than art Epithecus um, but
6:55
Speaker 1: not quite as human as the genus Homo um, which
7:00
Speaker 1: off all of these different species of human Because we're
7:03
Speaker 1: we're alive today, we're on you know, planet Earth, living
7:06
Speaker 1: here in two and every single human alive is a
7:09
Speaker 1: member of the same species. So like there's different kinds
7:13
Speaker 1: of cats, there's different kinds of fish species, there's different
7:16
Speaker 1: kinds of bird species. Um, there's only one kind of
7:20
Speaker 1: human species. But that wasn't always the case. There are
7:22
Speaker 1: plenty of different human species, some living alongside one another
7:26
Speaker 1: for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, that's right.
7:30
Speaker 1: And almost all the hominins used tools, it seems like,
7:34
Speaker 1: and make made tools, and for a long time we
7:37
Speaker 1: thought that that was sort of it, that only the
7:40
Speaker 1: Homo genus was the one who did use tools, which
7:43
Speaker 1: is and you know, we talk about things like being
7:45
Speaker 1: bipedal and using tools as sort of some of the
7:48
Speaker 1: building blocks of what would become human intelligence. But now
7:52
Speaker 1: we know that there are uh some older you know,
7:56
Speaker 1: we found evidence that they use tools before that. Uh
8:00
Speaker 1: that's kind of fairly recently, right, Yeah. We we wanted
8:03
Speaker 1: to say that toolmaking started sometime after the Homo genus
8:07
Speaker 1: showed up of a couple million years ago, um, but
8:11
Speaker 1: we found even older tools. So it seems like austral Epithecus,
8:14
Speaker 1: which again their hominance, they're part of the branch that
8:17
Speaker 1: led to us humans, but they're not human in any way,
8:20
Speaker 1: shape or form um. So the fact that they're using
8:23
Speaker 1: tools was kind of mind blowing, and it also really
8:26
Speaker 1: kind of undermined kind of like what you were saying,
8:29
Speaker 1: like our idea of using tools, like that's a big
8:32
Speaker 1: sign of intelligence, and and humans are intelligent, so it's
8:35
Speaker 1: weird to find out that non humans were using tools
8:38
Speaker 1: millions of years ago. That's right. Um, should we move
8:43
Speaker 1: on to the hardware software thing? Yeah, So if if
8:46
Speaker 1: tools and fire are not, um, because we found use
8:50
Speaker 1: of fire dating back at least a million years. UM.
8:53
Speaker 1: So if if tools fire hanging out with one another collectively,
8:57
Speaker 1: if these aren't like the indicators that make human intelligence,
9:02
Speaker 1: we've got to like get a little more granular. Unfortunately
9:05
Speaker 1: for you and I sitting here today, chuck, UM, scientists
9:08
Speaker 1: have done that, and they've come up with some really
9:10
Speaker 1: interesting like ways of looking at this. Yeah, and UM,
9:14
Speaker 1: there's a bit more of a preamble before we get
9:16
Speaker 1: actually to the intelligence. UM. And I like the way
9:19
Speaker 1: ed put this, sort of like talking about hardware versus software. Um,
9:24
Speaker 1: they were very intertwined and um, you know, sort of
9:28
Speaker 1: happening at the same time. So it's not like one
9:31
Speaker 1: couldn't happen without the other as far as the hardware
9:33
Speaker 1: software thing goes. But Uh, if we're looking at hardware
9:38
Speaker 1: and we're talking about um changes that made us like
9:42
Speaker 1: better at walking up right, Like you can you all
9:44
Speaker 1: of a sudden just don't stand up and start walking
9:46
Speaker 1: like this happens over a long long period of time.
9:49
Speaker 1: Our hind legs got longer, Uh, the shape of our
9:52
Speaker 1: pelvis changed. Um. There's something called the Foreman magnum, which
9:57
Speaker 1: is a hole in the base of the skull where
9:59
Speaker 1: the spinal cord and lots of nerves and things passed
10:02
Speaker 1: like sort of open up those neural pathways, and that
10:06
Speaker 1: changed its location. So these literal physical changes are happening
10:10
Speaker 1: over great periods of time in order just to be
10:13
Speaker 1: able to walk up right right and and bipedalism it's
10:17
Speaker 1: like the defining characteristic of prominence. Right. There's there's not really,
10:21
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, any other animals that
10:23
Speaker 1: that walk upright like by default. Um, so there had
10:27
Speaker 1: to be physiological changes, but they're not entirely certain why
10:31
Speaker 1: we started walking up right. But the fact that we
10:33
Speaker 1: did and it's lasted for this long means that there
10:36
Speaker 1: was some advantage to it because enough people walking upright
10:40
Speaker 1: were able to pass along their genes. And they think
10:43
Speaker 1: one one big theory is that it helped us survive
10:47
Speaker 1: climate change where maybe things got colder and there were
10:50
Speaker 1: less trees. So since we weren't arboreal anymore, we didn't
10:53
Speaker 1: hang out and live and eating trees. We were able
10:56
Speaker 1: to kind of move around and find different like food
10:58
Speaker 1: sources in different shelters, whereas the like our cousins the chimps,
11:02
Speaker 1: were in big trouble. They were up the proverbial creek. Yeah,
11:07
Speaker 1: and I love that you point out that we, uh,
11:09
Speaker 1: we're the only ones who walk upright by default, because
11:12
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree there's nothing more fun
11:15
Speaker 1: than YouTube videos of like a dog or a cat
11:18
Speaker 1: or something just walking on its hind legs for some reason. Definitely,
11:21
Speaker 1: and and it's the coolest and most fun thing ever.
11:24
Speaker 1: It totally is. And I mean, now I'll take like
11:26
Speaker 1: a Jesus lizard running across some water once in a
11:29
Speaker 1: while too. There's nothing wrong with watching. Is that what
11:31
Speaker 1: those are called? Yeah? I think I saw one of
11:34
Speaker 1: those in Mexico, but that was surprising. Are they not there?
