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Are humans wired to survive? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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  Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dot Com? Stuff you Should Know
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Josh Clark here with Chuck Bryant, Paara
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  Speaker 1: staff writers from how Stuff Works dot Com. How's it going, Chuck, Good, Josh,
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  Speaker 1: just a pair of pair of writers. I see you're
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  Speaker 1: still rocking your braves, Kathy, even after you said I'm
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  Speaker 1: not so sure I'm watching anymore this season. Yeah, but
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  Speaker 1: the hair's getting lost. Well, I just thought you were
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  Speaker 1: going to say you're a true fan. I am a
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  Speaker 1: true fan. So Chuck, you know the braves might not
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  Speaker 1: be doing that. Well, it's almost like they've lost their
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  Speaker 1: will to survive. That's really great set up, Thank you
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  Speaker 1: very much, Chuck. You know that if they have lost
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  Speaker 1: their collect the will to survive, that is flying in
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  Speaker 1: the face of evolution. In the opinion of many supposedly
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  Speaker 1: we are wired for survival. Yeah, I believe we are.
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  Speaker 1: I think you should give the example of the Japanese
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  Speaker 1: hiker Mitsu Taka Yuchi Koshi. I love that guy's name. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he's great, He's a good guy. This is just a
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  Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and uh, this guy was hiking
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  Speaker 1: with his friends in western Japan went off. I think
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  Speaker 1: he went to go down the mountain by himself for
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  Speaker 1: some reason, and he tripped. As as good as I
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  Speaker 1: can tell is he tripped, was not unconscious. The last
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  Speaker 1: thing he says he did was fell asleep in a
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  Speaker 1: grassy field. And you might say, to yourself, what's the
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  Speaker 1: big deal. The big deal is he woke up twenty
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  Speaker 1: four days later. Yeah, he was awakened by rescue workers.
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  Speaker 1: Twenty four days later. He was unconscious supposedly the whole time.
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  Speaker 1: The whole time. He when they found him, he was
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  Speaker 1: a cool seventy one degrees fahrenh height, which is basically
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  Speaker 1: the temperature of an average corpse that has not been refrigerated.
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  Speaker 1: His his organs were almost completely shut down, almost no heartbeat.
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  Speaker 1: And uh, he lived because they surmise that he almost
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  Speaker 1: went to a state of hibernation like a barwood. So
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  Speaker 1: then that we're not supposed to be able to do that. No,
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  Speaker 1: we're definitely not supposed to be able to do that.
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  Speaker 1: And I've tried that. I have to Actually I usually
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  Speaker 1: do it every winner, but it's unsuccessful and successfully I
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  Speaker 1: can rarely get my body temperature down. That low seventy
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  Speaker 1: nine is the lowest I've ever gone, and that took
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  Speaker 1: a lot of willpower. So, UM, yeah, you use this
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  Speaker 1: guy as an example in your article are humans Wired
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  Speaker 1: to survive? Uh? And I think it's a sterling example.
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  Speaker 1: I I I we are um seemingly programmed to continue
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  Speaker 1: to live, to protect our genes, to protect our offspring. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And you get some great examples. This is one of
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  Speaker 1: those wonderful articles where somebody in one of our editorial
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  Speaker 1: brainstorm meetings came up with this idea. It was based
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  Speaker 1: on zero research. Um. When I was doing supplemental research
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  Speaker 1: for this podcast, I went on typed in humans wired
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  Speaker 1: survived nothing? There's nothing out there, there's no study that
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  Speaker 1: this was based on. It was Chuck using his own
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  Speaker 1: brain and you know, drawing all of these conclusions from
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  Speaker 1: existing UH data, And I thought it was beautiful try.
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  Speaker 1: I appreciate that. You know. When I when I went
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  Speaker 1: to do this research, I did the same thing you did,
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  Speaker 1: and I really didn't find much and nothing. I decided
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  Speaker 1: that really the only way to research if we're actually
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  Speaker 1: wired naturally to survive is to see what human instincts
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  Speaker 1: we naturally have that we don't think about. They're just
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  Speaker 1: in us that helped keep us alive, and not just instincts.
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  Speaker 1: You also mentioned biological processes like our old friend fight
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  Speaker 1: or flight, Right, Chuck, I, I wrote an article on
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  Speaker 1: the theory of everything when it was about this guy
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  Speaker 1: who figured out these this lead group that's really mind
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  Speaker 1: boggling math. Uh, that that was the answer to everything.
