Herman Pontzer (on evolutionary anthropology)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Herman Pontzer on Evolutionary Anthropology Released April 2, 2025

In this insightful episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, host Dax Shepard engages in a compelling conversation with evolutionary anthropologist Herman Pontzer, joined by Dax's mother, Monica Padman. The trio delves deep into the intricacies of human evolution, energetics, and the biological underpinnings that make us uniquely adaptable. Below is a detailed summary capturing the essence of their discussion.

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1. Introduction to Herman Pontzer and His Work

Dax introduces Herman Pontzer, highlighting his expertise in evolutionary anthropology and human energetics. Pontzer, a professor at Duke University, is renowned for his research on how humans burn calories and adapt biologically to their environments. They reference Herman's previous book, Burn, and his latest work, Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us.

Dax Shepard [00:41]: "Incredibly cool. Professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University. He's an internationally recognized researcher in human energetics and evolution."

2. Human Evolution and Bipedalism

The conversation kicks off with a discussion on the origins of bipedalism in humans. Herman explains that humans diverged from our chimpanzee and bonobo relatives around seven million years ago. The early stages of bipedalism involved walking on two legs with grasping feet, as seen in fossils like Ardipithecus.

Herman Pontzer [11:59]: "We're part of the great ape family tree. Our lineage kind of breaks out about 7 million years ago, diverging from chimps and bonobos."

3. Sexual Dimorphism and Social Structures in Primates

They explore the concept of sexual dimorphism—the differences in size and appearance between males and females of a species—and how it relates to social structures. Herman points out that early hominins exhibited significant sexual dimorphism, which decreased as the genus Homo emerged, indicating a shift from physical to more intellectual forms of competition.

Herman Pontzer [17:34]: "In humans, males are just competing against males for mates, females are competing against females for mates. That's another obvious piece that's very different."

4. Human Energetics: Calories Burned and Metabolic Rates

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Herman's research into human caloric expenditure. They examine the common assumption that active hunter-gatherers burn significantly more calories than the average American. Contrary to expectations, Herman reveals that the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group in Tanzania, burn a similar number of calories as typical Americans despite their high activity levels.

Herman Pontzer [31:25]: "They as getting more activity in a day than a typical American guy in a week, are burning the same number of calories every day as the American. Total shocker, right?"

5. Hunter-Gatherer Lifestyle and the Caloric Hypothesis

The trio discusses the implications of Herman's findings on the popular "calories in, calories out" model. Herman suggests that the body's metabolic processes adjust to maintain energy balance, challenging the notion that simply increasing physical activity will proportionally increase caloric burn.

Herman Pontzer [35:36]: "It's figuring out a way to conserve energy on other things. When we were there, we brought up this sort of briefcase based respirometry system... it turns out, yeah."

6. Race, Genetics, and Health Disparities

Monica brings up the sensitive topic of race and its biological implications, particularly concerning health disparities like hypertension among African Americans. Herman emphasizes that such disparities are not rooted in genetics but are instead consequences of environmental factors like structural racism and stress.

Herman Pontzer [65:17]: "If you study folks that are black and even if they're descendants of the slave trade, but they aren't in the United States exposed to structural racism, they actually don't have hypertension."

7. The Role of Cooking and Cultural Inheritance

They explore how cultural practices, such as cooking, have shaped human biology. Herman explains that humans have evolved to require cooked food, which is easier to digest and allows for greater caloric intake, fostering brain growth.

Herman Pontzer [50:43]: "We spend four years in college talking about this, trying to dissect. People are different. How and why?"

8. Human Adaptability: Muscle, Bone, and Neuroplasticity

The discussion shifts to human adaptability, highlighting how muscle and bone can change based on environmental demands. Herman underscores that humans are incredibly flexible, able to adapt physically to various activities, which is a testament to our evolutionary success.

Herman Pontzer [53:08]: "Humans are incredibly inherently diverse. The way that we're built, just look around any population, you're gonna find the big people and the small people and the strong people and the thin people."

9. Aging, Longevity, and Senescence

They delve into the biological processes of aging and senescence. Herman discusses theories on why humans age, emphasizing the trade-off between energy spent on maintenance versus reproduction. He also touches on the concept of entropy in cellular processes as a factor in aging.

Herman Pontzer [74:00]: "The standard story is that whatever kind of damage accumulates over time as we get older, your body has ways to fix that and repair it and put it back. But that takes energy."

10. Vaccines, Public Health, and Race-based Medical Practices

Monica and Herman address the controversial topic of vaccines and their intersection with race. Herman criticizes the use of race in medical diagnostics, arguing that it often perpetuates stereotypes and overlooks the true environmental factors affecting health.

Herman Pontzer [62:05]: "No, there is no evidence... and also, you can take black families who are not descendants of the slave trade, but they grow up in America where there is racism, they have the effects of that."

11. Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with a light-hearted exchange between Dax and Monica about personal anecdotes and daily experiences, bringing a relatable end to the profound discussions.

Dax Shepard [120:28]: "And so there's this long period where adults are working harder than they have to feed themselves because they have to bring enough food home... And extended childhoods because of how complex we get."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dax Shepard [07:04]: "I've retained, I think more than your average bear. But I'm probably wrong about it."

• Herman Pontzer [17:34]: "In humans, males are just competing against males for mates, females are competing against females for mates. That's another obvious piece that's very different."

• Herman Pontzer [31:25]: "They as getting more activity in a day than a typical American guy in a week, are burning the same number of calories every day as the American. Total shocker, right?"

• Monica Padman [54:05]: "Why on earth would you categorize these people by this thing that is the least telling and least dynamic in everything?"

• Herman Pontzer [65:17]: "If you study folks that are black and even if they're descendants of the slave trade, but they aren't in the United States exposed to structural racism, they actually don't have hypertension."

• Dax Shepard [120:28]: "And so there's this long period where adults are working harder than they have to feed themselves because they have to bring enough food home... And extended childhoods because of how complex we get."

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Key Takeaways

1. Human Evolution is Multifaceted: The shift from significant sexual dimorphism to reduced differences in the Homo genus indicates a move from physical to intellectual competition in mate selection and social structures.

2. Challenging Caloric Myths: Herman Pontzer's research reveals that the body's metabolic processes adjust to maintain energy balance, making the relationship between physical activity and caloric burn more complex than commonly perceived.

3. Race and Health Disparities are Environmentally Rooted: Health issues like hypertension among African Americans are more tied to structural and environmental factors than to inherent genetic predispositions.

4. Cultural Practices Shape Biology: Innovations like cooking have had profound impacts on human biology, enabling easier digestion and greater caloric intake, which in turn supported brain growth and complexity.

5. Adaptability is Key to Human Success: The flexibility of human muscles, bones, and brain development showcases our species' remarkable ability to adapt to diverse environments and challenges.

6. Aging Involves Energy Trade-offs: The balance between energy spent on maintenance versus reproduction plays a critical role in the aging process, with cellular entropy also contributing to senescence.

7. Critical View on Race-Based Medical Practices: Incorporating race into medical diagnostics often reinforces stereotypes and fails to address underlying environmental and social factors affecting health.

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This episode offers a rich exploration of how our biology and cultural practices intertwine, shaping who we are as a species. Herman Pontzer's expertise provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of human evolution, energetics, and the complex factors influencing our health and longevity.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free. Right now, join Wondri plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Hermion Permian. I'm joined by my mom. Hi, Mom.

[Monica Padman]

Hi, son.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not gonna believe this.

[Monica Padman]

Ms. Monica, tell me.

[Dax Shepard]

Good friend of mine's here.

[Monica Padman]

Who?

[Dax Shepard]

Herman Poncer.

[Monica Padman]

Liam, did you make him up?

[Dax Shepard]

No, that's really our guess. Herman Poncer.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Herman Poncer.

[Monica Padman]

Herman Poncer.

[Dax Shepard]

What a what? Maybe my favorite name we've had for a guest.

[Monica Padman]

Really good name. A really cool guy.

[Dax Shepard]

Incredibly cool. Professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University. He's an internationally recognized researcher in human energetics and evolution. His previous book, which is great, is called Burn some shocking ways we can consume calories.

[Monica Padman]

We talked about it and it was really interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we did a little section on Burn and then his new book, Adaptable how your unique body really works and why our biology unites us. This was so fun.

[Monica Padman]

It was.

[Dax Shepard]

Evolutionary biology is one of my favorite things to think about in anthropology.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like what was I just. Oh my God. We were just discussing what could have been the cause of.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, you and I. I know.

[Dax Shepard]

You were saying women. Oh, women want to get something of their boyfriends to smell.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Like a T shirt or something. That's a very common desire for a woman to want.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I never met a guy who tried to get a shirt from a girl. Something's there.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I wonder if when there's a quantum computer that can model the future and all that, if it can go backwards in time and somehow we would get answers to these things.

[Monica Padman]

Well, in the meantime, Herman's working on it.

[Dax Shepard]

Herman rock. This is a really, really interesting episode. I'm usually threatened by other an anthropology majors because they actually know all this stuff. And I have. I. I mostly ill informed as we find out a few times in this episode.

[Monica Padman]

I'm glad that you allowed it because we all got to learn.

[Dax Shepard]

Please enjoy. Herman Potzer. This episode is supported by FX's Dying for Sex, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. Inspired by a true story, this series follows Molly who after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, decides to leave her husband to explore the full breadth of her sexual desire. She gets the courage and support to go on this sex quest from her best friend Nikki, who stays by her side through it all. F is Dying for Sex. All episodes streaming April 4th on Hulu. We are supported by Claude, the AI assistant. That just feels different, you know? We're curious about the old artificial intelligence here on the pod. We are curious and we always want to give our armchairs the if you know, you know tips.

[Monica Padman]

We sure do.

[Dax Shepard]

So they need to meet our new pal, Claude. While other AIs sound like robots, Claude just gets it with the emotional intelligence. Whether I'm researching guests or refining my latest meal plan to get Brad Pitt's abs or looking for the best dating advice to give Monica, Claude is the fact checker in your pocket while you're in the armchair.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's exciting for us. I like having an extra companion.

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome to the team, Claude. You can try Claude for free [e-mail]. that's C L A U D E.

[Monica Padman]

Dax is getting a new tattoo and Rob is matching.

[Herman Poncer]

So, like, when you hug each other, it forms a full.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, yes. But only our wives will see it. So you're from Pennsylvania?

[Monica Padman]

Mm.

[Dax Shepard]

Whereabouts? I'm a Michigander.

[Herman Poncer]

Okay. Did you ever see Groundhog Day?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Pak Sawanee. What is it?

[Herman Poncer]

Punxsutawney.

[Dax Shepard]

Punxsutawney.

[Herman Poncer]

So we played Punxsutawney in high school ball. They were that close. Oh, okay. Yes. They kind of nailed it. That's sort of the vibe. I lived in Brooklyn for a few years and it almost broke me. It was the F train. You'd be like on the F train at 9 o'clock in the morning. It was like a meat wagon you just, like, packed in just to pass the time. Once I was like, I wonder how many people are on this train? And I did the math and then how many cars there are? And I was like, oh, there's more people on this train than there are in the hometown I grew up in.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What was the pop?

[Herman Poncer]

So 800 people in my hometown of Kersey, Pennsylvania.

[Dax Shepard]

And what did mom and dad do?

[Herman Poncer]

High school teachers.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. In Kersey?

[Herman Poncer]

Kersey is not big enough to have a high school. So the town next door, St. Mary's they were there where I went to high school too.

[Dax Shepard]

How many acres did you grow up on?

[Herman Poncer]

It's kind of a long story, but. So the Poncer family was one of the first families to move into that area. It was not super densely settled ever. Even the Native American folks were like, this is a junky land. We don't want to spend a whole lot of time here.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And so my extended family owns hundreds of acres of forest.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. And could you get lost in there as a kid? 100%.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I lived at the end of a dirt road in a house that my dad built physically with his hands and his buddy Dean. It was wonderful. And I grew up riding motorcycles and hiking around and hunting. It was kind of an amazing way to grow up.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Would you be out tromping around with a BB gun when you were little?

[Herman Poncer]

Totally. I mean, the first time I got an actual firearm, I think, was for my 10th birthday.

[Dax Shepard]

A 22.

[Herman Poncer]

Yep. But my life is so different now because in the academics, university, that's not a background that you see very often.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly right. It's kind of looked down upon.

[Herman Poncer]

Oh, completely. Well, this is a whole other avenue. But we talk about diversity in the university and everybody is for that. But it means different things to different people.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, definitely.

[Herman Poncer]

It would be interesting to me to see diversity of backgrounds that way. You don't see a lot of folks in rural America in the ivory tower.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no. And also maybe a little more socioeconomic thrust because we've divided up into these lines that are pretty comical in way.

[Monica Padman]

Is some of it, though, do we think chicken or the egg? A little bit at this point? I think if you're in certain parts of the country, you don't want to be associated with liberal elite institutions. We've created it as like us, them.

[Herman Poncer]

I think about the folks I grew up with. One of my best friends growing up. He's a union electrician, still lives back in Kersey, and he's got a great life. That was an avenue. That is a wonderful way to go, but he would never have considered doing what I'm doing. This wasn't even on the radar. Who knows what this kid's going to do? But it is really kind of dichotomized that way.

[Monica Padman]

It is.

[Dax Shepard]

Where did you go to undergrad?

[Herman Poncer]

Penn State.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you did graduate school at Harvard.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

And when did you get in the anthro trajectory? Did you do any reading about me? I also was an anthropologist teacher. No, I know.

[Herman Poncer]

I was going to tell you that I'm actually here from ucla. You know the anxiety dream where you have the class that you never finished and they tell you you have an exam. I have with me here. We're here to do this with you.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, wonderful.

[Monica Padman]

This is great.

[Dax Shepard]

25 years out. Let's see how I do.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I want to see what's changed.

[Dax Shepard]

I think I'll do bad, and I think I'll be three standard deviations above what most people do. So how about that? Some humility and Some arrogance.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I've retained, I think more than your average bear. But I'm probably wrong about it.

[Herman Poncer]

Were you excited about the physical anthro, the cultural anthro? Were you like floor field? How did you do it?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So I deeply regret what I did, which is I was enamored and intoxicated with the excitement of cultural anthropology and learning about mating rituals and patrilocal and matrilocal and all these things. Even the kind of fakir, modern primitive. That was exciting. But as I got into it, I was like, oh, no, no. I'm way more interested in physical anthro, specifically evolutionary biology. I found that I left with, I need to know more how we ended up as a species before I study what the species then did culturally. Yes. What was your route?