11:39
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just saying I've I've never seen
11:41
Speaker 1: one in real life, so I'm sure that was surprising
11:43
Speaker 1: to see. I saw a lizard that was walking, and
11:48
Speaker 1: it wasn't walking on water, but I think it was
11:50
Speaker 1: one of those kinds that can I just didn't know
11:52
Speaker 1: the name of it. Had you recently eaten the worm
11:55
Speaker 1: from the bottom of the bottom of most cow? Very funny.
12:00
Speaker 1: Another thing we should point out is that walking upright
12:04
Speaker 1: is an energy saver. I mean, it's they've done studies
12:07
Speaker 1: and they found that um, you use about the energy
12:11
Speaker 1: um rather than you know, bounding around on all fours
12:14
Speaker 1: like a chimp mte right or like a chimp does.
12:17
Speaker 1: But to save that energy, to conserve it um, our
12:20
Speaker 1: pelvis has had to change shape. Like you mentioned, that
12:23
Speaker 1: was just a consequence of walking upright. Um. And the
12:27
Speaker 1: reason to change shape is when you walk up right,
12:29
Speaker 1: if you're a chimp, your body swings side to side.
12:32
Speaker 1: You have to hold your arms up to balance yourself.
12:35
Speaker 1: That takes a lot of energy. UM. So we developed
12:38
Speaker 1: like gluteal muscles and other muscles that can cling to
12:42
Speaker 1: a specific shaped in size pelvis so that we don't
12:46
Speaker 1: have to spend all the energy. Our muscles are just
12:48
Speaker 1: kind of keeping us much more balanced. But one of
12:51
Speaker 1: the consequences of that of walking upright and our pelvis
12:54
Speaker 1: changing means that the size of the birth canal afforded
12:58
Speaker 1: by the hole in the all of us the child
13:00
Speaker 1: passes through during birth. UM got smaller, a lot smaller.
13:06
Speaker 1: And it's really strange to think that this the the
13:10
Speaker 1: decreasing in size of the birth canal actually was one
13:14
Speaker 1: of the factors that led to an increase in intelligence. Yeah,
13:18
Speaker 1: and you know, we should point out this is just
13:21
Speaker 1: the first of what will be a lovely cascade of
13:24
Speaker 1: theories that we're gonna lay lay on your brains today. Uh,
13:28
Speaker 1: and that, like you said earlier, there there is no one,
13:30
Speaker 1: single one. It's kind of when you put all of
13:33
Speaker 1: this stuff together. I think that's sort of the beauty
13:35
Speaker 1: of of human intelligence, is it took all of these
13:39
Speaker 1: great things sort of coalescing um. But the whole thing
13:42
Speaker 1: with the brain is interesting because the size of the
13:47
Speaker 1: brain is is one of nature's kind of controversies. Like
13:51
Speaker 1: we know that as far as humans go, just because
13:53
Speaker 1: you have a bigger brain doesn't mean that you definitely
13:56
Speaker 1: will be smarter. But there are some correlations cross species
14:00
Speaker 1: in nature, uh, and in humans there can be, you know,
14:04
Speaker 1: evidence that bigger brain means you're more intelligent. But it's
14:08
Speaker 1: not one of those things where it settles science where
14:10
Speaker 1: they just say, hey, if you've got a bigger brain,
14:12
Speaker 1: you're gonna be smarter. No, And in fact, like there's
14:14
Speaker 1: all sorts of evidence in nature that suggests that's not
14:18
Speaker 1: the case. Because our brain to body size ratio among
14:22
Speaker 1: humans is one to forty, So our brain makes up
14:25
Speaker 1: about our body mass, and that's the same ratio that
14:29
Speaker 1: a mouse has. My mice just I don't care how
14:32
Speaker 1: you cut it. They're just not as intelligent as humans.
14:35
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, an elephants brain to body
14:38
Speaker 1: ratio is one to five hundred and sixty and elephants
14:41
Speaker 1: are super smart. So, um, you you can't really find
14:46
Speaker 1: much there that says, you know, there's no direct correlation
14:50
Speaker 1: where it's like the bigger the brain, the more intelligent
14:53
Speaker 1: the being. Um. But there does have to be some
14:57
Speaker 1: minimum amount of brain size because it seems like the
15:02
Speaker 1: connections of the brain is we'll see, are what really matter.
15:06
Speaker 1: And the more brain tissue you have up to a
15:08
Speaker 1: certain point, the more connections that can be made. Right,
15:12
Speaker 1: So that brings us back to the birth canal situation.
15:15
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned you're walking upright, that changes in the
15:18
Speaker 1: shape of the pelvis, you have a much smaller birth
15:21
Speaker 1: canal all of a sudden. So evolutionarily speaking, you might think, well,
15:25
Speaker 1: does that mean we're going to have to have babies
15:27
Speaker 1: with tiny, tiny little heads and therefore tiny tiny little
15:30
Speaker 1: brains that may not be able to grow very fast
15:33
Speaker 1: because it's enclosed in a skull that's sort of locked down,
15:38
Speaker 1: but that didn't happen to us. What happened was we
15:41
Speaker 1: have Fontanell's and we have this delayed fusing of the
15:46
Speaker 1: skull kind of you know, closing for good, and so
15:49
Speaker 1: it allows and it's you know, it's remarkable still to
15:52
Speaker 1: think about this to me, but it allows that little
15:56
Speaker 1: baby head to squish down to get through the birth canal,
15:59
Speaker 1: and it through the vagina and out into the world
16:02
Speaker 1: and stay that way for a while. And it's during
16:05
Speaker 1: that for a while period before that skull completely fuses
16:10
Speaker 1: that a human brain really really grows a lot, and
16:14
Speaker 1: chimps don't have that ability. No, a chimp, uh, their
16:18
Speaker 1: skull fuses mostly in the womb, and their brain, as
16:21
Speaker 1: a consequence, grows mostly to what size it's going to
16:24
Speaker 1: reach in the womb. So, on the one hand, a
16:27
Speaker 1: chimp baby, you could say, is much smarter and much
16:31
Speaker 1: less helpless than a human baby. But given enough time,
16:35
Speaker 1: the human baby is going to start to exceed the
16:37
Speaker 1: chimp's abilities very quickly. And it's because our development is delayed.