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  Speaker 1: It was the underlying cause. I think based on our podcast,
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  Speaker 1: the fight or flight response is the theory of everything.
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  Speaker 1: We always come back to it. Yeah, it does come
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  Speaker 1: up a lot. Yeah, So we'll we'll go over all
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  Speaker 1: more time, real quick, shall we. Okay, So, basically, you're
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  Speaker 1: confronted with danger, your brain releases or send signals for
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  Speaker 1: your body to release hormones like adrenaline, which act on
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  Speaker 1: your cells, and basically, uh, energy is taken from digestion
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  Speaker 1: and put towards enlarging your pupils, increasing your respiration, your
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  Speaker 1: heart rate, basically getting you ready to either you know,
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  Speaker 1: pound somebody or run away from a pounding. And the
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  Speaker 1: fact that this happens involuntarily, that we don't have to
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  Speaker 1: think about it, that you can't really control it, even
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  Speaker 1: if you do try to think about it, because people
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  Speaker 1: try to and you can't. Right. It's it's that that
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  Speaker 1: in and of itself is kind of evidence for for survival,
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  Speaker 1: based at the very least on Darwin's theory of evolution,
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  Speaker 1: which which is very much about well almost all about
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  Speaker 1: natural selection, right right, and uh, you know, I mean
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  Speaker 1: it all sin is really a pretty basic concept, and
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  Speaker 1: I can illustrate it to you guys like you did
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  Speaker 1: my article. Let's say you have red worms and brown worms,
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  Speaker 1: and over time um birds decide they really like to
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  Speaker 1: eat these red worms, so they keep eating red worms,
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  Speaker 1: and then they just start reproducing less and less. The
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  Speaker 1: brown worms are not getting eaten, so they're reproducing more
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  Speaker 1: and more, and over time the red worms dwindle until
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  Speaker 1: eventually they could go away completely. So only the strong survive.
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of the basis of old Chucky Darwin's
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  Speaker 1: whole thing exactly and fight or flight is almost physical
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  Speaker 1: evidence of that. Yeah. So, so what are some other
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  Speaker 1: examples that you gave. Well, there's one, Uh, actually, there's
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  Speaker 1: so many um babies crying. One way, we're wired because
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  Speaker 1: a lot of babies are actually most babies in the
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  Speaker 1: animal kingdom are born um with a little bit of ability.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, a newborn horse will stand up and be
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  Speaker 1: running around within the hour. Sharks are born underwater and
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  Speaker 1: they're pretty much on their own right from the moment
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  Speaker 1: they're born. Human babies are really the only ones that
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  Speaker 1: are born kind of defenseless. So a baby's cry, it's
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  Speaker 1: just their natural instinct, uh, to keep alive, telling mom
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  Speaker 1: and dad, hey, this is what I need or I
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  Speaker 1: need something. And uh. It's further evidence in the fact
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  Speaker 1: that they can change the volume and the pitch of
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  Speaker 1: their cry depending on how urgent their needs are. So
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  Speaker 1: that's hard wired, buddy. Yeah. Well, another example that you
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  Speaker 1: gave was that we have been shown to be able
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  Speaker 1: to visually recognize changes in our our environment more and
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  Speaker 1: with living things more than inanimate objects. And I actually
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  Speaker 1: I was looking into that, and h I found that
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  Speaker 1: there was a two thousand five Arizona State study that
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  Speaker 1: suggests that that very um instinct to pick up living things, uh,
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  Speaker 1: may actually tie into modern prejudices. You want to hear
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  Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, this is news to me. Yeah, it's
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  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of cool. UM. Although it's basically just
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  Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure there's some neo Nazi group that's
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  Speaker 1: picked it up to, you know, use it as evidence
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  Speaker 1: that we shouldn't mix races or something stupid like that. UM.