[Herman Poncer]

I went to Penn State not having any real idea what I wanted to do. I took a seminar in human evolution that was co taught by a cultural guy and a sociobiologist. Bioanthro guy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And the cultural guy, the postmodern stuff had kind of passed him by and he was not into that. And so he was a good foil for the evolutionary guy because they both kind of saw things sort of the same way. Cultural anthro and bioanthro can be very at odds.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone's even telling me at Berkeley, we just interviewed someone, they were like, look, if you get in this trajectory, you can't talk to the physical anthro. We don't even actually want you speaking to them. Which is kind of nuts.

[Herman Poncer]

So there's a lot of that kind of schism still now, but luckily for me, these guys complimented each other well. And that class just lit my hair on fire. I mean, it was amazing. My parents are both high school teachers. It was a home where we talked a lot about ideas and had arguments that were good arguments. It was really fun growing up. It was such good training. Looking back, they were English teachers, so evolutionary biology wasn't their thing really, to sort of have a whole nother way to look at the human species and this evolutionary deep time perspective and all these quirks and weird things about, you think, oh, but actually there's a reason for those.

[Dax Shepard]

That's what was illuminating to me first. I'll say even before anthro is a Western civ class learning. How did we get to where I was in Milford, Michigan, 1975, and I was prescribed all these things. How arbitrary are they? Where do they come from? That was like, oh, wow. There's an actual explanation for why we're doing Everything the way we're doing. And then you reverse from there and it's like, oh, and there's an even greater explanation. And then the physical part is the grand explanation. Just in your intro, I'm really glad at how you lay this out because one of my great interests was always these differences in populations. I just was drawn to them immediately finding out, oh, we kind of know that native Americans came from Asia because they have a dish incisor and all. Only Asians have a distant sizer and so do native. That's a really cool hard bit of evidence. Clue. I like that. And for people to know the history of anthropology, there was a field called anthropometry, which studied specifically differences between people and was heavily weaponized and used during the Nazi era.

[Herman Poncer]

Oh, completely fed completely into the whole eugenics. The big push was that.

[Dax Shepard]

So that kind of went away with good reason. It was being terribly exploited for the wrong reasons. But my interest was always not from any place of superiority, just a deep curiosity of how we could have these variations within the same species.

[Herman Poncer]

Right. And you begin talking about the ways that populations differ or even just more fundamentally how people differ. And because of that really dark history, people get nervous right away.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

The sort of superpower that an anthropology background gives you is you spend four years in college talking about this, trying to dissect. People are different.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

That's a good thing. How and why?

[Dax Shepard]

How is it adaptive to where they live?

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. And how much of it's noise and how much of it's signal. Lot of noise. And how much is different within groups versus between. It gets less scary. You go, okay, that's how that works.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's actually a weapon in debunking racism.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. And I think right now, when I look at social media world, which has gotten even weirder recently, the only people who want to talk about difference that way are the race realists. That's a new word for eugenics.

[Dax Shepard]

What do they call it?

[Herman Poncer]

Race. Race realism. Race realists. This kind of thing.

[Monica Padman]

Like we understand that there's differences between races.

[Dax Shepard]

Like they're telling the truth about race.

[Herman Poncer]

Exactly, exactly.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I doubt they are.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Herman Poncer]

And it's really kind of scary. And so you don't have anybody with any real background in how this works talking about it because everybody's afraid to.

[Monica Padman]

So then they get to come to the surface.

[Herman Poncer]

So let's talk about it in a way that's evidence based. That's less scary. Let's unpack it. I think you have to start with how the body works. Right. Because I think people don't have a fluency in that. How does embryology work? How does the brain work? How do your muscles work? I mean, if you start with those pieces, then you can say, well, then how come your physique is different than yours or mine? How does skin color work? Now we can understand why skin colors differ. And it's not a scary thing. This is the biology of it. That's how we talk about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So the book Adaptable aims to educate you on how your body works, but instead of it just being a straight biology textbook, there's going to be exploration of the lifestyle of the people, the landscape, the local adaptations. So it's a very fun lens to look at it. So I guess let's just start with the history of us as humans.

[Herman Poncer]

Oh, yeah. Well, we're part of the great ape family tree. Our lineage kind of busts out about 7 million years ago, breaks away from the lineage that becomes chimps and bonobos. But the first 5 million years, I think of it as basically the Ewok chapter of human evolution. You're walking on two legs, but you're furry and kind of ape like.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you fully bipedal?

[Herman Poncer]

Well, the people argue, let's just say yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Herman Poncer]

Earliest ones probably have a grasping foot. We see that in a couple of these, like Ardipithecus. That's changed since you left.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I know.

[Herman Poncer]

A. Afarensis prior to Lucy's A. Afarensis is Ardipithecus. The initial stuff was found in the 90s, but was fully reported till 2009, I think.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. So I was nine years out.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

He's what?

[Dax Shepard]

He's walking on two legs.

[Monica Padman]

He's the first one to walk on two legs.

[Herman Poncer]

So as far as I can tell, the earliest. Earliest ones even before that one are walking on two legs. The evidence for that is if you look at the skull of one of the earliest fossils we have, you can figure out the orientation of the spinal column. And if it comes straight down out of the head, vertical, then it's probably on two legs. And if it comes towards out of the back, then it's probably on quad. So that's the kind of way they put these things together, isn't it, Nate? I love that stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

The osteology class was my favorite one. All of physical anteroch. So australopithecine is no longer the earliest one?

[Herman Poncer]

No. You're already 2 million years.

[Dax Shepard]

This is humiliating. Can I just add, my favorite one was Gigantopithecus.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, but that's like our long lost Asian cousin, right?

[Dax Shepard]

That was in Asia. That was a giant biped.

[Herman Poncer]

Still is the biggest ape ever. Like, you know, twice the size of a gorilla or something crazy like that. They're really, really big.

[Dax Shepard]

Think Bigfoot. Some of these people are really grasping for Bigfoot to be real. They like the Gigantopithecus.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

There's a wonderful Of a professor, I think he's in Idaho, who did his whole PhD on very normal anatomy and questions in anthropology. And then once he had tenure, he was like, yes, let's party. And now he's like, all about Bigfoot. I'm like, I have respect for that.

[Dax Shepard]

How tall was the. Shaky.

[Monica Padman]

And yeah, see, we can fact check that.

[Herman Poncer]

This is the fun stuff. Gorillas aren't that tall.

[Dax Shepard]

No, but they're £450, right?

[Herman Poncer]

I don't know, six feet tall. Let's go. Six feet tall. If I had to guess, I'm not sure how much full skeletons of it either. We have. We have mostly cranial dental stuff. Heads and teeth.

[Monica Padman]

9.8Ft.

[Herman Poncer]

9.8Ft.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's go. You want the source. I can see it on your face. I want the source, Rob.

[Herman Poncer]

I do Britannica.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you just shot Britannica. Thank God they're not a sponsor.

[Herman Poncer]

Wikipedia says 12ft. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Herman Poncer]

I had to write a new book.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So I sidetracked you. Okay, so seven million years ago.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. And so you got these bipeds. They're walking on two legs, but they've got grasping feet for at least for the first couple million years. Then you get Lucy and Australopithecus afarensis, and that's another very successful chapter.

[Monica Padman]

Not everyone knows about Lucy.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. She came out of the Rift Valley, right?

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. So she's one of the earliest, let's say, full skeletons that we've ever found. So it's not just a head and it's not just a tooth. You can kind of see the whole thing. It was a really big deal. And it's just been 50 years since that discovery, actually.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. And it was named after his wife.

[Herman Poncer]

It was named after Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, which was playing on the radio, as they were.

[Dax Shepard]

Louis Leakey, Is that who found it?

[Herman Poncer]

No, no, no. This is up in Ethiopia. And they named Lucy after this. Oh, the Beatles.

[Dax Shepard]

Wonderful.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Anthropologists are cool.

[Monica Padman]

Very.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They name it after drug songs and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, specifically a drug Beatles song. Even better.

[Herman Poncer]

Australopithecus methamphetamine never caught on.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so they find Lucy.

[Herman Poncer]

But again, I mean, still very ape like, as far as we can tell in terms of diet and stuff. Eating almost all plants. There's some interesting ideas these days that they might have had some very simple tools, maybe, but things don't really shift away from like an ape like kind of way of life until you get, get hunting and gathering going two and a half, two million years ago.

[Dax Shepard]

And we get fired as well.

[Herman Poncer]

So that doesn't show up till about a million years ago. There's a gap. So there's about two and a half million years ago we start hunting and gathering. And that changes everything because I mean, just think about what it means to have a species that does two different things. No other species does that. There are species that kind of generalize. Any individual bear, for example, will eat fruits and we'll hunt a little bit. And so they're generalists, but there's no other species that half of the group does one thing, acts like a carnivore, the other half acts like an herbivore and gets plant foods. And then so you get the advantages of both. Then you have to share it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

Animals don't like to share, right? Very rarely. And in fact, even apes don't share much.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, for sex trade they do.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. Very specific context and very little in terms of total amounts.

[Dax Shepard]

No one throws it into a big pot. Other than lions maybe.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. Social carnivores, that's another example. Wolves. But that's how rare it is. You can kind of think of specific examples. Almost every animal just keeps it. That's what usually works the best.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

That has permeated everything. So I come in here and I don't know you guys, but you don't kill me. That's crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

That is nuts.

[Herman Poncer]

And then you offer me food. Wow. Think about that. And anytime you have a celebration, you're sharing food. That's the fabric of what humans are all about. And then what's fun about that is it's just this snowball of social complexity, intellectual complexity. All of a sudden brains are not just figuring out where the food is and not just figuring out maybe who to mate with, but they're doing all these calculations about who's in my group, who's a, who's an ally, who I can trust, who I can't trust. Then you have all the forging stuff on top of that and the complexity just snowballs. And you see the tools develop with that. So over the past 2 million years, you can like literally track from simple stone tools to more complex to multi piece tools, to iPhones.

[Dax Shepard]

It ratchets up quickly.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Do we have any sense? Could you determine this from the archeological record? When does mate selection shift from a game of size to perhaps a game of savvy and aptitude in hunting? Aptitude and gathering.

[Herman Poncer]

The easiest way to track that would be size dimorphism. So in a gorilla, for example, males are twice as big as females and it's because they basically just fight over who has access to the group of.

[Dax Shepard]

Females and they're gonna just increasingly get bigger and bigger and bigger ad infinitum, because the biggest one will have access and pass on its big genes and just keeps going up. Male lions just keep getting bigger than female lions. Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

So that's a funny piece about human sexual biology, is that there is less sexual dimorphism than even in Lucy. So Lucy is still pretty significant sexual dimorphism. She's tiny. The males are not tiny.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

And so there's probably a lot of male. Male competition. That's what you'd have to infer. And you get to our genus, the genus Homo, and that all of a sudden starts to go away and you get to the sort of 5, 10% dimorphism that we see today.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it only 5 to 10%?

[Herman Poncer]

It depends on the metric. So in terms of height, probably about 10%. In terms of strength, for example, it can be 20, 30%. It would depend on the population too. But so here's what's also fun. In humans, males are just competing against males for mates, females are competing against females for mates. That's another obvious piece that's very different. I'm sure that there's some kind of interesting female competition happening within chimps, for example, but it's subtle.

[Dax Shepard]

It's mostly inherited their status.

[Herman Poncer]

So females in chimpanzee, they leave, so they can't inherit status from mom because mom's not there. They grow up in a community, when they hit puberty, they go to the other community. So females are always new, males stay and the males are duking it out for where they are in the hierarchy. And there's friendships too. It's not all mean. So in bonobos, for example, it's a bit different. Female groups are dominant to males. In bonobos, a male's rank has everything to do with mom and his best female friends, kind of more so, yeah, in terms of where the power dynamic lies.

[Monica Padman]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so we do see that Dimorphism start to shrink.

[Herman Poncer]

You could call that a move away from pure physical competition to more intellectual competition.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so we're super unique in the fact that we have split up the food gathering. What else is unique? Obviously the way we rear young, the.

[Herman Poncer]

Intellectual complexity that kind of runs away and becomes these huge brains that are three times the size of a chimpanzee brain. You end up having to learn so much to be a successful adult. That childhood gets strung out. So there's this 15 year, 20 year gap between being born and being a capable human. No other species is like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you were saying at your daughter's seventh birthday party, all the seven year olds there, if they were, any other animal, would be grandparents at that age.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God, that's right. That's so, so wild.

[Herman Poncer]

Isn't that fun?

[Dax Shepard]

That's a great way to think about it.

[Monica Padman]

It is. And our frontal lobes aren't even developed until 25, so it takes us 25 years.

[Herman Poncer]

So there's this long period where adults are working harder than they have to feed themselves because they have to bring enough food home, not just to share with everybody, but if you were just sharing with other adults that were all.

[Dax Shepard]

Capable, it's kind of a one to one.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, but because you're also trying to feed all the young ones now, you've got to get even more than you had to get before. So it changes the whole economics of all the calorie gathering, basically the food gathering. And we have these extended childhoods because of much there is to learn, because of how complex we get. And that's what people get wrong about brains too. People get really nervous about kind of the biology of intelligence. Again, the racists are happy to talk about the biology of intelligence.

[Monica Padman]

Charles, what's his name?

[Herman Poncer]

Charles Murray. Yeah, Charles Murray.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank you.

[Herman Poncer]

But what people, I think get wrong about it is to understand how the human brain works, we are born unfinished. And you have to be born unfinished because there's so much to learn, that your brain's job is to learn how to work in its culture today can't be hardwired because it's going to change so quickly that if you sort of genetically encoded what you're supposed to learn, that wouldn't work because it won't work next generation.

[Dax Shepard]

It won't be adaptive.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. So your brain comes in completely unfinished and you spend 15 years literally constructing your brain. Because every time you make a new memory, you're plugging neurons together, you're taking.

[Dax Shepard]

Other ones apart, building this Neural network.