16:42
Speaker 1: We do a lot of developing outside of the womb,
16:44
Speaker 1: and that's afforded by that skull that's not fused. For
16:47
Speaker 1: a couple of years after birth. And this was not
16:52
Speaker 1: there is no intelligent design, so there this was not like, um,
16:55
Speaker 1: like a good solution or work around. This was just
16:59
Speaker 1: a natural selected, naturally selected trait, the skull not fusing.
17:05
Speaker 1: That was a solution to the smaller birth canal, not
17:09
Speaker 1: to not to increase intelligence, but the advent of babies
17:15
Speaker 1: being born that didn't have few skulls allowed for the
17:19
Speaker 1: advent of intelligence. Yeah, a solution to the problem of
17:23
Speaker 1: walking up right, which is really interesting to think about. Yeah,
17:27
Speaker 1: And it also just goes to show like it's like
17:30
Speaker 1: nature is not always like elegantly simple. Sometimes it's really
17:34
Speaker 1: convoluted and organisms including us are held together by like
17:38
Speaker 1: duct tape and bubblegum, you know. And that's a good
17:41
Speaker 1: example of it. I think that's a good time for
17:44
Speaker 1: the break, yea, yea. And we'll come back and drop
17:48
Speaker 1: some plasticity on your brain right after this, So, Chuck,
18:13
Speaker 1: this is the point we're about to talk about brain plasticity.
18:16
Speaker 1: This seems to be, uh, what if anything explains human intelligence,
18:22
Speaker 1: and certainly the burst of intelligence that happened thirty to
18:25
Speaker 1: sixty thou years ago. Yeah, And I think the opening
18:30
Speaker 1: statement to this whole thing is all you gotta do
18:33
Speaker 1: is look at the fact that we learn almost everything
18:38
Speaker 1: as humans, like from the moment we're born. There there
18:42
Speaker 1: is some maybe instinctive knowledge, but like you said, like
18:45
Speaker 1: human babies are kind of helpless, little dumb dumbs. And
18:48
Speaker 1: from that point forward, our brains are are learning and
18:53
Speaker 1: they're growing, and they're capable of learning, and they're capable
18:56
Speaker 1: of adapting. And this all has to do with plasticity, right, So,
19:01
Speaker 1: just if you aren't familiar, plasticity is the brain's ability
19:04
Speaker 1: to um basically rewire and create new connections as new
19:10
Speaker 1: experiences come along. Uh, And you can even take old
19:13
Speaker 1: experiences that you experience more than once and the second
19:17
Speaker 1: and third and fourth time, those neural connections are going
19:20
Speaker 1: to become more sophisticated and more connected than they were before.
19:24
Speaker 1: So our brains are plastic. They can be molded and
19:27
Speaker 1: shaped kind of like in the rhinoplastic um sense of
19:31
Speaker 1: the word. They're not made of plastic. They can be
19:33
Speaker 1: molded and they're molded by the connections that they make.
19:36
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that you have a giant brain.
19:40
Speaker 1: It's that you human being have a brain that is
19:43
Speaker 1: really highly capable of creating new connections, and it's those
19:48
Speaker 1: connections that forms the basis of intellect. Yeah, and that
19:53
Speaker 1: really frees up, Like once you have a brain that's
19:55
Speaker 1: plastic and that can evolve, you know, to figure out
19:59
Speaker 1: a pro ablem rather than taking eons and eons to
20:04
Speaker 1: have like genetic to genetically adapt to a solution to
20:07
Speaker 1: a problem. If all of a sudden you have a
20:09
Speaker 1: brain that can figure something out, you do it so
20:11
Speaker 1: much quicker, and that frees you up to do more
20:14
Speaker 1: and learn more, and it creates this feedback loop all
20:18
Speaker 1: of a sudden where the process really really speeds up.
20:21
Speaker 1: And that's you know, basically what we saw thirty sixty
20:25
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, and the reason and we're still seeing
20:27
Speaker 1: it today, Chuck. I mean, like you know, a thirty
20:30
Speaker 1: to sixty thousand years ago, it was a huge burst
20:32
Speaker 1: of creativity and intelligence, but we're still talking about changes
20:36
Speaker 1: that took place over thousands of years. Now. We're seeing
20:39
Speaker 1: changes to the human condition in our society that takes
20:43
Speaker 1: place over like tens of years. So it still seems
20:46
Speaker 1: to be speeding up and we're still going through the
20:48
Speaker 1: same process. But the I guess the best way to
20:51
Speaker 1: think about what you've just described as evolution, which typically
20:56
Speaker 1: you know, UM forces changes on us based on environmental conditions,
21:02
Speaker 1: goes into the brain, and now it's the brain that's
21:06
Speaker 1: able to change, and like you said, it changes much faster,
21:09
Speaker 1: and that leaves genetic evolution or genetic natural selection to
21:13
Speaker 1: focus on UM selecting for traits that create more and
21:17
Speaker 1: more intelligence. So it creates that positive feedback loop like
21:20
Speaker 1: you said, and speeds things up. It's pretty brilliant. So
21:23
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of really interesting research, especially in
21:28
Speaker 1: that it seemed like the early to mid nineteen nineties
21:30
Speaker 1: about plasticity UM. There are a couple of researchers name
21:34
Speaker 1: to Be and Cosmides great names, and they had a
21:38
Speaker 1: theory basically that human intelligence UH evolved with all these
21:43
Speaker 1: UM encapsulated cognitive models, so they did not have the
21:47
Speaker 1: ability to excess each other. Each each of these modules,
21:52
Speaker 1: and each one was very specialized for a very specialized
21:56
Speaker 1: problem or task that was trying to do our problem
21:58
Speaker 1: that was trying to solve, and that's like a language module, UH,
22:04
Speaker 1: spatial relation module. UH, here's how to make and use
22:07
Speaker 1: a tool that kind of a module. And that all
22:10
Speaker 1: these modules are still around, uh and basically the same
22:13
Speaker 1: form that they were back then, because it's there on
22:18
Speaker 1: the timeline of you know, humanity, that that hasn't been
22:22
Speaker 1: a lot of time to undergo any kind of modifications basically,
22:26
Speaker 1: So I disagree with that. I think I think on
22:29
Speaker 1: a speaking about classic evolution natural selection, that's true, but
22:33
Speaker 1: brain based evolution and natural selection like cultural natural selection,
22:37
Speaker 1: I think that that's false. You hear that to be. So.