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  Speaker 1: But basically, what the Arizona State researchers postulated is that
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  Speaker 1: we UM, since we're programmed to recognize changes in our environment,
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  Speaker 1: and we used to live in these small tribes of
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  Speaker 1: people that looked a lot alike. Um, anytime we saw
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  Speaker 1: somebody who didn't look like the rest of us, we
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  Speaker 1: usually perceive them as a threat. That makes sense. And
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  Speaker 1: even though we don't live in tribes anymore, this you know,
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  Speaker 1: relic of tribal living or hunting, hunting and gathering UM
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  Speaker 1: still remains and explains modern prejudices. Why you know, people
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  Speaker 1: are xenophobic and racist and all that and anything that's
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  Speaker 1: not like you is exactly And I thought I thought
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  Speaker 1: that was pretty interesting that it tied into that instinct
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  Speaker 1: that survival instinct of visually recognizing organic changes in the
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  Speaker 1: in the environment. Yeah, I've got another one if I
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  Speaker 1: want to hear it, Chuck good. Uh, there was a
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  Speaker 1: study that the BBC did for the television program called
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  Speaker 1: Human Instinct that was really kind of cool that I watched, And, uh,
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  Speaker 1: this isn't the most scientific study, as you've pointed out
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  Speaker 1: to me in our in our downtime, but it isn't
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  Speaker 1: pretty cool nonetheless. Um, you know, humans are born with
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  Speaker 1: an immune system, and there's different genes that that indicate
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  Speaker 1: what kind of immune system we have. You know, you
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  Speaker 1: might be better at fighting off the common cold. I
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  Speaker 1: might be better at fighting fighting off yellow fever. People
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  Speaker 1: have these immune systems, and um, the theory is that
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  Speaker 1: you want to pick out a partner for reproduction that
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  Speaker 1: has a different immune system than your own, because you'll
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  Speaker 1: have babies that are more robust against a wider range
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  Speaker 1: of sickness and disease. And they've proven this by the
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  Speaker 1: fact that or by the theory that people uh do
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  Speaker 1: this through their nose actually smell rather than visually when
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  Speaker 1: they're picking out a reproductive partner. And how did they
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  Speaker 1: prove this? I love this this test? Yeah, they got
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  Speaker 1: the the show's host, and they got these six women
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  Speaker 1: at the University of Newcastle, six lookers to sleep in
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  Speaker 1: the same T shirt to night straight. They put each
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  Speaker 1: of their T shirts in a jar and uh, you know,
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  Speaker 1: they had the blood work done before to see what
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  Speaker 1: kind of immune system they all had. And then this
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  Speaker 1: show's host sniffed all these shirts and put two aside
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  Speaker 1: that he found the most pleasing to his nose, and
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  Speaker 1: then to aside that he found the least pleasing, and
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  Speaker 1: then the other two. I guess you could take it
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  Speaker 1: or leave it. And interestingly enough, it supported the results
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  Speaker 1: the findings. They the two that he liked the most
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  Speaker 1: shared zero of the same jeans immune system jeanes as
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  Speaker 1: he did, and the two that he did not like
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  Speaker 1: shared the most five out of six or the same.
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  Speaker 1: So this kind of indicates that we we smell around
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  Speaker 1: for a good partner that will effectively leave us with
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  Speaker 1: robust babies that will keep the human race going. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the reason I find it unscientific is because you can't
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  Speaker 1: go wrong with girls from the University Newcastle. Like you said,
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  Speaker 1: they're all lookers, go fighting brown ales. Um. But this
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  Speaker 1: whole concept of um of creating wanting innately to create
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  Speaker 1: more robust offspring. That kind of jibes with um Richard
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  Speaker 1: Dawkins theories. Have you heard of him? Not the family
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  Speaker 1: feud host. Uh, that was Richard Dawson, Right, this is
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  Speaker 1: Richard Dawkins UM, And they're often confused. They kind of
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  Speaker 1: look alike a little bit. They used to party together
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  Speaker 1: in the seventies. Richard Dawkins is a zoologist and just
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  Speaker 1: based on his observations and some studies of that kind
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  Speaker 1: of thing, he concluded that the human body and us
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  Speaker 1: in general are just kind of these um mindless vehicles
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  Speaker 1: for genes. That it's really um our genes that are
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  Speaker 1: interested in survival, and we get our instincts from, you know,
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  Speaker 1: our genes and our genetic makeup that kind of thing
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  Speaker 1: which command ourselves, which in turn basically make us do
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  Speaker 1: all the things that we do or carry out all
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  Speaker 1: the process that we're supposed to carry out. Uh. And
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  Speaker 1: and basically the the our entire point of existence is
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  Speaker 1: to protect and pass along this genetic line as if
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  Speaker 1: we were wired to survive. Yeah, yeah, it's thrilling. It's
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  Speaker 1: proof enough for me, agreed, So uh, I think everybody
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  Speaker 1: would be very well off to go read Chuck's article
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