[Herman Poncer]

We measure something like iq and we think, oh, that's something inherent about the brain. It can be. If it's a really controlled setting, you could begin to understand how well a brain builds or doesn't build those connections. But pretty much, if you compare across people or across cultures, what you're measuring is the content that got built in there. It's a content measure, it's not an ability measure.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you factor in nutrition, too. We were with Bill Gates in India, and one of his main thrusts is these gaps. As much as like 30% of your intelligence can be missed if you're not hitting your nutritional goals in certain windows of your life. Like, it's pretty dramatic, the impact of nutrition.

[Herman Poncer]

The brain is the most expensive organ in the body. And when you are five years old, it's at its peak, something like half of your resting energy expenditure. The calories you're burning minute by minute as you just rest there as a kid are going to your brain.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yeah, proportionally, you look at a baby's head, it's a third of its fucking being.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. And inside what's going on is even more active than it would be as an adult because of all the connections that are being.

[Dax Shepard]

It's working its ass off to catch up to this baseline knowledge. It's so cute. And when they're cranky, it's like, of course they're cranky. They're in a graduate class every day.

[Monica Padman]

With a final stress.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. So of course, if you move those calories, your body's going to try to shield your brain, but there's only so much you can do.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so are you leaning towards. Because in 2000, the two most promising explanations for our explosion intelligence was. One is our groups were growing in size in the complexity of the group and the facial recognition, all these different things, and knowing where you're at hierarchically was going to predict your mating success, and that was driving it. And then there's this other kind of fruit based. I never loved that one. Where are we at? Are those still the two debates?

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. This is not going to be very satisfying. I think that's a false dichotomy because we're doing both things. We're in this really complex social world and you got to be good at that. You suck at that. I'm sorry. Your reproductive success is not very high.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You get excommunicated and you die very quickly.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Or you become a tech bro.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Monica Padman]

That's working out pretty well for A lot of them actually, because they're good.

[Herman Poncer]

At the other part of it, which is the foraging piece. Today's foraging is getting a job that you can bring home resources.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, Right.

[Herman Poncer]

So you gotta be able to do both. If you look across all primates, the biggest brain species are the ones that have the hardest job to do. Figuring out how to go get food. It's not the ones with the biggest social groups.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, right, because like homidrized baboons have bigger groups than.

[Herman Poncer]

Exactly. But that doesn't mean that in any one case it's not a combination of things. You get these big trends and then the one off cases, like humans are the extreme one off case. There's nothing else like us.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, so there's no silver bullet explanation. It's just perhaps some combination of different.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, and speaking of tech, bro, I'll say that in my line of work you get emails regularly to your doctor Poncer. I have figured it out. Here's how it all works together. And here's the silver bullet thing that nobody's thought of. And it's just the one thing. And the proportion of those emails from engineers and retired doctors is disproportionate to their numbers on the grade. So there's something about that training of seeing things in a black and white way.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

And I give them credit for spending time thinking about this stuff. It's fun to think about and doing a good job. I don't want to be too harsh on it, but the sort of black and white feeling of how things work and knowing that, well then it must just be this one thing. And it's never one thing, is it?

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Yes. It's very comforting that there would be a single explanation and it would be definitive.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, right.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So our intelligence starts taking a leap. How is that graft? Is it totally linear or is it more of a hockey stick? Like when we go from Homo erectus to. I know. Neanderthals have a 1650cc brain. It was enormous. Bigger than ours. How gradual is that?

[Herman Poncer]

The hockey stick inflection point is when you start hunting and gathering and then from there on out it's been just a climb. The way that we're figuring this out is we're going to the field, we're digging up fossils, we're measuring the skull sizes. I've had a chance to do some of that. That's really fun work. It's like putting the frames of a movie back together, only it's a 2 million year long movie. Even if you had 100 frames, that's not enough now.

[Dax Shepard]

And also, part of your work was you've done a lot of fieldwork with the Hadza, and they're in northern Tanzania.

[Herman Poncer]

That's exactly right.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, and so what have you observed in them that seems to conf from what you learned on the biological side?

[Herman Poncer]

There's a fun story there that the first project I did with them was measuring energy expenditures, metabolic rates, how many calories you burn every day for your book Burn. It ended up in Burn. That's exactly right.

[Dax Shepard]

This is fascinating because I think we would all assume this group that is walking all day long, they're averaging 19,000 steps for the dudes and 16,000 steps, and then they're busy all day long. They don't domesticate any animals, any plants. They're doing it.

[Monica Padman]

Right. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You think of yourself as burning a couple thousand calories a day or. I mean, that's what we're told. What would you think they're expending?

[Monica Padman]

I don't know enough about these types.

[Dax Shepard]

Of things, but yeah, I think that would be a very natural, common guess. They're five times as active as me. Yeah, I would imagine double that. At least.

[Herman Poncer]

That's all. Yeah, yeah, but nobody measured it. Lots of estimations about what that would look like. It kind of feeds into questions in public health because maybe obesity is a big problem in the US because, well, we're not burning as many calories as we should be. Maybe we should be burning like, hunter gatherer level calories. Yeah, but we're not.

[Dax Shepard]

And then that also gives rise to a whole paleo movement diet.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes, all of it. So looking into it, I was like, wait, this is all based on nothing. These are just estimates, you know, like, we don't really know any of this stuff. Let's go see. And so a couple of collaborators and I went. One of the guys I work with is Brian Wood. He's at UCLA now. You're alma mater.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Herman Poncer]

He must be a genius. Yes, of course. Of course. He spent more nights in a Hadza camp in the past 10 years or 20 years than he's probably spent at home. He's there a lot. We go and we do this project and we're measuring energy expenditures. We're measuring how many calories you burn every day over about a week, week and a half. And we use this isotope tracking technique. It's the best, coolest way to do it. Gold standard, so that we know the numbers are real.

[Dax Shepard]

Could you explain that for a second? Because I found it fascinating. Maybe it's too nerdy, but you're measuring carbon dioxide.

[Herman Poncer]

I'll go as deep as we want to go.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's put these people to sleep.

[Herman Poncer]

Let's go. Exactly. It's called doubly labeled water. You drink a half glass full of water. So water's H2O. Some of the H's are different, some of the O's are different. They're different versions of those elements. And you can track that if you took a water sample and put it in a mass spectrometer, that's a machine that would measure how much of the those different elements are there. You can use them like tracers. Basically, you drink some of that water and over time, you're going to flush all the marked hydrogens out because you're peeing and you're breathing out water vapor. All the water you lose, the hydrogen is the marker of that. The oxygen you'll also lose as H2O. But it turns out you also lose oxygen that you drink. It gets mixed up with all the oxygen and carbon dioxide that you're making in your body, and you end up breathing out those oxygens as CO2 as well. So those oxygen elements, oxygen isotopes, get lost two ways. The hydrogen isotope only gets lost one way. If you look at the difference in rate loss, you can figure out how much carbon dioxide the body's making. That's calories per day.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, that is cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Because carbon dioxide is the exhaust.

[Herman Poncer]

That's exactly right.

[Dax Shepard]

Of metabolic activity.

[Herman Poncer]

You cannot burn calories without making CO2. You cannot make CO2 without burning calories. It's the measure.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a whoop or a Fitbit.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. We're not estimating at all. This is a real measure, and it got figured out in the 50s, but then we could use it for people in the 80s. And so people have been doing it since then, and it is the gold standard.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you done it to yourself? Because I would want to do you have. And what did you burn a day?

[Herman Poncer]

2,800 a day.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you active physically?

[Herman Poncer]

I am. I was sick that week, so I was less so. I'm not, like, bedridden, but I wasn't running as you.

[Dax Shepard]

Probably more like 3,000 a day.

[Herman Poncer]

Typical American male burns 3,000 calories a day. Typical American woman is going to burn 2,400 calories a day.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you're lazy.

[Herman Poncer]

If I had a guess, that's what you're burning.

[Monica Padman]

I'm not lazy.

[Dax Shepard]

I know the real answer.

[Herman Poncer]

What's the real Answer.

[Dax Shepard]

The only real relation hardcore is your non fat mass. So your muscle and your organs. As you plot that and you plot calorie consumption, it's spot on. When we're observing the difference between males and females, all we're really observ observing is the difference in our body composition that men have X amount. Well, in this case, 24 divided by 3,000. Yeah, that's probably the exact difference in non fat body mass.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. That's right. Anyways, back to the Hadza. So we go there, we do this study. We live in Hadza land for a summer. Basically it's a big camping trip with scientific equipment doing these measurements, hanging out, going on hunts, going on gathering outings. It's really amazing. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it fun?

[Herman Poncer]

It's so fun. And the people are just generous, wonderful folks.

[Dax Shepard]

Bow and arrow. And what are they getting? Gazelles and stuff.

[Herman Poncer]

Picture natural geographic Savannah. That's it. Zebra giraffe.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you eat some zebra?

[Herman Poncer]

I've had different animal foods, whatever they would bring home, I've had zebra.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you have a favorite? None of it tastes as good as a cow.

[Herman Poncer]

Ponta cuisine is not really a thing.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not fatty any of those animals, A and B.

[Herman Poncer]

It's just the meat.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

There's no seasoning, there's no salt. Very little salt and very little anything else.

[Dax Shepard]

No dry rub?

[Herman Poncer]

No. If they kill a zebra, you can't eat a zebra in one day. It's a huge thing. Even camp can't eat a zebra in a day. And so they eat what they can right then. And then they bring all the meat home and they cut it into strips and they hang it from the trees. A camp is about 12 or 20, sometimes it's even smaller. But let's say a dozen grass houses in a nice part of the savannah and the whole camp just kind of smells like a butcher's shop for a week. It's kind of crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

Do they have any elevated rates? Probably less of animal borne bacteria.

[Monica Padman]

E. Coli.

[Herman Poncer]

It isn't rampant, any of these subsistence groups. If you look at hunter gatherers, you look at farmers, parasites are like a part of life. And so I'm sure they have them more than. I hope us three have them. I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

But no, it doesn't affect their day to day.

[Dax Shepard]

I read this result and I found it quite depressing.

[Herman Poncer]

Oh, right. So we haven't gotten the result yet. We take the samples home, they get analyzed at a lab at Baylor. Internationally leading guy in this technique sends me the data back and I'm just so excited about it because we're going to find out they're burning double the calories. It's going to be so cool to see. And nope, it's the same. So they as getting more activity in a day than a typical American guy in a week, are burning the same number of calories every day as the American. Total shocker, right? As a scientist, that's the best.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And so I went back to the guy, Bill Wong, he's the one who did it. I said, bill, did we screw it up?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, this can't be right.

[Herman Poncer]

And he said, no, no, no, the data, because there's internal checks they can do data look great. And I said, then what's going on? And he goes, well, we see this sometimes they're more efficient. And I go, oh, thank God somebody understands what's going on here. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, well, they burn fewer calories than you thought. Well, that's not an explanation.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And so that's been the last 15 years of my career. A big part of it has been trying to understand this phenomenon because it's not just them. We've done this in other cultures, we've done this in other species and activity doesn't sort of link up with your daily expenditure the simple way that people think it does.

[Dax Shepard]

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I say data.

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[Monica Padman]

Oh my gosh, it's SP is upon us. Whether you're in school or not, you should still take a spring trip.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Dax Shepard]

The cashmere. It's so soft.

[Monica Padman]

Beautiful sweater. But also I have these knives from Quint that are incred edible. They do have really really really high end products.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Herman Poncer]

Not at all.

[Dax Shepard]

You're embracing that. Like if you eat 2000 calories and you only burn a thousand, you will have a surplus turned into fat 100%. Vice versa the other way. So how do you make it jive within that system?

[Herman Poncer]

I think what it does is it helps explain why people have such trouble trouble doing the calories in, calories out Thing. First of all, it's hard to know how many calories you're eating. And then secondly, it's very hard to know how many calories you're burning because it isn't just how active you are.

[Monica Padman]

Right?

[Herman Poncer]

It turns out, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, interesting.

[Herman Poncer]

Now it's like, well, yeah, it's calories in, calories out, but good luck tracking either of those things. It sort of sends you back to square one of like, how do I find a way to do this if I'm really worried about diet and diet's the best way to handle your weight, which is true, then okay, then how do I find a way to do that?

[Monica Padman]

Is it because they are expending so much energy that the body is figuring out a way to conserve the oxygen?

[Herman Poncer]

It's figuring out a way to conserve energy on other things. When we were there, we brought up this sort of briefcase based respirometry system where you can put a mask on a person. It's hooked up to a little computer you wear on a chest harness. We can measure how many calories they burn to walk. That's the same. So the activity costs aren't lower. So they are really active. They're burning tons of calories on the activity. There's no secrets there. The fact that the total number of calories a day is no different than everybody else else means there has to be something else going on in all the other things that your body's doing. Saving energy here or there, squirreling it away. And that's interesting. So an analogy to that would be really physically active people here in the States versus inactive people.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

When we look at them, what we notice is people who are really physically active, they have less inflammation. Well, what's that? Your immune system isn't as active. Oh, wait, okay, so we're saving some calories there. Maybe your reproductive hormones aren't as sky high. They're actually really high in the sedentary Americans versus like the Hadza for example.

[Dax Shepard]

Or this is why you have Olympic athletes that don't get their period for.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes, that's a curve. But on the way there, there's a very healthy point where your estrogen levels might not be as high as somebody who's sedentary. And maybe that's a good thing.

[Dax Shepard]

All signs point to that is a good thing. Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

Stress reactivity. If you are an athlete or even if you just exercise regularly, if I scare you, your heart rate's going to go up, but less. You're going to have a smaller stress response and if you measure how much cortisol you make all day or how much epinephrine your body makes all day, it's less if you are physically active.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Have we gotten good at monitoring how many calories the brain is consuming while intensely active? I have to imagine if you're crunching numbers and computing that activity is going to burn more calories than watching tv.

[Herman Poncer]

It's kind of a disappointing amount. They do these tests where they have people play like chess against a game that's tuned to be just a little bit better than them.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Herman Poncer]

So they're working their asses off and they're struggling. They lose anyway. It must be very frustrating. And it's like four calories an hour. It's nothing. It's like a couple.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's not like you could say this brain economy is a kind of one to one to this physical activity.