22:42
Speaker 1: The the idea about all this is that these modules
22:45
Speaker 1: that we developed over time is like we came upon
22:48
Speaker 1: new problems in our environments and had to figure out
22:51
Speaker 1: new solutions to them. They started to kind of get
22:54
Speaker 1: cross referenced here there, Like you could say, um, you know,
22:59
Speaker 1: the same the same ability to UM to to follow
23:05
Speaker 1: the sunset, right, Yeah, I wish I would have come
23:08
Speaker 1: up with something better can also can also be used
23:11
Speaker 1: to UM to follow herds of game, right. And so
23:16
Speaker 1: all of a sudden we now not only just know
23:18
Speaker 1: to to follow the sunset if we want to follow
23:21
Speaker 1: the sunset, we also know we can use that same
23:23
Speaker 1: ability to follow game around. And all of a sudden,
23:25
Speaker 1: our diet expands that kind of thing. So as these
23:29
Speaker 1: different modules started cross referencing themselves and and got more
23:33
Speaker 1: and more connected. We were able to apply these different
23:36
Speaker 1: things to more and more situations and got more and
23:39
Speaker 1: more intelligent. All right, So that's UM. That's one sort
23:43
Speaker 1: of grand theory which I love. Another one that we're
23:48
Speaker 1: going to talk about is I think super interesting because
23:51
Speaker 1: some of this stuff is so kind of rudimentary in
23:55
Speaker 1: it when you just sort of look at it from
23:57
Speaker 1: a macro view, but when you really have to think
24:00
Speaker 1: about how important that ended up being, it's it's fascinating
24:04
Speaker 1: to me. And in this case, we're talking about the
24:06
Speaker 1: fact that UM. One of the sort of side and
24:10
Speaker 1: again it's going back to bipedalism. One of the side
24:12
Speaker 1: effects bipedalism is that we lost our ability, UM, with
24:17
Speaker 1: our feet to be able to like hang onto things
24:20
Speaker 1: like chimpanzees do. They were these boots were all of
24:22
Speaker 1: a sudden made for walking, and they weren't made for grabbing.
24:26
Speaker 1: And if they weren't made for grabbing, then you couldn't
24:30
Speaker 1: hang on to mama like a chimp could with hands
24:33
Speaker 1: and feet. So mama had to hang on to human baby.
24:37
Speaker 1: And mama can't hang on to human baby all the
24:40
Speaker 1: time because mama still has to get things done around
24:43
Speaker 1: the you know, savannah. So what you have to do
24:46
Speaker 1: then is leave that baby somewhere and go do stuff
24:50
Speaker 1: like go down to the river and uh and do
24:53
Speaker 1: things and uh. If you leave a baby somewhere, what
24:58
Speaker 1: you go down to the river and do and things?
25:01
Speaker 1: Two things you know unen uh and if you leave
25:05
Speaker 1: that baby And this is all leading to this statement,
25:07
Speaker 1: if you leave that baby somewhere, you want to be
25:09
Speaker 1: able to go back and find that baby. And it
25:11
Speaker 1: seems so rudimentary and basic, but that is a huge
25:15
Speaker 1: thing in the development of the early human brain, is
25:19
Speaker 1: simply to spatially map and remember, like where I have
25:23
Speaker 1: left this child. It's important to go back and get
25:25
Speaker 1: that child, and I can do that. Yeah, and then um.
25:31
Speaker 1: Consequently to that, another adaptation seems to have arisen from
25:36
Speaker 1: the same problem, the problem of not being able to
25:38
Speaker 1: cling to the mother anymore, and then also the problem
25:41
Speaker 1: of the baby being otherwise helpless, way more helpless than
25:44
Speaker 1: a baby chimp. Right, So they think that around the
25:47
Speaker 1: same time baby's cries developed, like you don't hear other
25:51
Speaker 1: things necessarily crying like a human baby, And they don't
25:54
Speaker 1: think that babies cried like that until around this time,
25:57
Speaker 1: because there was that problem. So even if a mom
26:00
Speaker 1: couldn't remember where she put her baby, she could listen
26:02
Speaker 1: out for the baby crying. And they also think around
26:05
Speaker 1: this time that an urge or desire to soothe the
26:09
Speaker 1: baby from its crying would have developed, and that it's possible, Chuck,
26:12
Speaker 1: And this makes so much awesome sense that language actually
26:16
Speaker 1: developed out of what's called mother ease, that kind of
26:20
Speaker 1: soothing baby talk that calms the baby, that mothers know
26:24
Speaker 1: how to do just naturally. They think that it's possible
26:27
Speaker 1: that that is what formed the basis of language. Yeah,
26:31
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go beyond that even because what I
26:34
Speaker 1: noticed when I had a baby in the house was that,
26:38
Speaker 1: even beyond the soothing thing, if you are holding your
26:41
Speaker 1: baby and you have to put your baby down to
26:43
Speaker 1: go wash the dishes or whatever, generally, and I think
26:47
Speaker 1: I speak for most parents, you don't just go set
26:49
Speaker 1: your baby down, go in the other room and do stuff.
26:52
Speaker 1: You're you're talking to that baby from the very beginning,
26:55
Speaker 1: and you're saying, all right, let's go over to our
26:57
Speaker 1: little place here. I'll be right back. I'm gonna be
26:59
Speaker 1: right here in the other whom that baby doesn't know
27:01
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, obviously, but there's there just seems
27:04
Speaker 1: to be this evolutionary instinct to to say things to
27:08
Speaker 1: it right out of the gate. It's really interesting. It
27:11
Speaker 1: is interesting, and then wrapped up in this also there's
27:14
Speaker 1: a better example than following the stupid sunset that I
27:17
Speaker 1: came up with. I love sunsets. But if you can
27:20
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden like remember where landmarks are
27:23
Speaker 1: and then wayfind your your way back to you know,
27:26
Speaker 1: the starting point. Now you can start to use that
27:29
Speaker 1: to follow game further and further afield, and you're expanding
27:33
Speaker 1: your range and you can expand your diet. So that's
27:35
Speaker 1: a really good example of one thing kind of leading
27:37
Speaker 1: to another, and all of it being um arising from
27:42
Speaker 1: environmental pressers brought on by changes to buy of us. Yeah,
27:48
Speaker 1: I love it me too. Um. This next one is
27:52
Speaker 1: kind of fits in a little bit with a plasticity
27:55
Speaker 1: I think. Uh. The idea of the cognitive niche um,
27:59
Speaker 1: which is, you know, typically figuring out like a solution
28:03
Speaker 1: to a problem. But this theory is that maybe intelligence
28:07
Speaker 1: evolved as a universal adaptation to all kinds of uh,
28:13
Speaker 1: evolutionary pressures that we're bearing down. So um and ed
28:17
Speaker 1: has a pretty great example. If you've got a an
28:19
Speaker 1: island with a tree that has a certain um fruit
28:23
Speaker 1: seed that's really beneficial for your body, Um, but you
28:26
Speaker 1: can't crack into it. There's you know, it would take
28:29
Speaker 1: a bird, uh, you know, hundreds to thousands or millions
28:33
Speaker 1: of years to develop and evolved to have a beak
28:36
Speaker 1: that can crack that thing open. But if all of
28:39
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know how to make a tool, you
28:42
Speaker 1: can just walk over and steal that thing from that
28:44
Speaker 1: dumb bird and just crack it open with the tool.
28:47
Speaker 1: So it's not filling, it's your brain at work, and
28:50
Speaker 1: in that case is filling a specific niche. But that's
28:53
Speaker 1: a tool that was also used to kill the animal
28:56
Speaker 1: or chop the wood. Yeah, and that really supports what
28:59
Speaker 1: we were talking about a few minutes ago that once evolution,
29:02
Speaker 1: once a brain is evolved to a certain amount of intellect,
29:05
Speaker 1: the brain can take care of the organism and natural
29:09
Speaker 1: selection and genetics can kind of take a step back
29:13
Speaker 1: and not have to say, like, um, you know, uh,
29:17
Speaker 1: select for a thicker harrier chest. Because we're living in
29:21
Speaker 1: a colder time now because the brain can come up
29:23
Speaker 1: with a way to create a coat, right, So it
29:26
Speaker 1: just kind of takes over evolution from evolution by doing that,
29:31
Speaker 1: and that's that cognitive niche. And one of the consequences
29:35
Speaker 1: of it is that there seems to be as as
29:38
Speaker 1: things change in our environment, we figure out new ways
29:42
Speaker 1: to to solve those, and then those those solutions are
29:47
Speaker 1: inevitably going to create other problems or changes, So then
29:51
Speaker 1: we have to we have to evolve even further intelligence
29:54
Speaker 1: to figure out how to solve these new problems. You
29:57
Speaker 1: can actually see it still going on today, Chuck, Like,
30:00
Speaker 1: we've evolved a level of intelligence where we can extract
30:04
Speaker 1: petroleum from the earth, we can build machines that run
30:08
Speaker 1: on that petroleum, and we can develop science that figures
30:12
Speaker 1: out that burning those the that petroleum is really really
30:16
Speaker 1: bad for the climate. So now we've we've altered our
30:20
Speaker 1: ecosystem enough that we have to evolve intelligence enough to
30:24
Speaker 1: figure out how to get out of this new conundrum
30:27
Speaker 1: that we've created for ourselves based on our previous intellect.
30:30
Speaker 1: So intellect builds on intellect through environmental pressures that we
30:34
Speaker 1: often bring on ourselves. That seems like the case, Yeah,
30:39
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of people seem to
30:40
Speaker 1: think of intelligence is only solving problems, but it also
30:43
Speaker 1: creates a lot as well. It's interesting, Yeah, it really is. Um.
30:48
Speaker 1: I know we were gonna skip this section entirely, but
30:51
Speaker 1: I think just for frenzies, we should very quickly mention one,
30:56
Speaker 1: uh the ideas from someone called Terence McKenna who describes
31:01
Speaker 1: as a post modern Timothy Leary type, one of these
31:04
Speaker 1: people that that advocates for psychedelic drug use, and just
31:09
Speaker 1: very quickly the idea is that, uh, the cavemen were
31:13
Speaker 1: tripping on mushrooms and that's how intelligence evolved. And I
31:18
Speaker 1: just like mention it because I feel like there's almost nothing,
31:22
Speaker 1: no leap in history that some person hasn't said, like
31:26
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment or whatever, like, oh man, they were just tripping, right,
31:30
Speaker 1: they were just super I don't think it's pretty funny.