[Herman Poncer]

Probably not. Probably the brain is one of the pieces that's not getting touched you can't really mess with. And that's because most of what your brain is doing is completely off of your radar. It's all the organizational stuff, housekeeping stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

What you found is that there is a pretty narrow margin that the body wants to operate in metabolically.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. It's working to keep you within a narrow range. Sometimes this gets misinterpreted, like, oh, there's no effective exercise now. There can be. Sometimes you can see it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I've experienced it. So that's where I'm wrestling with like as I read this stuff, I'm like, well, no, I up my thing and I've had all the results one would expect.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. If you start an exercise program tomorrow, it's going to take a while for your body to adjust. So for that first couple weeks, you haven't seen the adjustment yet. So you really are burning the extra calories that you expect to burn.

[Dax Shepard]

And the body hasn't found its way to homeostasis yet. But if you're doing a lot of weight training, we get into this non fat body mass or we are going to see a direct result to your metabolism.

[Herman Poncer]

So when we say no more calories than somebody else, those, those are all sort of size adjusted comparisons.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

Because it doesn't make any sense for me to say that you and Monica burn the same number of calories. Obviously it's going to be different because of the size difference.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

And so when we do these population comparisons, we don't want to just compare sizes across, we want to compare adjusted for size. And so that's Right. If you build more muscle, for example, then yeah, you'll burn more calories just because you are bigger.

[Dax Shepard]

Your body can only adjust so much. Like these bodybuilders that are walking around 300 pounds of lean muscle. Their body's not going to hit a homeostasis where they only consume 3,000 calories a day.

[Herman Poncer]

They'll go up. So that's a fun one. The other challenge to this idea is like, what about the Tour de France? You're burning 8,000 calories a day.

[Dax Shepard]

8,000 calories a day. I did the math really quick. Can I tell it to you? Because it was great. They're doing 7,8000 calories a day for three weeks. So 21 days straight, that's 150,000 calories in three weeks. That would be 75 days of normal caloric output in 21 days. The body can't adjust to that. Right. It's going to need those 9,000 calories.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. So we know that there are periods of the body can, at least for some short term time, really crank it up. And we see that with those guys.

[Dax Shepard]

And we see it with pregnancy, interestingly.

[Herman Poncer]

So that's the fun thing. The ceiling kind of comes down and it's analogous to you can sprint for 10 seconds or you can jog for an hour. The sprint in this scenario is the Tour de France and the jog is how hard can you push yourself for six, seven, eight, nine months? And the hardest thing you can do for nine months is pregnancy. We call it a metabolic ceiling. The total limit to how many calories your body can possibly burn. Burn is higher for a short term thing, but gets regressively lower and kind of squeezes down to about two and a half times your basal metabolic rate.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess I'm just curious how much it goes up during pregnancy.

[Herman Poncer]

It goes up maybe 20, 30%. But that's because of the size change.

[Monica Padman]

It's all proportional.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right, it remains proportional. So that's kind of fun to think about.

[Dax Shepard]

So when your heart rate's above 150, there's no hacking there. Your body's never going to adjust to that.

[Herman Poncer]

Not in the moment, surely. No. You're burning those calories. Calories, right then, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So even if you do it for a prolonged period of time, your body's never going to be at 150 beats per minute and only burning the amount of calories one would burn at 80 beats.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. The adjustment seems to be happening in the other times.

[Dax Shepard]

The non exercise Moments.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think you can feel that?

[Herman Poncer]

The stress response, for example? I think you can feel that. Who knows how that's affecting the brain. Exactly. But I think the mood impacts. You're seeing that regulation that's happening from exercise touches everything.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we know it's directly related, but we've never had a great exercise explanation for why. Yeah, my explanation was always like, oh, we were designed to go do physical activity and get a serotonin reward. And in the absence of any of that physical activity, the brain's like, I'm not giving you that. So that was always my explanation. But this one's interesting and compelling as well, which is just we don't have the energy to do that. Right.

[Herman Poncer]

I would like to see people think about exercise in a different way. It's not just about putting your foot on the gas pedal and raising the calories burn. It can do that in a short term and your body's going to adjust and juggle the calories. Don't worry so much about the calories. What the exercise is doing is re regulating how all the other systems work because they're all linked. So if I start exercising more, I'm going to affect all my other systems in good ways.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You say it kind of like calibrates and puts in harmony all these different systems.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, it's like the rhythm section.

[Monica Padman]

But if. Okay, so instead of working out, you could just get scared a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yeah. You could pay someone to follow you.

[Monica Padman]

They would have the same output.

[Dax Shepard]

You need to drink the isotope though. So we know Exactly. Is it 80 calories per scare or.

[Herman Poncer]

Let's do it. Let's do it. I actually brought with me now wouldn't that be amazing if you could get like a can of dlw, crack it open. Isotope water.

[Monica Padman]

I'm dying to know how that'd be cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Calories I burn.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, so people who have high anxiety or panic, stress and stuff, do they burn more calories just being anxious?

[Herman Poncer]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

That's wild.

[Herman Poncer]

Fun set of studies done in the 90s. You have somebody just kind of hang out and relax. The best part is you don't even have to. You get them when everybody thinks that they're relaxed.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

But then you have them do this survey afterwards, whatever the scale is, about how anxious you are in general. And people who are pinned out on being anxious have higher expenditures. Just resting their body is just a.

[Dax Shepard]

Higher resting heart rate and cortisol just.

[Monica Padman]

Dealing with a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so really quick blast Paleo because this is on the surface, something that seems really logical to people. So the premise of Paleo is, during the Paleolithic era, we lived a very certain way. We only ate non processed vegetables and meat. It was a low carb, high protein protein diet. And this is people's religion. But what did you find with the Hadza?

[Herman Poncer]

They don't eat a Paleo diet, which is hilarious because they're actually hunting and gathering. There is no single one diet that hunter gatherers eat. If you look across the globe, you'll find people on any mix of animal and plant foods. Across time, across space, you see anything. The real Paleo diet would be whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

Is there 100% fish in some cases.

[Herman Poncer]

So the Hadza have actually quite a lot of carbon in their diet. We see that again and again and again. This idea that the only way to be Paleo or the true Paleo is low carb. Sorry, that's not really true.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, these tubers are very starchy.

[Herman Poncer]

They're very starchy. And when it's not tubers, it's berries. And when it's not tubers and berries, it's honey.

[Dax Shepard]

There we go. Yeah. You said 10 to 20% of their calories are straight honey. Fucking water and sugar.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. People think that honey is magical and it is kind of wonderful, but it's just sugar and water, man.

[Dax Shepard]

I hate to break it to you, it is sugar and water. Tell us about what is unique about us humans. Heart and air song supply. How did this system come about and what's unique about it?

[Herman Poncer]

Well, you're kind of your typical mammal setup for hearts and lungs, right? If a four chambered heart, all mammals got that. Our lungs are driven by a diaphragm, the muscle below your lungs. That kind of pushes them out and brings air in. And pushes air out. That's all the same. But what we've done is we've taken your larynx, that's the little voice box, little cartilage cup that you can feel in your throat. And we've brought it down in our necks low. And that's because of the way that we've been adapted to speak. It's a very appropriate discussion for this. All of this right here where I'm making air sound waves at you, that means something to you. That's crazy. First of all, I know, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Transferring what's in your brain to my brain with air waves.

[Herman Poncer]

But to get this range of sound, and particularly the vowel range aiou's, you need to have a vocal tract that has kind of two components, a vertical part that comes up out of your throat, and then a horizontal component that comes out of your mouth. And you shape those different. Different things separately to make different sounds. By taking your larynx and putting it down here in your throat. Now you can choke. That's dumb.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so that's a new.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. So a chimpanzee, other primates, they have it up high. Their larynx is up almost kind of behind their nose, it's up real high. And so the likelihood of them swallowing something and it gets dumped into their lungs, way less. God.

[Dax Shepard]

I experience this almost daily.

[Monica Padman]

Joking.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm eating, and I take a deep breath. For some reason, I suck some food in there. And then I'm dealing with it for 30 minutes.

[Herman Poncer]

An even cooler, deeper history, which is that. Have you ever wondered why food and air go in the same place?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's a bad design.

[Herman Poncer]

It's a bad design in general. But you know what? It is, because when we were fish, there was a little air pouch called a swim bladder that helps fish stay buoyant. Do you ever wonder how they stay upright and know how deep or shallow to be?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

It's because they can adjust how much air is in this swim bladder. And for them, it's not lungs, it's just a little pouch. But then, as vertebrates move onto land, that becomes lungs. That's the structure that gets all, you know, vascularized. Isn't that fun? Cause gills are no good anymore, right? Yeah. And now we're stuck with this dumb thing where even embryologically, you see the gut tube form, and then a little pouch grows out of your guts, and that's your lungs.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Herman Poncer]

And it all connects out to your mouth. And now we want to have this vocal communication. And there's been such strong selection on that that even though thousands of people die in the United States alone die every year from choking. Yeah, it's a big cost. Sure, that's a problem. But this is so valuable that evolution said, yeah, the net result was still more kids having this even with the risk of dying. Isn't that crazy?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

The body's full of these wonderful things.

[Dax Shepard]

So it had nothing to do with our uprightness. Because I could also imagine when you're quadrupedal, your orientation is all different.

[Herman Poncer]

So that ties into when you run. You can run and talk, and you can run and kind of breathe in different schedules. If you ever have some fun with this, you can take a breath in every two steps and out every two steps, or in every step and out every step. Or in every three and out, depending on your pace, you can change that up. A quadruped, that's sprinting can't do that because every time its front feet hit the ground, its guts sloshes forward, push the air out of its lungs and then every time it stretches back out, the slushes back and they pull air back in. So there's this idea that actually my PhD advisor built on this idea. It's an old idea that goes back to the 80s, that being bipedal made it easier for us to become endurance runners that could run down game. Because there are some cultures even to today that will run an animal to exhaustion. That's how they hunt.

[Dax Shepard]

Like wolves.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, exactly. You know, we can kind of run at all these different speeds and still be able to breathe fine. Whereas if you are a quadruped, the range of speeds that you're able to maintain and still be able to breathe effectively is much more limited. And so you can kind of push these anyway, that's the idea.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, are there differences within populations or. No.

[Herman Poncer]

About what?

[Dax Shepard]

Our air supply and our heart.

[Herman Poncer]

You don't see it in the vocal tract and that kind of thing, but what you see is there's a bit player in this whole system, which is the spleen. Monica, do you know what the spleen does? Most people don't, no.

[Monica Padman]

I just know it can explode if you have mono.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. So it's mostly like an immune system organ. It tracks what's going on. Immune system wise, but. Right. It kind of seems expendable. Maybe you can even get it removed. It's not a big deal. It also acts as a reserve tank for red blood cells. And so there are people who live at altitude and are always kind of oxygen starved. Their spleens get a little bit bigger because it becomes this extra reserve red blood cell thing for their blood to irretto. Blood cells are the ones that carry oxygen, your hemoglobin. Exactly. And then there's this amazing case is kind of documented in 2010 or so. There's a population of folks called the Sama. You hear them written about as the Bajau as well, but they call themselves the Sama and they are basically hunter gatherers in the ocean who spend their lives on.

[Monica Padman]

Ocean?

[Dax Shepard]

What ocean?

[Herman Poncer]

This is South Pacific, so Southeast Asia, the Philippines and islands up into Indonesia. Now they forage underwater, so they just kind of free dive. There's no scuba or anything like that. They're just holding their breath. And you can imagine in that very particular population there was strong selection for can you hold your breath a little bit longer? Are you less likely to drown because you push it too far?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And in those folks, the gene variants that build a bigger spleen have been favored. And now they have bigger spleens on average.

[Dax Shepard]

On what order, 30% bigger or.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, something like that. It's not double, but it's just enough. Right. And evolution's always working on the margins like that. Yeah. Isn't that so cool? But it's a nice example of. And it's something I try to cover when I teach this stuff. But also in the book, people are always looking for adaptive stories about why this population is different than that one. Usually there's nothing there. Usually the selection pressures are kind of the same, like a heart and lungs. It's kind of the same for everybody. And it's only in these really small particular cases, like underwater foraging, like living at altitude. Because think what has to happen. You have to have selection pressures be stable for long enough and really localized that evolution will say, yes, these particular gene variants now are an advantage and stably so.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

So that now things change. Most of what we see when we look across populations is kind of just slush and slop and noise. Noise, Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And maybe not even consistent long enough for it to have a big impact. Okay. What about how we eat? We're kind of talking about it already.

[Herman Poncer]

People are really good at eating whatever's around. You can tell from our teeth and our guts, broadly speaking, that we're ready for a high quality diet. We don't have to spend hours chewing grass, obviously. Right. We're good at stuff that's energy dense. Cooking has actually changed our bodies completely.

[Dax Shepard]

A common argument from vegetarians is like, look at our mouth. It doesn't resemble a true omnivore's mouth. They're leaving out that. That's because we cook. Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

That makes energy in the food easier to get at. Which ends up meaning that you get more calories per bite and it's easier to chew on all these things. This is a fun one too. We talked about how once cultural complexity gets out of hand and kind of snowballs, now the brain is playing catch up. You're born trying to fill the brain with all the things that you learn. You see this cultural inheritance, in other words, we call it the dual inheritance. Sometimes you've got your DNA inheritance. We've also got this cultural inheritance that's just as important. And those things have to link up. Case in point, with cooking. There's no gene for fire. There's no genetic variant for fire, but our bodies need cooked food. So the biological inheritance is a digestive tract that requires cooked food. Actually, raw foodists have a hard time even today with the weird, amazingly easy to digest foods you get in the supermarket. You could never be a raw foodist on wild foods.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

It wouldn't work. So our bodies need cooked food. And how to cook and how to make fire is completely culturally inherited.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't come out knowing how to start a fire.

[Herman Poncer]

Right. And so if you don't put those things together, you're done. Isn't that fun?

[Dax Shepard]

I want to earmark this for the very end. Get off book a little bit. But yes. This is like I read Behave. I don't know if you read Sapolsky's book.

[Herman Poncer]

I've read Sapolsky. I've read parts of Behave. Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But that one does a really great job of. The nature nurture debate is really a false dichotomy. You can look so many times where they're so interwoven, you can't really even make some distinction between which is which. Which weirdly and funnily kind of brings back Lamarckian biology a little bit. But let's earmark that.

[Herman Poncer]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, necessarily about the book. But it's a fascinating thing to think about now.

[Herman Poncer]

Totally.

[Dax Shepard]

How about muscle and bone?

[Herman Poncer]

And there's nothing that's more kind of plastic and adaptable than your muscles. You can change sizes and even change kind of fiber types if you're slow twitch or fast twitch, power or endurance. That's a really flexible system. And I think is another case where if all humans were just born to be just one kind of athlete, just an endurance or just a power kind of thing, it wouldn't work. Because cultures change. The jobs you have to do change too quickly. So evolution has to solve that problem by creating flexibility and creating adaptability. So over the course of a lifetime, if you grow up someplace you're doing a lot of running, you'll get good at that. You grow up somewhere where you're working with your upper body, farming or canoeing, you'll get good at that. Like, you see examples of all these things.

[Dax Shepard]

The Olympics is the best place to observe.

[Herman Poncer]

I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Look at a powerlifter, look at the ultra marathoner, look at the sprinter. Every sprinter looks the same. Every beach volleyballist looks the same.

[Herman Poncer]

That's it.

[Dax Shepard]

And they're all the same species with 99.9% of the same DNA. And look how fucking flexible it is.

[Herman Poncer]

Humans are incredibly inherently diverse. The way that we're built, just look around any population, you're gonna find the big people and the small people and the strong people and the thin people. You find all of it everywhere. And I think that is true. Humans are kind of inherently more variable. I think that also gets back to this issue of every lion has to be the best lion it can be. And there's a narrow, prescriptive way of how that's going to work for them. To be a successful adult in a human society, even a hunting and gathering society, where the career options are more limited than maybe here, you're still going to see a variety of ways that are successful to be an adult. And so I think there's sort of more breadth of possibility there than in other species.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to go straight to environmental protection. I would imagine many people don't even know why some people are white and some people are black.

[Herman Poncer]

I think that's probably true.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I think they've observed that, but I don't know if they would necessarily know.

[Herman Poncer]

So the molecule that makes it skin dark is a molecule called melanin. You've got these really cool cells that start off in this very special part of the embryo that migrate into your skin, and those cells make melanin. That's their job. And the more they make, the darker you are. And so we all make it less. We're melanin challenged.

[Dax Shepard]

We're lazy. Melanin.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

I feel. On a sunny day, I feel it.

[Dax Shepard]

But even the baseline is variable, right?

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. So if we were an African species, we know that 300,000 years ago, that's where we all were. Melanin is this natural sunblock. You see more mel and darker skin in populations that have more ultraviolet light exposure. And it's because ultraviolet light is good, because it helps you make vitamin D, but it's bad because it blows up this molecule called folate, which you need to make DNA. You are making two miles of DNA every second, or something like that. Oh, my God. It's crazy because your cells are dividing. And so if you don't make that right, that's a problem. There's no mitosis or there's cancers, or if you are pregnant and you are building a fetus, there's a lot of DNA being made there. And if that doesn't work out, that's not good, obviously.

[Dax Shepard]

So you need the exact right amount.

[Herman Poncer]

You want to make vitamin D. You want to protect your DNA. And that balance is why, if you're At a high sunlight area, you're going to be inherently adapted to be darker. Populations farther away are going to be that. To be lighter and get more of that uv, because that's the other part of the seesaw.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So just to remind people about the geology. So Africa is on the equator, or where most of the humans come from. So the sun is always in the same spot in the sky. It's always up and down for 12 hours. You're out on the savannah, there's not a lot of COVID You're not in a forest. So as people move north, the balance shifts. So there's less light, there's less uv, there's less opportunity to make vitamin D. And then the skin gets lighter.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. So there's like a hundred and some genes that work together to kind of figure out how much melanin you're going to make. You can imagine there's variants of those. We all have those 150 genes, but your versions might be different than mine. And so the versions that help make more melanin, those are going to be successful in high UV platform like Africa. As you move north, the variants that make you a little bit lighter, all of a sudden that's an advantage. And we see those variants get selected for to be lighter, and then people move back into more tropical areas with higher sunlight intensity, and we see the darker skin variants come back.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's where it gets Lamarckian. So my question to you is, do we have every ingredient at the disposal? And we are turning on and turning off certain things. That's where this weird interplay between how we've thought of Darwinian evolution and now we're starting to see. Well, no, we kind of have a lot of genes that are just not.

[Herman Poncer]

Activated in my mind that says that you, Dax, could be black. Be black.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. I can't.

[Herman Poncer]

No. But in our population, pick any population, you will find all the variants available. That's one of the big discoveries of modern genetics, is that those variants, the same variants that make some people darker, some people lighter, they're all, all there in the population, even if no one's black, potentially. So. Because what'll happen is they'll just be much lower frequency. So maybe only 5% of people have one gene, have the variant that would make you darker skin. Since it's a low frequency, it's unlikely they're gonna have that variant and the other variant that helps, and the other variant that helps, and the other variant that helps that altogether give you darker skin. But now let's make selection favor darker skin. Well, now, bit by bit, you kind of reassemble the frequencies to make those alleles more frequent. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The two darker kids of the hundred K survived and one had a third of this recipe and another had a third. And now we're two thirds of the way there.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. So Lamarck would say anybody in their own lifetime can achieve that change. That's not right. What is right is that any population over enough time could end up going back and forth on these traits.

[Dax Shepard]

I might be misunderstanding, but I guess what Darwin was missing was the epigenome.

[Herman Poncer]

He also had no idea about genes and he thought that traits mix like paints mix.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, Right.

[Herman Poncer]

And if you do that, then you.

[Dax Shepard]

Just get blah, recessive and dominant.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, he didn't have any idea about that. So he was out to lunch on how any of genetics works.

[Dax Shepard]

But the epigenome, which is hovering above your DNA and deciding what RNA is going to send out, that's a big factor too. This is where I get into the recipe thing, right?

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

With this enormous amount of detailed data for the epigenome to choose to use or not use. And there's a lot going on there.

[Herman Poncer]

Whatever genes you've inherited from mom and dad, they're not all turned on all the time.

[Dax Shepard]

And this is where nature and nurture start really mingling, right?

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. And this has been a big break through in the last 15, 20 years of just how this works. The moment you're born, and maybe even before you're born, which is crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

Mom's uterus passed on.

[Herman Poncer]

You are listening, you're paying attention. And yes, you have all these genes for mom and dad, but you're not going to use them all. You're going to pick which ones you use, and then that creates diversity too.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, I've heard male pattern baldness is an adaptation of going into northern climates as well.

[Herman Poncer]

See, I thought it was a sign of prowess and obvious.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I like to think so. Is male pattern baldness an adaptation to receive more vitamin D from the top of your head?

[Herman Poncer]

I doubt it. And here's why. That extra little patch isn't doing you a whole lot of good.

[Dax Shepard]

First of all, but if you're upright all day, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

But you're also not wearing as many clothes all day, probably. And you're outside the entire day, you probably get plenty of exposure. Anyhow, here's who really needs the vitamin D is Mom.

[Dax Shepard]

So why is her hair not falling out?

[Herman Poncer]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. How do we explain male pattern baldness, though? Is there an armchair theory on It.

[Herman Poncer]

So this is where I would push back and say, let's be sure that we're looking at an adaptation and not just a tolerated bit of noise. Right. Skull shapes is a great example of this. Back in the bad old eugenics days, people are measuring the skull shapes of Eastern Europeans and Asians, all these things. Right. And they're trying to figure out who's a good person and who's a bad person. And it was all really ugly.

[Dax Shepard]

Guess who was great? Aryans. Exactly.

[Herman Poncer]

And you do that analysis today and you say, well, what if rather than assuming that, that I'm looking at selection favoring that skull shape here and this skull shape there, what if my model is, well, evolution doesn't care. It doesn't affect how you survive. It doesn't affect how many babies you have.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. There's no real force acting on this. Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

So what if the model is. Well, it's just noise. And we know what noise should look like. Noise should look like gray screen noise. Right. It's just no real pattern to it. There's a very clear mathematical test you can make for that. And sure enough, if you look at skull shapes across the globe, it's noise. They don't mean anything.

[Dax Shepard]

So let's put a real fine point on this because what I learned in anthro and what I've repeated to a lot of people is the categorizing of people by race is just simply scientifically, very, very weak in that the example that was given to me in anthro is there are populations within Africa that have more genetic similarity with populations in Ireland than they do with a neighboring tribe. Yep. So why on earth would you categorize these people by this thing that is the least telling and least dynamic in everything? This is just like, as you said, 150 alleles or something. That means nothing in the grand scope of things. If you really wanted to categorize and. And group people, we just know that would be about the worst way to do it to get any consistency.

[Herman Poncer]

That's exactly right. And the reason why do we do it is because we seem to be inherently built to like to have in groups, out groups. And we're visual primates, man.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

So we pick something visual. I think it's kind of inherent in the way that our brains are built to go that way. So it's not a surprise. But that doesn't make it right. It's a pretty crap way to do it.

[Dax Shepard]

It just means nothing if you were looking at it scientifically.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, but what's Crazy. Crazy to me is that's still how we do it. Not just casually. It's how you doctors do it. Yeah, doctors are still doing this race based view. That's how they're trained. You come into the doctor's office, you get a medical test. And how I interpret that test is through a lens of if you're black, if you're white, if you're Asian, you.

[Dax Shepard]

Give the exact examples in the books. Because I was like, oh, this is fascinating.

[Herman Poncer]

There's a thing called an egfr, estimated glomerular filtration. It's how your kidneys are doing. It's a blood test. I get a blood test, I run it through the this analysis, I get a number, and that's your egfr.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Herman Poncer]

Is it good or is it bad? It all depends. If I'm a doctor and I'm interpreting that number, I ask, is the patient black or is the patient white? That's fucking crazy. Because their kidney function has nothing to do with that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, but let me attempt to push back and maybe you'll correct me in this. So one thing I learned along the way, which I found very fascinating, is that African Americans, not black people across the globe, but African Americans have a very elevated rate of hypertension. And so the question, question is how they get this rate of hypertension. And what people have figured out is that when the people in Africa were kidnapped, they were first marched to West Africa, most of them, to get put on boats to be brought to America. Half of those people died of dehydration on that walk. So the people that made it to the boat had a really high salinity count or asymmetrical salinity count. They were able to hold onto the salt in their body, then they put them on boats. Half those people died of dehydration. So the people that landed here had this extreme force case of natural selection where a high salinity rate was beneficial to survival. We assumed for half a second that was true.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm a doctor and I measure the salinity count of someone's body and I see that it's elevated. Well, what I'm really trying to do is decide, is it elevated relative to his peers or her peers or her in group? Because that's really what's going to be significant. Is this person running an outside risk, even given their elevated disposition? That would be relevant now, again, at.

[Herman Poncer]

Least as a plausible mechanism there to push back specifically on that one. If that were true, if that bottleneck with the slave Trade were what was happening, we would see that in the genes that we know are related to hypertension risk. But we don't see that.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't?

[Herman Poncer]

No, there is no evidence. And also, you can take black families who are not descendants of the slave trade, but they grow up in America where there is racism, they have the effects of that. So race becomes biological.

[Dax Shepard]

Meaning if someone flew from Nigeria here tomorrow, within some time they would have the predictable.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes, that's right. So, yeah, usually there's not even a story as to why. At least that one has a story.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. It seems extremely plausible to me. People dying of dehydration, I'm certainly. They weren't handing out water.

[Herman Poncer]

Let's do more of the heart rate thing. So through the 80s and 90s, it was thought that black folks in America were just genetically predisposed to heart disease. This is how it is.

[Dax Shepard]

Accept it, accept it, move on.

[Herman Poncer]

And now we know. Okay, well, actually, if you study folks that are black and even if they're descendants of the slave trade, but they aren't in the United States exposed to structural racism, they actually don't have hypertension. That isn't a thing that all the folks have downstream.

[Monica Padman]

It's a stress thing.

[Herman Poncer]

It's a stress thing, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Herman Poncer]

Another great example. Native Americans in this country have, for all sorts of reasons, they also have hypertension and other sorts of bad heart.

[Dax Shepard]

Outcomes over index and diabetes.

[Herman Poncer]

Is that because they're predisposed to it? Well, actually, if you also look at Native American groups in Bolivia, it's the same diaspora that came down, the same folks, but they aren't living in a world that has oppressed them. That oppressed them, yeah. And so guess what? Healthiest hearts in the world in Bolivia, no signs of diabetes. Diabetes. So it's true that in this environment that gets triggered, that set of sequences. But what we're looking at is an environmental influence. We're not looking at some inherent biological predisposition. And what gets dangerous is if you say, well, that's just how those folks are.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

It's the. What can we do? Throw up your hands. Yeah, that's a very different response. And you say, holy shit, this group does have an issue.

[Dax Shepard]

We gotta fix it.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe we can fix it.

[Herman Poncer]

That's right. So the way that you understand how the body works ends up with big consequences for how you think about society, how we deal with all these problems.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by BetterHelp. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in person Therapy can cost anywhere from 100 to $250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50, 50% per session. And you know, people don't have any problem investing into their physical health and I sure would like to see them have that same willingness to invest in their mental health. With BetterHelp, you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and time. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With online therapy, you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health is worth it, and now it's within reach. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's convenient too. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life plus switch therapists at any time. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.comdax today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.comdax we are supported by Squarespace, our old friends Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. We love Squarespace. We have our Armchair Expert website which was built by Squarespace and it's gorgeous. It's a great, great product. If you want to build a website that looks as snazzy as the Armchair Expert site. Squarespace makes it simple. With their collection of cutting edge design tools, you can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits your brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI Enhanced Website Builder to get a fully custom website in just a few steps. Basic info about your industry goals and personality will generate premium quality content and personalized design recommendations. Squarespace also offers a complete library of website templates with options for every use and category. You can make a gorgeous website without any previous experience. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com and promo code DAX to get started today we are supported by Skims.

[Monica Padman]

Skims has been a longtime sponsor which has been incredible because I would be wearing them whether they're partnering with us or not. Don't tell them I said that, but they are one of my favorite brands. The quality is next level. It's so Good.

[Dax Shepard]

What have you been wearing lately?

[Monica Padman]

Oh my goodness, pretty much everything from the Fits Everybody collection. You know I like to do a big clean out of my underwear every now and then.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Monica Padman]

And now that I found the Fits Everybody thong skims, it's just all I wear.

[Dax Shepard]

It's comfy.

[Monica Padman]

It's so comfy and it's cute. You need both in an underpinning, in an unmentionable. Yes. I really love it. It's.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a great product shop Skims Best intimates including the Fits Everybody collection and [e-mail] and skim stores. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you select podcast in the survey and select our show in the drop down menu that follows.