31:34
Speaker 1: It is funny, but it does. I mean, like if
31:36
Speaker 1: you apply it exclusively to the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, where
31:41
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's like art and jewelry and
31:43
Speaker 1: dancing that stuff, it's possible that it was based at
31:47
Speaker 1: least in part you know, yeah, you never know, alright,
31:50
Speaker 1: So I say, we take a break and we come
31:52
Speaker 1: back and get down to the nitty gritty of how
31:55
Speaker 1: food might have brought intelligence along. How about that? Mm hmm.
32:19
Speaker 1: By the way, Chuck, I have a theory real quick
32:23
Speaker 1: that the more you say uh or um, the more
32:26
Speaker 1: intelligent you um are. Oh boy, I must be a
32:30
Speaker 1: smarty pan. You know, other more intelligent podcasts cut all
32:35
Speaker 1: that stuff out. Yeah, I guess do they? Yeah? I mean,
32:40
Speaker 1: what did I mispronounced in the Row episode? I couldn't
32:43
Speaker 1: even substantive Oh yeah, yeah, it's true. Other podcasts would
32:48
Speaker 1: not have left that in. But that's because dummy leaves
32:51
Speaker 1: that they're not as brave. We're courageous podcasters. Okay, I'll
32:55
Speaker 1: buy that. Um. This next theory I think is super
32:58
Speaker 1: cool because anytime each tie in um, not just food,
33:04
Speaker 1: but sort of a an appreciation for a creature comfort,
33:09
Speaker 1: it really like turns turns me on and not you know,
33:15
Speaker 1: in certain ways intellectually turns me on. And in this case,
33:19
Speaker 1: we're talking about the fact that we used fire obviously
33:23
Speaker 1: and then started cooking food, and people that cooked food said, wow,
33:30
Speaker 1: this is really good, and this taste a whole lot
33:34
Speaker 1: better than that raw meat. We've been eating this charred
33:37
Speaker 1: meat is delicious, and let's let's try and do more
33:40
Speaker 1: of this around here. Yeah, And so that would have
33:43
Speaker 1: just them being um, responding to like a taste preference,
33:49
Speaker 1: and that's it. But it just so happened that that
33:52
Speaker 1: taste preference would have had a really big benefit and
33:55
Speaker 1: a big contribution to the development of intelligence. Because if
33:59
Speaker 1: you cook me eat um, you unlock a bunch of
34:03
Speaker 1: nutrients and calories that are otherwise unavailable to you if
34:06
Speaker 1: you just eat it raw. So over time, the people
34:10
Speaker 1: who ate meat would have had more energy and more
34:12
Speaker 1: calories to contribute to a growing brain, which could have
34:16
Speaker 1: helped the process along if not sped it up. And
34:19
Speaker 1: if you consider the fact that we've definitely seen that
34:22
Speaker 1: that taste and smell has responded to evolutionary pressures in
34:27
Speaker 1: that we at some point learned not to eat poop,
34:30
Speaker 1: and we learned not to eat rotten food and stuff. Um,
34:33
Speaker 1: And that's you know, taste and smell it can have
34:36
Speaker 1: the you know, it looks like it can have the
34:38
Speaker 1: opposite effect to where all of a sudden you have
34:40
Speaker 1: a preference for the good. And that just happens to
34:43
Speaker 1: work out in your favor. Yeah, and this is another
34:45
Speaker 1: example of one thing leading to another, where like you know,
34:48
Speaker 1: mothers developed an awareness of landmarks and wayfinding, and then
34:52
Speaker 1: that led to um being able to follow game, which
34:55
Speaker 1: expanded our diet, which led to us eating meat, which
34:57
Speaker 1: eventually led to applying controlled fire to that meat, which
35:02
Speaker 1: led to more calories and nutrients available, which led to
35:05
Speaker 1: bigger brain growth, which helped found uh, the growth of
35:09
Speaker 1: intelligence and humans. Just one thing, one totally random, unconnected thing,
35:14
Speaker 1: or even connected but seemingly unconnected, uh, just creating us today.
35:20
Speaker 1: It's just so nuts. So to me, I love it. Yeah,
35:23
Speaker 1: me too. And the fact that, like, think about this,
35:26
Speaker 1: not only the preference for a charred meat, but the
35:29
Speaker 1: preference for a specific charred meat because you know, different
35:33
Speaker 1: stuff tastes different. It's not like everything tastes like chicken.
35:36
Speaker 1: I know that's a joke, but all of a sudden
35:38
Speaker 1: took took his out there and and says, boy, that
35:42
Speaker 1: one thing that we killed yesterday. You guys, I don't
35:45
Speaker 1: know about you, but that was really really delicious. And
35:49
Speaker 1: we know that that is we saw that thing three
35:52
Speaker 1: days ago, about fifty miles away. Everyone said, what's a
35:56
Speaker 1: mile and he well, that doesn't matter right now, but
35:59
Speaker 1: the point that it was really far away. So all
36:00
Speaker 1: of a sudden, other things are introduced, like cooperation, not
36:04
Speaker 1: just wayfinding, but hey, let's let's all get together because
36:07
Speaker 1: this is like a three day journey and this thing
36:10
Speaker 1: is really big. That tastes so delicious, So it's gonna
36:13
Speaker 1: take a few of us to bring this thing down
36:15
Speaker 1: and to process this animal and get this meat ready
36:18
Speaker 1: for cooking. So it just introduces like a cascade and this,
36:22
Speaker 1: and it could have all just come from Hey, that
36:25
Speaker 1: tastes really great. Yeah, and so that that you know,
36:28
Speaker 1: these all that hunting and coordinating all that takes like
36:32
Speaker 1: a lot of intelligence. And not only does it take
36:34
Speaker 1: intelligence to to coordinate, it takes intelligence to explain what
36:39
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And it takes intelligence to come up
36:42
Speaker 1: with that plan in the first place, you know. So
36:44
Speaker 1: all of those factors combining are just making humans more
36:48
Speaker 1: and more intelligent with every every step. And again, it's
36:51
Speaker 1: not like it's just following this perfect linear progression. Yeah,
36:56
Speaker 1: it's just like it's just kind of randomly. And the
37:00
Speaker 1: the reason that we're intelligent today is because the attempts
37:04
Speaker 1: that didn't work out, got selected out, the fact got
37:06
Speaker 1: trimmed along the way. Is it kind of a ruthless
37:09
Speaker 1: way to put it, but you know it makes sense. Uh.