[Herman Poncer]

Here's a fun one. My mother in law just had a DEXA scan done because she had her bone density checked and they give you a BO density score how mineralized your bones are. And then I was reading the report with her because she wanted some inputs and they had this thing at the end, your frax likelihood. FRAX is this sort of algorithm they run the data through likelihood of major fracture in the next 10 years is X. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So I looked that up online. I'd heard about this, I wanted to look into it. You can go to the frax website. Any doctor would use this. The her doctor used this. You put in the bone mineral density, you put in your bmi. Are you frail, Are you robust?

[Dax Shepard]

A robustus. Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

Good age, sex, the things that are relevant. And then it also asks you, what's your race? Are you black? Are you Asian, Are you Caucasian? And I played with it. She grew up in China, she's Asian. If you put an Asian versus Caucasian versus African American you could change your risk by double or half.

[Dax Shepard]

So that's 4x from the ceiling to the floor. Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

And it's totally bullshit. I mean there's no way that's right. And the training set that they must have used this on was capturing something about the environment of folks and that's affecting your likelihood.

[Dax Shepard]

I wonder how this menopause data because we had a menopause expert on, she's saying Southeast Asians go through menopause on average like six years earlier, like around.

[Monica Padman]

47 or 48, which is earlier than.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, maybe it wasn't six, but it was several years.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I wonder if that's a nature nurturer.

[Herman Poncer]

6 It would be interesting. Yeah, I don't think we have a Great answer. We know why menopause happens mechanistically, but we don't really know what triggers the exact time. I mean, like, why it's 47 versus 49. I don't think we have a great handle on each other.

[Dax Shepard]

We run out of eggs and the body starts ratcheting up.

[Monica Padman]

But if everyone's so why do you.

[Dax Shepard]

Run out of eggs and why this.

[Herman Poncer]

Time versus that time? 5 years difference is a big difference. Why who's early and who's later? I don't know. So the idea that your doctor is looking at the census box that you ticked and making real decisions, it's like, take your car to the mechanic. They say, well, we checked the timing bell, we checked the brakes, and we think your car is going to be okay because it's blue. Like, whoa. What?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, hold on.

[Herman Poncer]

We did this as a diagnostic test, and here's the numbers. But then it looks pretty bad. But the good news is you've got a blue car. Well, what the hell are you talking about?

[Dax Shepard]

We do this.

[Herman Poncer]

Well, it starts.

[Dax Shepard]

If they come in and there's a rod knock at 100,000 miles, and it's an American car, all systems go. This is what we expected. If you bring a Toyota in that's got a Rod knock at 100,000, something's really weird because we do know a Toyota will go 300,000 miles and the American car is going to go 150.

[Herman Poncer]

But that has to do with how that actually is built. This is literally as dumb as saying two coyotes, both have rod knock. One's black, one's white.

[Monica Padman]

The numbers are exactly you want, you want.

[Dax Shepard]

You're going to win most of these, but I'm going to keep going for it. Let's talk about dying, because here's my great curiosity. Your cells go through mitosis. They make an identical copy to themselves. So there's this great mystery. If they're making identical copies, how does aging ev even really happen? So clearly something turns on or off and it starts making the cells differently, which is its own mystery, kind of how it's making identical but not identical copies. My question is, why hasn't there ever been a mutation that just didn't turn that on? What would govern against that? Why couldn't that be a mutation? That would have happened by now.

[Herman Poncer]

Well, first of all, some species are getting pretty close. So you've got bristlecone pine trees that live 5,000 years, and aren't there some sharks that are like 600 years, I think.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I Want to live to 600? Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

There's a wonderful story, it may be apocryphal, about the guy who discovered the oldest living organism. You guys ever hear this story?

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Herman Poncer]

That was lovely. Maybe apocryphal, but it's such a good story. So it's a grad student in forestry and he's trying to study bristlecone pine trees. For some reason I think he's using the tree ring data to figure out environmental changes over deep time. This is in the 60s, but it has a special tubular drill bit that you can drill it into the tree, pull it out and you get this core sample of the tree. Look at the rings. He's starting his research and he gets up there into the forests, probably somewhere here in western US and he starts drilling into a bristlecone pine. Gets the thing stuck and he's like, ah, I can't finish my dissertation, I'm in real trouble. So he goes to the ranger station and says, this is what happened. I'm so sorry, can I cut that one tree down, please to get my core thing out? And the guy's like, yeah, fine. So he cuts it down.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Herman Poncer]

And he's a good scientist about it and so saves a section of it and counts the rings later on and goes, oh my God, I just killed the oldest thing on the planet.

[Monica Padman]

That's risky.

[Dax Shepard]

And it was a 5,000-year-old trick.

[Herman Poncer]

It was a 5,000 year old tree.

[Dax Shepard]

I love when you go to Muir woods and they've got the cross section and then fucking Jesus is on there on one of the rings. Oh, it's incredible when people argue for.

[Herman Poncer]

Like a 6,000 year old history of the earth. The really serious anti evolutionists, I think, man, we've got tree ring data older than that for sure, it's older than that.

[Dax Shepard]

But anyway, yeah, how do we age? What's your unique about how we age? Obviously we live quite long for a primate.

[Herman Poncer]

We're the oldest living primate for sure. And we do a better job not senescing. So there's been selection there to push that process off. The standard story is that whatever the kind of damage that accumulates over time as we get older, your body has ways to fix that and repair it and put it back. Right. But that takes energy. Everything's a trade off. So if my body's spending energy keeping myself alive, well then I'm not spending those calories and reproduction. And that's the balance of that. And really the reproduction part is what evolution really cares about how many copies of your genes do you get in the next generation? So if you spent all of your energy on maintenance, then maybe you could live a lot longer. But that's not a great strategy because.

[Dax Shepard]

Those genes won't make it to anybody.

[Herman Poncer]

Exactly. So that's the standard story about why senescence happens. The mechanism of exactly what's happening at the cellular level, what's breaking down, why that still is, I think, up in the air. The stuff I find can convincing too is that it's kind of entropy. The wild number of chemical interactions that actually become at that scale. Physical interactions of molecules bouncing against molecules. Things get wrecked and broken and you have to put them back together. The idea would be that that's why calorie restriction, for example. I don't know if you want to do it, but that's been the one thing shown in every species ever looked at. But even in like lab settings in mice, if you cut their calories by 20%, they live a lot longer because.

[Dax Shepard]

Your body starts eating all the junk that's accumulated.

[Herman Poncer]

It kind of cleans up the scrap and uses it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And it just creates less exhaust, less byproduct and less entropy.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so what do we need to know about living and how to live longer?

[Herman Poncer]

You got to play two games to try to live forever. One, we know the rules too, and we can do something about, which is make sure you're exercising, eating a healthy diet. We can talk a long time about what that would look like.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

Don't smoke. Don't do things that are going to, we know, lead to early drinking.

[Dax Shepard]

I hate to say it, but I.

[Herman Poncer]

Think drinking is not all these things that we know know how to do and that can push you through the kind of typical falling off the cliff that happens to a lot of us as we get older. But once you push into the kind of the 80s, 90s, then you got to hope you got good genes. Who's the guy who's trying to live forever is Brian Johnson.

[Dax Shepard]

Is that the guy?

[Herman Poncer]

And I don't know him. And I wish him the best.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you watch the Doc?

[Herman Poncer]

The last thing I saw with him was him on Bill Maher's pod talking with him.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, I haven't watched the Doc. I kind of keep up with him a little bit on social media because I think it's interesting. I am aware of the root routine, at least some of it. He'll have a really good chance of winning the first game. He's not going to die of heart disease. That seems Unlikely.

[Dax Shepard]

He's going to beat the Four Horsemen, as Atiya would call them, the preventable cancers, metabolic disorders.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes. He's going to do great. He's going to get to be 80 or 90 if I were to make a prediction. And then we're going to find out how mom and dad did in the genes category.

[Dax Shepard]

This is where I'm very discouraged.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. So I don't know. The idea that you could have a life that's 20, twice as long is, in my mind the same as saying that I'm going to have a human that's twice as tall.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

There are thousands of genes that all work together to make a human sized human. If you wanted to make a double sized human, imagine all the things you'd have to change. It wouldn't just be make sure you feed them better. You've got to change genetically how you build the thing. And so lifespan is just another trait just like that. So what I think we're seeing now is there's enough good nutrition around the world, enough good medicine around the world. Please get vaccinated, take your antibiotics, take the medicine you need to take. We can get you to 80, 90, relatively. That happens for a lot of folks. That's wonderful. And even over 100. But then you start hitting the genetic limits of what's possible.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Herman Poncer]

That's how I read it. And I'll be happy to be wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

Do two minutes on vaccines.

[Herman Poncer]

Well, as the measles outbreak right now in Texas lets us know they're an important public health thing to do. The vaccination schedule is critically important to keep. There's a reason all those are in there. Those are all diseases that really harm kids and have lifetime effects and sometimes death. But, I mean, these are really nasty things. Vaccination is one of the greatest medical discoveries ever. It goes back to the 1700s. George Washington was vaccinating his troops against smallpox.

[Dax Shepard]

It has saved more lives than any medical discovery ever, by a landslide.

[Herman Poncer]

That's exactly right. That and clean water. And you basically have the modern world.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Herman Poncer]

And without those things, you don't.

[Dax Shepard]

And what. What's really troubling for vaccines is they are a victim of their success. Yeah. And that's a real bummer for the people who did not grow up around polio, as my grandfather did. The notion you wouldn't get a polio vaccine for your kid is outrageous to me. But a modern person hasn't seen a generation of kids in wheelchairs and on crutches.

[Herman Poncer]

And the way they work is this really Clever thing that your immune system has cells that are listening, looking for infection, and they learn how to identify. Identify it and kill it and make antibodies to it. And you are evolved to have this adaptive response that vaccines kind of take advantage of. The idea that it's sort of unnatural is it's completely using this natural system that your body has evolved. And then the other thing that people always want to tie it to are developmental issues and autism, of course. And all of that's been completely debunked. Just such bullshit. And yet it just won't die. People really want to push it and it's kind of scary. For my perspective, I think, man, if we can't hold onto that advantage, right, then what are we doing?

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, this is just my hypothesis. It is the same part of your brain that makes us all very susceptible to religion that's being hijacked because it's driven by a notion of purity in the natural world. Because there's been these studies where if you plot on a US map the lowest rates of vaccinations, they correlate perfectly with where. Where Whole Foods are.

[Herman Poncer]

I believe it.

[Dax Shepard]

That's really troubling because people are shopping. Whole Foods are also more often college educated. They're upper socioeconomically.

[Herman Poncer]

Yes, it's a great example of this thing that's become associated with the political right since COVID but actually before that was very much on the political left.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this is where the circle meets exactly. This sense of purity, this sense of.

[Monica Padman]

Nature, natural thinking about everything being natural and non toxic.

[Herman Poncer]

The is ought fallacy. We ought to teach that better. Right. Just because something is some way doesn't mean it ought to be that way. First of all. So just because polio exists in the natural world doesn't mean that we ought to just say, yes, let's have that.

[Dax Shepard]

You naturally can't see at a certain age when we go get glasses. People are very a la carte about what they want to accept and what they don't. That's right.

[Monica Padman]

But a lot of people really think that it causes the person to change. I know someone who is an anti vaxxer and they were describing seeing someone get vaccinated. And the way they were describing it, they were like, I saw a shift in their eyes.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah, it's because they knew they were protected against Covid. They were happy.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly. They were smiling. No, it was wild. And I believed that that's what they saw in their head.

[Herman Poncer]

That's fair.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know how to tell someone like, no, you Didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, back to anthropology and cultural anthropology and cultural relativity. I grant people their reality.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I know, but there has to.

[Herman Poncer]

Be a place where we say we appreciate your beliefs and everybody has their own perspective, but that we are going to pay attention to the numbers. There has to be some agreement about an evidence based way of making decisions.

[Monica Padman]

Fine. But when it starts impacting other people's realities, that's where I think we have to say no.

[Dax Shepard]

We wouldn't even have an issue if it didn't actually pertain to children because that's what it's all about. I don't give a fuck if someone doesn't want to get vaccinated. If they're going to die of measles and you chose it, it's on you. In the most literal sense, you have decided for your kid they'll have the same position as you will. And it'd be like branding them your religion when you're born or branding them your political identity. That's the bummer about it is they've inherited their parents position on something which is probably not fair.

[Herman Poncer]

100% and they're not old enough. The age of consent is there for a reason. Right. And they're below that. They're powerless to voice a different view.

[Dax Shepard]

And yeah, yeah, we're seeing outbreaks that are preposterous that we would see in this time 25.

[Herman Poncer]

So that's really worrisome. I mean it's. Well, yeah, if we want to get into this, but we're watching right now, real time, maybe the dismantling of one of the most amazing medical research apparatuses that there ever has been. And it's starting with the way that HHS is potentially being led by somebody who's really skeptical about vaccines. That's scary.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. Kennedy.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah. All the way down through. They're changing the way the NIH is going to run. International Science foundation is going to run. I don't think people appreciate just how radical this is. I mean this is the world I live in. You know, university research. People are really afraid about what the next year is going to look like. Are we going to be able to do medical research? Is there going to be the next discovery for the next vaccine? Is it going to be the next discovery for the next medicine or the next treatment? Because maybe it's going to be very different, maybe not. But it's much harder to fix things than it is to break them.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Herman Poncer]

And so the timeline, when we say in two years, gosh, where's the pipeline? For new drugs. It's not going to be six months to put it back together like it was six months. Wants to take it down.

[Dax Shepard]

Right?

[Herman Poncer]

So that worries me a little bit.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Dr. Poncer, this has been so fun. You're the first Herman I've ever met.

[Herman Poncer]

You're the first Dax I've ever met.

[Dax Shepard]

Look at that.

[Herman Poncer]

I've met other Monicas.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's a great name.

[Dax Shepard]

It's trusted. Very trusted brand. We got a lot of Monicas we like. But we have a character on the show, though, that is Hermion Permian.

[Monica Padman]

Hermium.

[Dax Shepard]

Hermion, Permium.

[Monica Padman]

So that's close. But not Herman.

[Dax Shepard]

He sounds like this. I've never met a Herman. This is really exciting, Exciting stuff. And you're a professor and a scientist. Ms. Monica. My mom. Do you see this?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's really cool.

[Dax Shepard]

So Herman and Herman sat in one room together. It's very exciting. Your book's awesome. I hope everyone's as interested in the human evolution and biology like I am. Adaptable. How your unique body really works, and why our biology unites us as a beautiful message. And it's rooted in our story, which I find endlessly fascinating. So thank you so much for coming.

[Herman Poncer]

Thanks for having me. Really fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Max. Office of Fact Check. I don't even care about facts. I just want to get in your pants. Do you want me to bore you with some mechanical stuff?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, boy. It's. We're already so tired. But sure, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

We're. We are both drowsy.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

What's your explanation? Well, yours is the weather. I guess I don't even need to ask.

[Monica Padman]

But yes. Yesterday the weather was top tier gorgeous and I was exhausted.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So my explanation is I flew 7am flight on Friday to Nashville. So that's up at 4am to get in the car at 5, 4:45 or whatever. Receive my pontoon boat.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't deserve it. It's too nice of an item for me. I was just like, I don't deserve this. It's so nice.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so nice. I hit a button and the whole canopy goes up. The sound system is insane. It's the best sound system that's great. That I've ever heard. So many creature comforts. It's. Oh, I love it. I did put up the. The Bimini and crank the music and walked around the deck for a while and just pretended I was kind of hanging out. My friend Tyler made the funniest joke. I bet it's big in the boating World. But I'd never heard it. He said, it's the most fun you can have on a floating patio. And I was like, that is what a pontoon boat is. It's a floating patio. It's just a perfect rectangle. Okay. Board. And then. And then a lot of busy work, readying stuff to depart, whatever. Then I drove also. And my nose blowing back a bit because my nose was so full on day two of the motorhome drive back. So clogged. Really clogged.

[Monica Padman]

Well, maybe you have a bug.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I think I might have a bug.

[Monica Padman]

I think I have a bug.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's probably a bug.

[Herman Poncer]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Then drove 2,000 miles and got home and got at it. Yeah. And just a bit exhausted. Okay. So as you were dying to know what mechanical things happen on the bus.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that wasn't it.

[Dax Shepard]

No, nothing's happened so far.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I thought just the mention of the boat was mechanical.

[Dax Shepard]

Was enough. About the bus.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, the bus. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All in all, best. Least amount of broke that ever has.

[Monica Padman]

Great.

[Dax Shepard]

Inside of the front door, all of the molding, which is a big chunk because it's got a power shade in it. That thing came off, so that was flopping. Then it broke. Still not bad. Rear toilet. My bathroom toilet. No power. Took the switch out of the middle bathroom, plugged it into the back one. Okay. It's not the switch. Get home, start reaching out to the dudes I know that build the bus. Okay. This is a gratitude and a grievance.

[Monica Padman]

Okay?

[Dax Shepard]

So grateful. They talk to me and they help me every time. So grateful. But I'm talking with a newer guy, and I don't. I feel like he underestimated my mechanical ability.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So I'm like, where. Where does this plug into? Maybe the module's bad. Blah, blah, blah. He's like, oh, no. There's a fuse panel under the bed. And I go, okay. I look under the bed. There's no fuse panel visible. So now I'm going under the bed, and it's a. It's an electric bed, so I can't remove the mattress and look under it. It's all bolted down with this huge, heavy frame. That's two and a half hours yesterday to get under the bed and get all the little plates off of things to find these fuses. Finally, I'm like. I film it. I'm like, there's no fuse panel under here. And I think he thinks I just can't find it. He. Then I start showing him videos. Like, I've taken apart everything oh, wow. So he's like, huh, that's interesting. The only other place it could be is X, Y and Z. Go there this morning. Look. No, then there's this huge panel with all these other fuses on it. And I. And I send a picture and say, before I take this off, do you think it could be behind here? They say, no, absolutely not. I take it off anyway. Anyways, it's in there. After three days of searching for this fuse panel, I found it buried in a wall behind this other huge panel. Plugged it in. I have power in the back. Flushed it, it popped the fuse. TBD more to come. Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Can't wait.

[Dax Shepard]

I know while I'm boring you, let me bore you. Oh, no, I didn't get to a couple things last fact check, but I.

[Monica Padman]

Want to talk about my toilet.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. Tell me about your to toilet before we move off the toilet topic.

[Monica Padman]

So my plumber is at my house doing some repairs. Now I had to leave in the middle and of course I'm.

[Dax Shepard]

That's an. That's a tricky sit.

[Monica Padman]

It's a tricky sitch. What do you think about that?

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I think you just had to do what you had to do, which is go to work. Exactly. So there's really nothing to think about. Is it I ideal?

[Monica Padman]

No, it's not ideal. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not ideal.

[Monica Padman]

And I, I mean, I. I don't.

[Dax Shepard]

Think he's going to steal from you.

[Monica Padman]

Neither do I.

[Dax Shepard]

He's too obvious of a suspect.

[Monica Padman]

Either do I. And he's a very nice man.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you know him prior to this or is this his first trip over?

[Monica Padman]

No, he's come over before. He's like the building plumber.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, then I'm not too worried.

[Monica Padman]

I'm not too worried. I just, you know, it is weird to leave your apartment or house and leave a stranger in there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think I'd recommend it, but it is what I did and I do feel a little uneasy about it.

[Dax Shepard]

It's fine. What do you think could happen? He'll look through your stuff.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know. There's nothing even specific. It just feels weird. A little icky.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, icky.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And. And I already have anxiety, as we talked about.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

I have anxiety today.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Death, Premature death. Anxiety.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I. I heard a very sad story. Yeah, I'll tell it. I'll tell it quickly. You told that. I can tell this.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, mine didn't make you sad, did it?

[Monica Padman]

Sad that I had to listen to it.

[Herman Poncer]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. So Yeah. I. There's a makeup influencer that I follow that I really like that. I. She had a new makeup video, so I clicked it, and it wasn't a makeup video. It was a very sad story about someone passing away and her family suddenly and unexpectedly. Very sad. So then I just started. This is how my brain works. Right? Like, sometimes something will happen. It's not every time. Sometimes I'll hear a story or something will happen sort of in the zeitgeist or in the news that will spark, like, a spell of anxiety for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

And. And it's just like everything comes to the surface of all the bad stories I've ever heard. The scary stories, the unexpected.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's just rumination on scary stories.

[Monica Padman]

Like the way life is so scary and unfair.

[Dax Shepard]

God, I'm sorry. You have that.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you. Me too. Yeah. So my brain is filled with a lot of bad stories right now. And then I try to tell myself, like, this is what happened. You heard this story, and it's why you're feeling like this. And it's okay. But I'm also, like, I'm pretty smart. So when I say, it's okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You start poking.

[Monica Padman]

It's like, there's a dumb. You know when people have angel and devil on their shoulder? Mine's like, I have a stupid mouse and a smart mouse.

[Dax Shepard]

And this is a smart mouse. Wearing glasses.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Obviously.

[Dax Shepard]

In a graduation gown and holding a.

[Monica Padman]

Little pen, like a quill.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Very studious.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And. And the stupid mouse is just wearing undies.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. That are inside out.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And she says the stupid mouse is like, it's Monica. It's. It's fine. It's gonna be okay. And then the smart mouse is like, what makes you think it's gonna be okay? It's not okay. This is life. This is what happens. Yeah. And then the stupid mouse is like, I guess that's true. But also, you just have to accept it. And then the smart mouse is like, well, that's not helping. The acceptance isn't helping me feel better.

[Dax Shepard]

See, I would reverse those two mice. I think it's the dumb mouse.

[Monica Padman]

Don't they say that about the quill girl?

[Dax Shepard]

Listen, it's the dumb, dumb mouse who is saying, you need to be afraid of dying and you need to be afraid the people you love are going to die. And then the smart mouse goes, you're ignoring the odds. You're just refusing to look at the odds. Which is like, one in a million. You're gonna know somebody who Dies of an aneurysm.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but it's actually not. It's not as pointed as that. It's not like, Like. Well, it is. It does obviously start morphing into, like, my life and people and being scared, but it's actually more like the weight of the world that the world has very upsetting things happening all the time. And I can walk through life ignoring that most of the time, but then when it's, like, shoved in my face, I am forced to remember that that's part of it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And that's what's happening. It's like just overwhelm.

[Dax Shepard]

But even I hear you. But even that if you took your 37, 365 days you've been alive.

[Monica Padman]

What if I just was doing this the whole.

[Dax Shepard]

Just gently knocking the whole time as you heard this. But I can't, dude, that. You've hit the limits of my fasting. Wow. I mean, I could, but it would take me five minutes. Minutes.

[Monica Padman]

All right, we don't have to do that.

[Dax Shepard]

But suffice to say, over 37 years, that's 3,737 thousand. It's over 150,000 days that no one you love has died.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's not true.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, your grandpa died.

[Monica Padman]

Well, no.

[Dax Shepard]

One day I know people who've died out of 100.

[Monica Padman]

This isn't. This isn't that helpful. Like, it's not helpful to.

[Dax Shepard]

I just think the smart mouse to be the one that points out the actual odds in the data you've accumulated so far.

[Monica Padman]

That's not how emotions work. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

The emotions are for the dumb mouse. I'm just asking you to flip the roles of the mice.

[Monica Padman]

I know. I know what you want me to do.

[Dax Shepard]

I think the dumb mice sees scary stuff in the news and gets really scared because they saw it. And then the smart mouse goes, yeah, but it's. Cause you're seeing things from all over the world. There's 7 billion of us you're seeing. It's very misleading.

[Monica Padman]

But it's not misleading that the world has pain in it.

[Dax Shepard]

No, that's true. The world does have.

[Monica Padman]

The smart mouses say, as the world is suffering.

[Dax Shepard]

The mouse is Buddhist.

[Monica Padman]

Well, obviously the smart mouse is like, yes, this world has so much pain and suffering, and it's part of it. And that's hard. That's overwhelming for me, even though I know it's true and I know you.

[Dax Shepard]

Can'T think your way out of it. I get that. But also another angle I would framing is, yes, life is Scary. It has moments of heartache and pain. So when you're not in those. They're coming.

[Monica Padman]

That's.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they're coming. And on that day, you get to experience what that is. But to waste any of the days that aren't those days is a little dishonoring to the days where there isn't any suffering.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

No, that doesn't help.

[Monica Padman]

I know. It doesn't really help. It's okay. Sometimes you have anxiety.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. Some things I saw and thought of on my trip.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I was at an In N Out in. In Barstow, and I was in the bus parking, and so other buses were arriving with people that. That were on tours. And there was a German group on a tour of conceivably the usa, and they were stopping at In N Out. And the organizer of the trip was wearing an In N Out paper hat.

[Monica Padman]

Cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And one of the German women had a shirt on that said New York Dreams. Brooklyn Vibes.

[Monica Padman]

Wow. So they had already gone to New York.

[Dax Shepard]

Clearly. And I don't know what that means.

[Monica Padman]

Means Brooklyn vibes is like, you're chill. Yeah. It's more hipster in New York dreams.

[Dax Shepard]

You want to be on Broadway dreams is.

[Monica Padman]

Or finance city dreams. It's like big city dreams.

[Dax Shepard]

Backwater vibes.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I don't know about backwater, but like. Like, it's like saying Hollywood dreams. Los Feliz vibes.

[Herman Poncer]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know if I would get there different. Sure.

[Monica Padman]

Well, they were.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I was watching Turning Point, which I was trying to tell you about in the last fact check. The history of the Cold War. No, you're going to like this one.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

This is about the power of media.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So Ronald Reagan was ratcheting up the nuclear arms race really dramatically.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

He really wanted to get leverage over Russia. He was. Was warhawking. I've talked about this before. This is the only thing my mother never let me see in my whole childhood. The Day after.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it was a movie.

[Dax Shepard]

It was a movie about what the day after a nuclear holocaust would look like.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And 100 million Americans watched it.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

It still has the record of the Most viewed ever TV movie ever made.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

100 million Americans watched it. Ronald Reagan. Reagan watched it. He was profoundly moved. And he changed his course.

[Monica Padman]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

And he backed off.

[Dax Shepard]

He did. And so began.

[Monica Padman]

Holy shit.

[Dax Shepard]

A more collaborative approach to nuclear disarmament. And I was like, we want to talk about the power of fucking movies and media. I know a hundred million people see this thing and Then the President completely changes course.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, don't underestimate it. Putin was obsessed with these KGB movies that were popular when he was a kid. He was trying to live out this thing he saw in a movie.

[Monica Padman]

Right. So this circles back sort of to an ongoing debate we have. Not really, because I think we sort of agree, but I. The power of media is very extreme. And so then do we have a responsibility if we are participating in the media? Like, if we're members of the media, Is there a responsibility? Like if you're a filmmaker or you're a podcaster or a. Whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think so. I think you make.

[Herman Poncer]

What.

[Dax Shepard]

You're drawn to this. Whoever made the Day after was into making that kind of movie.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, and then. So they did that. Well. But I think to give yourself a call. Now we have. I have one that's clear to me. Me here.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Which is openness, vulnerability.

[Herman Poncer]

Poops.

[Dax Shepard]

Trauma. Poop.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I don't think any. I don't. Do you think people have to have a.

[Monica Padman]

No, I don't think you have to.

[Dax Shepard]

Have a. I don't really trust everyone's thing that they.

[Monica Padman]

No, I actually. I don't mean have a cause necessarily. I'm just. I guess I'm saying what if they had made a movie that was, like, pro. What if it had made Ronald Reagan, like, blow up everything?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Right, Right.

[Monica Padman]

That's possible.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. This one clearly was fearful, as everyone should be, of a nuclear disaster.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Several times the people in charge have been told that. That the other side had launched missiles. That's happened several times. Thank God. This Russian dude, he just refused to do it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He was. His computer was telling him that we had launched 200 nuclear warheads that were inbound and would be there in eight minutes. And you just got to pray that no one ever responds because, like, if I'm. I hate to tell everyone this, but if. If. If I'm in that job and I see that Russia has launched the entire arsenal on us, my reaction is not to kill all them people.

[Monica Padman]

Right. What's it going to do?

[Dax Shepard]

What's it going to do?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

We're all dead.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

This isn't going to undead us.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'll just be for killing hundreds.

[Monica Padman]

Of millions of people.

[Dax Shepard]

I hope that's how everyone feels.