37:12
Speaker 1: And that sort of ties into this other theory of
37:16
Speaker 1: um smaller prey, like when they were hunting um large
37:21
Speaker 1: prey species that you know, they eventually uh, they were
37:25
Speaker 1: hunting and track of these these large animals and eventually
37:29
Speaker 1: they were driven to extinction. So humans had to start
37:32
Speaker 1: going after smaller things or I guess, uh, hominem's had
37:36
Speaker 1: to start going after smaller things, and the fossil record
37:39
Speaker 1: indicates this. It sort of worked in lockstep with the
37:43
Speaker 1: evolution of human intelligence. So all of a sudden, if
37:47
Speaker 1: you're hunting smaller things, you probably have to be a
37:50
Speaker 1: little bit smarter. You have to be a little bit
37:52
Speaker 1: more coordinated, you have to cooperate a little more, you
37:55
Speaker 1: have to maybe invent new tools, and like obviously using
37:59
Speaker 1: a big thing to smash a large thing isn't the
38:02
Speaker 1: same thing smashing a small thing. Uh. And just simply
38:05
Speaker 1: the fact that they had to do a lot more
38:06
Speaker 1: of it. You know, if you're eating a squirrel uh
38:09
Speaker 1: as your diet, you're you're eating a lot of squirrel
38:12
Speaker 1: every day, whereas if you eat a wooly mammoth, that's
38:14
Speaker 1: your food for the month or whatever exactly. And that's
38:17
Speaker 1: a really good example of what I was talking about earlier,
38:19
Speaker 1: that cognitive niche where the more sophisticated we get, the
38:23
Speaker 1: more problems we actually generate for ourselves, the more challenges,
38:26
Speaker 1: the more intelligent we have to become. That's right. And
38:31
Speaker 1: what about this last notion? And then I think this
38:33
Speaker 1: is kind of where it all comes together, right, Yeah,
38:36
Speaker 1: so you know, we have like a real urge and
38:39
Speaker 1: a desire to to wrap everything up in a neat
38:41
Speaker 1: little package, and we just haven't reached that point yet
38:43
Speaker 1: with human intelligence. But if you step back and look
38:47
Speaker 1: at some of the theories, um and see how they
38:50
Speaker 1: all kind of fit together, it seems like most are.
38:54
Speaker 1: All of them with the exception of stone date probably
38:57
Speaker 1: could be right. But they all have to work together
39:00
Speaker 1: and work with one another, um, which is great because
39:04
Speaker 1: that level of organization requires intelligence, that's right. But the
39:08
Speaker 1: key to all of this, and I think, um, we
39:11
Speaker 1: we talked about the evolution of language on a whole show,
39:14
Speaker 1: right yeah, uh, we we still don't quite know exactly
39:18
Speaker 1: how that evolve, but we have some ideas, like we
39:20
Speaker 1: talked about with the uh, what'd you call it? Mother
39:23
Speaker 1: ins No, mother ease, mother ease. But all of this
39:27
Speaker 1: became possible because of language. All of this, like you
39:30
Speaker 1: were saying, all of this coordination, all this cooperation, anything
39:34
Speaker 1: that would eventually lead to writing down human history, all
39:39
Speaker 1: of that had to have language. So it seems that
39:42
Speaker 1: all of these sort of theories coalescing around the beginnings
39:45
Speaker 1: of language, and eventually the written word is like the
39:49
Speaker 1: key to it all. Yeah, totally. And one of the
39:51
Speaker 1: other things. Um, because we are so aware that we're
39:55
Speaker 1: intellectually superior, not only to all the other animals, at
39:58
Speaker 1: the very least, we're intellect really different from the other
40:01
Speaker 1: smart ones. Um, we tend to think of ourselves as
40:04
Speaker 1: the most intellectually evolved or the most successful humans ever,
40:09
Speaker 1: and that's absolutely not the case. Um. I think Homo
40:12
Speaker 1: erectus was around for one and a half million years
40:15
Speaker 1: and modern humans have only been around for about three
40:18
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years. So we're definitely not necessarily the pinnacle
40:22
Speaker 1: of evolution just in the amount of time and success
40:26
Speaker 1: we've had so far. But also, um, we have a
40:28
Speaker 1: tendency to think like we're we're the top and there's
40:31
Speaker 1: nothing coming. And that's not necessarily true either. Like if
40:34
Speaker 1: you look at that acceleration and technology, like um, some
40:38
Speaker 1: of our ancestors used the same tool for a million
40:41
Speaker 1: and a half years without innovating upon it. They just
40:44
Speaker 1: made that same tool over and over and over again.
40:46
Speaker 1: And then somebody came along who was born and figured
40:49
Speaker 1: out a way to make it better, and that kicked
40:51
Speaker 1: off more and more technology, and you can see it's
40:54
Speaker 1: picking up faster and faster. But the fact that evolution
40:58
Speaker 1: has jumped from the external old for us to our
41:01
Speaker 1: brains and in turn to our culture, you can make
41:05
Speaker 1: a really good case that we're not necessarily going to
41:08
Speaker 1: physically evolve any longer. We're going to mentally evolve. So
41:11
Speaker 1: it's not it's not certain what humanity is going to
41:14
Speaker 1: look like in the future, but it's probably going to happen.
41:17
Speaker 1: The changes are going to happen a lot faster soon
41:20
Speaker 1: than they have been before, and we'll all just end
41:24
Speaker 1: up brains and jars right probably or uploaded. That's right.
41:30
Speaker 1: Oh boy, good luck with that. Everybody that had a
41:35
Speaker 1: very so long sucker bring to you, got anything else?
41:39
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I love these, uh that types
41:42
Speaker 1: of episodes. Stuff me too. Since Chuck and I agreed
41:46
Speaker 1: we'd love this episode, it's time for listener mail. So
41:52
Speaker 1: this is another Appalachian trail probably the last one I'll
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Speaker 1: read because, Um, Sophie here a k A tough cookie,
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Speaker 1: which a Sophie's trail name. It's just a lovely human
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Speaker 1: and we we had a nice back and forth Sophie
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Speaker 1: and Sophie's sister did a nobo through hike inven and
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Speaker 1: just had some kind of fun things to point out. Um.
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Speaker 1: One of the general rules of trail names is someone
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Speaker 1: else has to give it to you. So I think
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Speaker 1: that's kind of like, uh, if you're a pilot in
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Speaker 1: the military, you're like a Maverick and Goose. I think
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Speaker 1: people think they name themselves cool names. But my brother
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Speaker 1: in law was like, no, no no, no, no, no, you'd
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Speaker 1: get a name, and it's usually not something super cool
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Speaker 1: like Maverick. Yeah, if you name yourself, I'm sure that
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Speaker 1: people are going to be way harder on you in
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Speaker 1: the name they actually select for you. Yeah. I don't
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Speaker 1: even know if you're allowed to. I'm not sure. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Sophie says that my sister and I cheated a little
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Speaker 1: bit because we gave names to each other a few
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Speaker 1: days in. I don't think that's cheating. You're still naming
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Speaker 1: someone else. Sure, that's called getting ahead of the curve. Uh.
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Speaker 1: We We did have some unofficial trail names though, that
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Speaker 1: other people would refer to the pair of us as.
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Speaker 1: My favorite was a sixty year old Kentucky hiker from
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Speaker 1: Maine who told us, uh, he referred to us as
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Speaker 1: the Kentucky Wonders, which is pretty fun. And one thing
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Speaker 1: I realized after reading all these A t emails is
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Speaker 1: that it's it's really kind of fun. Like people get
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Speaker 1: together and like they start off alone and all of
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Speaker 1: a sudden there's a group of like twelve people hiking
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Speaker 1: together for weeks at a time. That is the very
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Speaker 1: reason why I will never hike they that sounds like
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Speaker 1: a nightmare to me. You would be the uh, the
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Speaker 1: loner hiker totally. Maybe, like, don't turn your back on
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Speaker 1: that one. I think your trail name might be Jed Bundy. Um.
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Speaker 1: The trail through West Virginia is actually less than four
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Speaker 1: miles and I heard this from other people to um,
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Speaker 1: not eighteen. So I think we screwed that up. It's
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Speaker 1: an amazing feeling to go through so quickly after psychologically,
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Speaker 1: after completing Virginia, which is five hundred miles and a
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Speaker 1: quarter of the whole entire trail. Uh. And there is
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Speaker 1: a four state challenge that some hikers will attempt to
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Speaker 1: do a forty five mile day to go through the
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Speaker 1: end of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania in
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Speaker 1: two hours. Her family hosts a trail magic spot because
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Speaker 1: they live near the trail in Tennessee, So they will
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Speaker 1: go out on the weekends and they pack up a
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Speaker 1: bunch of hiker food and they grill burgers and stuff
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Speaker 1: or make pancakes and just feed people on the trail
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Speaker 1: and then we'll go back home. I think you could
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Speaker 1: be down with that part, right. Sure, I'd need a
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Speaker 1: free hamburger, Like can I take it to go? I'd
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Speaker 1: be like why, I'd be like why is there mustard
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Speaker 1: on here? But not catch up? Uh. And then finally,
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Speaker 1: during the hike, we would treat ourselves to podcast for
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Speaker 1: a couple of hours when hiking was getting monotonous and
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Speaker 1: wanted to get out of our heads some and your
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Speaker 1: voices were a frequent, frequent companion listening to stuff that
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Speaker 1: you should know. Selects these days often have the weird
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Speaker 1: sensation of remembering exactly where I was hiking in the
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Speaker 1: woods when I listened to that episode. Uh, come to
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Speaker 1: Kentucky sometime, check out the Bourbon distilleries and the Red
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Speaker 1: River Gorge and do a show here Lexington. I know
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Speaker 1: you'd probably rather go to Louisville or Cincinnati, but Lexington
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Speaker 1: is definitely worth a visit. And Sophie sent along a
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Speaker 1: bunch of cool pictures of Sophie and her sister before
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Speaker 1: and after, and it's just looked like a really great time.
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Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thanks a lot for that email, Sophie, that
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Speaker 1: was a great one. And agreed Chuck that one had
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Speaker 1: to be right for sure. Just stay away from Josh
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Speaker 1: if you see him in the woods. No, I'm harmless.
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Speaker 1: I just don't want to be spoken to. That's all.
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Speaker 1: I want to be left alone. It's too awkward. Otherwise,
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Speaker 1: you could just hike with a big giant like nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventies headphones as if you're listening to right with my
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Speaker 1: head down, sunglasses on in a bag over my head.
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Speaker 1: I love it. If you want to be like Sophie
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Speaker 1: and get in touch with us. You can send us
45:51
Speaker 1: an email and send it off heart Radio. For more
45:55
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart radio app. Apple
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