[Monica Padman]

They don't. A lot of people are like, yeah. You got eight.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Did you finish Paradise? James Mar. Friend of the po.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Friend of the pod.

[Monica Padman]

So it was. It had an element to that Spoiler. I won't say anymore. Remember, like he decides.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[Monica Padman]

That show was great and I've heard a lot of people talking about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Last thing on my trip, I watched the disappearing and murder of one of these girls.

[Monica Padman]

It's really petito or something.

[Dax Shepard]

Abby. Yep, yep, that's the one.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I haven't seen. I see it pop up a lot, but I haven't watched it. I don't think it's good for me to watch during my anxiety.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. I forget their. The people's names.

[Herman Poncer]

It's Gabby Petito.

[Dax Shepard]

Gabby and her. Who? I'm not. I don't want to say his name. They're going to go out and they're going to have like a vlogging. They're going to live in a van and they're going to be YouTube people. And at some point they're on the side of the road and the police are called because a motorist saw him hitting her in the car.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

They pull, they pull up on them or they pull them over. He was swerving. He's got some cockamamie story, blah, blah, blah. During the interview with the police, the guy who observed the hitting, he said, well, the gentleman was hitting the girl.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God. He's like trying to be like PC about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I just. It's so weird. Like you call a woman a girl and then you call guys beating the. Out of a woman. A gentleman.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Really flipped this.

[Monica Padman]

He did. It was an accident.

[Dax Shepard]

I think maybe.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You go into like police speak like you think that's how the cops talk.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. I think that's what is happening. He like feels.

[Dax Shepard]

And then he should have said the gentleman was hitting the victim or something. He should have said the gentleman was hitting the.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think he was equipped to really.

[Dax Shepard]

He's probably nervous being. And I just, I heard that line, I was like, oh my God. Hold on. Did you just say the gentleman was hitting the girl?

[Herman Poncer]

I think that you could say that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. That should, yeah, that guy should be cancelled.

[Herman Poncer]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

That you're. You're now relieved of all my housekeeping.

[Monica Padman]

From the bus trip. I loved those last ones.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, good. The crazier part of that story is like he comes home, she's missing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The parents of the gentleman. Or the gentleman hit her. The gentleman abuser.

[Monica Padman]

Uh huh.

[Dax Shepard]

And they let him live at home for two weeks. And then when the cops come they go, you can't talk. Talk to our lawyers. Like, they, they get very involved in protecting him. And then they find this letter between the mom and the son that predates this. That was like, I love you so much. If you killed someone, I'd shovel and bury the body with you. And all this stuff. It's really kind of like a look at what people do for their kids. And I would, I would do, I would do some terrible stuff for my kids. I would. I can relate. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Brooks Running. If you're a runner, you've definitely heard, heard about Brooks. They're a reliable, high quality brand known in the running community for being the best in the biz. Brooks gifted both of us pairs of the Glycerin 22 sneakers. And man, I love mine.

[Monica Padman]

Really comfortable.

[Dax Shepard]

Got the right pair of shoes. Can make all the difference when it comes to getting out and working out. I'm doing my sprints in them. Oh. Just total comfort on my knees.

[Monica Padman]

Also, great design.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, very stylish. The Glycerin 22 is for anyone whose feet crave a cushioned experience. The wide platform plus the tuned heel and forefoot help your foot land and transition from heel to toe smoothly and steadily. Okay, this is smart engineering. Listen to this. The sole of these shoes has a next gen nitrogen infused foam with larger cells in the heel to provide plush landings. And then there are smaller cells in the forefoot to invite responsive toe offs. That's a fancy way of saying they thought of everything here and these shoes perform great and feel even better. So whether you're running, hitting the gym, or just want to feel maximum comfort and stability as you live your active life, give Brooks a try. Learn [e-mail].

[Monica Padman]

I don't like that.

[Dax Shepard]

I know, but I have girls. It's. It's hard. It's a little less scary.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but like, okay, on the.

[Dax Shepard]

Pit.

[Monica Padman]

Show I watch, there is this woman. Girl, gentlemen. There's a storyline with this old. This woman and she comes in with her son. She's sick. The woman is sick and the son brings her in. And the son has a very reclusive.

[Dax Shepard]

Lives in the basement. Maybe.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but he's in school. He's in high school. Anyway, she's sick and she's throwing up. And then at one point they realize, like, or she says, I've been poisoning myself to come so that he would bring me here because I, I think there might be something going on with him.

[Dax Shepard]

And then this is a crazy plot line.

[Herman Poncer]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

It's gonna call the cops.

[Monica Padman]

No. Cause she. She feels like that's a huge betrayal. So take. So the. She feels like the hospital can't, like, get him arrested.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course they can. But continue.

[Monica Padman]

Well, she doesn't know that. Okay? The husband has passed away way.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, now.

[Monica Padman]

So then they're like, okay, maybe. But then they have to figure out a way to talk to him. And like, that's complicated. And essentially he runs out of the hospital.

[Dax Shepard]

He flees.

[Monica Padman]

He flees. And then Dr. Robbie, Noah. Wy. He goes chasing him, but then he's so hot and he. He. He can't find him. And then. But he has like, a list. The. The. The older mother found this list of girls he had, like, written about. And so Dr. Robbie is like, not. He's kind of taking it seriously, but he's. So.

[Dax Shepard]

He's kind of an investigator and a doctor.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, he's kind of taking it seriously, but he's like, I don't really want to. I. If I go to the police and ruin this boy's life for no reason. You know, that's this whole thing.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the conundrum now.

[Monica Padman]

I don't want to spoil. Okay, if you're. If you're watching the pit and you're not caught up, pause right now or fast forward at the end.

[Dax Shepard]

Pausing won't help you.

[Monica Padman]

There's a mass shooting.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

And obviously it's. We're meant to believe it's this kid.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course. Red herring.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And I don't know if that's the way it's going to go, but the things you do for your kids, like, tell me, please, if. If you. I mean, yeah. It's not going to work for your kids because it's like, too hard. We know them. We know that. So it's trickier. But let's. Let's play it.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's play. Because this is a worst case scenario.

[Monica Padman]

I think we have to play because I think everyone thinks this about their kid, that their kid is incapable of doing something really, truly horrendous. And that's.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think that. That's not my hang up.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, well, then let's say that you found a list of kids in the class.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What if it says, like, I want to kill them and it's a list?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What would you do?

[Dax Shepard]

I would ignore it. No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing.

[Herman Poncer]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I would sit down and we would talk for a long, long while. There's a Huge gap between I wish these people were dead and I'm going to kill these people.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, there is.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're trying to figure that out.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you're also trying to evaluate do they have the means to do this? How serious, seriously, are they? If I had an inkling at all that this was a possibility, I would move. I would take the kids, I would move away from all these people. I would get her in therapy hardcore. And I would get a tutor to come finish her schooling until she got out of this adolescent phase. And we would be checking in. I would not call the police. Is that what you're wondering?

[Monica Padman]

Well, how fast are you going to move that day? Because, like, I think if they have this, like, need to kill.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I also take them to school so I could definitely pat her down.

[Monica Padman]

That's true.

[Dax Shepard]

People will be mad about that. I don't think the police have anything to add to make the situation better. I don't think removing her from the house and putting her in foster care is going to help. I don't think a state mandated counselor is going to help. I don't think jail time, you know, like, I don't think they have a solution that would be appealing in this situation. They can't fix. That's not what they do. So involving them, I'm not sure what that would get us. I'm going to remove her from the school. I'm going to make sure those kids are safe and we move. But there's no services that the city offers that are going to help her in this situation. And I just would want to help her.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I guess I don't know enough about that to know if that's true.

[Dax Shepard]

Homicidal teens.

[Monica Padman]

Well, no, about like what the police could do preemptively.

[Dax Shepard]

We'll think it through. Let's think of what they could possibly.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, if they have a list like that. Yeah, I think they could arrest them. I don't know if you can arrest them based on that. I don't know. Actually, I think you could because it's.

[Dax Shepard]

Like premeditated, attempted, I don't know. Intent versus is attempted. It's not attempted. If she made a list. I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

No, it's not attempt.

[Dax Shepard]

But regardless, sending her to jail is not going to help.

[Monica Padman]

Well, it is going to. It's. It, it is going to help protect the other kids.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'm going to remove her from those other kids.

[Monica Padman]

I just think removing her from the situation isn't going to. It's. It's so yes, I guess it would protect those kids. Maybe. I mean she might just like leave and go kill them. Like how can you know first just because you moved?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'd be moving to many states away.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, but what if then she kills it then. Oh, you said you're going to do.

[Dax Shepard]

A personal Jonathan height really quick. I thought of all the ways that.

[Monica Padman]

But, but like you really did like in real life.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

If you moved some states over. Unless you like literally kept her in her bedroom.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

She's going to be out in the world.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yes, at a later date with a lot, lot of therapy and assessment.

[Monica Padman]

The therapy is going to be interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Broader question. Do you think this is a broader dicey or scarier question?

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think it's possible that a kid could have those feelings and intentions in 11th grade and then grow out of that? I, I, I think I, I'm inclined to think yes. Now I'm not saying everyone would, but I'm saying do I think that's a possibility? Do I think there's crazy hormonal confused in a worse situation they're going to be in, in their whole life kids that will be different as 20 year olds.

[Monica Padman]

I do, I think that is a possibility.

[Dax Shepard]

I think my main obligation is to protect any innocent kids from getting hurt.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And once I've achieved that, I think I'm, I feel fine on my own to be trying to help her through it. And I don't think the state would be helpful, helpful in that process. Some people will be screaming, you're rich, you can do that. Yeah, but the question is what would I do?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but I guess I, if I had a kid at that school and I, my kid was on that list.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

You then just taking her away I don't think would cause me much peace. I think I would have more peace.

[Dax Shepard]

If the kids knocked out, knowing that.

[Monica Padman]

Kid was in juvie versus their parents, decided to take them a couple states over and like take it on and get therapy. Like look in five states. Okay. Five states over and, and also Arizona. I am conflicted because also I agree that I think like a good therapist and a different, you know, a safer environment for that kid is actually going to probably result in a better outcome for that kid.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. And all hands on deck.

[Monica Padman]

Like I get that and I get if that's my kid, I'm like that that kid needs to be away and like, oh, that's it.

[Dax Shepard]

And for how long? So you're buying yourself like a temporary peace of mind.

[Monica Padman]

Well, all of it's temporary. If you go and you take your kid there again, they're not going to, like, live in their room for another 50 years.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So that's kind of times out the same. It's like by the time they'd be letting a kid out of juvie for having made a list.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Would be the same time Lincoln would be entering the real world as an adult.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. So I guess. Yeah. I would feel like. I think there needs to maybe be some putting away during that time, some confinement just to make sure.

[Dax Shepard]

I get it. I get it. I get it. I'm just being very honest about what I would do. I would break a lot of laws for my kids. I would kill for my kids. I wouldn't kill otherwise. You know, there's a lot of things I would do.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I would steal. I would do anything.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think I'd be able to, like, kill another innocent person. I don't think I could do that.

[Dax Shepard]

Innocent. They have to be threatening your child for this to work. I wouldn't. If my kid said, I don't like the groceries, will you kill him? I would not do that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. This is feeding into your anxiety a little bit, I think.

[Monica Padman]

What if. Okay. What if at the grocery store.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

She. She. She pulls a gun.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. She. Okay, this is a lot. So. So at the grocery store, Lincoln has a firearm.

[Monica Padman]

I hate this story.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Yeah, she has a firearm. She hates the grocer.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Mainly because he doesn't sell ripe pears.

[Monica Padman]

No. There's something about his face she just really doesn't like.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. It reminds me of Turning Point, but continue.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. And she pulls out a gun and is about. About to shoot him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I tackle her.

[Monica Padman]

No, no, no. This is the grocer. Then pulls out a gun.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

To protect himself.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

You're there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

With your own gun.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What do you do?

[Dax Shepard]

And I have the opportunity to shoot him before I think. So he shoots her. That's a good one. You came up with a good one.

[Monica Padman]

Like, she.

[Dax Shepard]

That one's really hard.

[Monica Padman]

It is, right?

[Dax Shepard]

That one's really hard. Good job.

[Monica Padman]

Would you ever. Would you ever maybe shoot her in the foot?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

So that, like, she drops her gun.

[Dax Shepard]

I would just tackle her so he knew the threat was over and that he didn't have to shoot her.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. That's your plan?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. It'd be very hard to kill the grocer if she pulled out a gun.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But also, he is a gun to your Kid, like I. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Turning point.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, sorry. You started.

[Dax Shepard]

What I learned. So when Ukraine had their first elections, there was a pro west candidate, and forgive me, because I've forgotten these names or I can't pronounce them to begin with.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And then there was a pro Russia candidate.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

The pro Western candidate was leading by a lot. They poisoned him. They poisoned him.

[Monica Padman]

Who did?

[Dax Shepard]

Russia.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah. Duh.

[Dax Shepard]

And his face.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you ever seen this guy?

[Monica Padman]

No, but they use that.

[Dax Shepard]

He grew it, but his whole face became inflamed and atrophy. I mean, they turned him temporarily into a monster so awful. Can you believe that's what they.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. They do this.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. It's maddening.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's horrifying.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Oh. So what are the ethics of this? I wish someone would assassinate Putin so bad.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, me too. Yeah, but he's a bit. He's inflicting armor.

[Dax Shepard]

He's killing so many people. Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Now, do you think I could go to jail for saying that I want Putin dead?

[Dax Shepard]

No, you're just not allowed to say that about our president.

[Monica Padman]

But it's kind of the same as the boy saying the list. Yeah, right.

[Dax Shepard]

So what if they found in my bedroom at list, and I said, must kill, and I intend to kill Putin.

[Monica Padman]

What can they do?

[Dax Shepard]

I think they'd probably give me 100 bucks for a plane ticket.

[Monica Padman]

I know. That's the thing. Well, actually, no, not currently.

[Dax Shepard]

Why?

[Monica Padman]

Our government is not anti Putin.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, our government is one. Our leader seem to.

[Monica Padman]

Who makes all the decisions.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

All right, let's do some facts. This is for Herman.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, Herman.

[Monica Padman]

Loved Herman. Learned a lot. Okay. Gigantopithecus. Yes, I have. Largest ape to ever live. Estimated to have stood about 10ft tall and weighed over 500 pounds.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. I wanna see one so bad.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I really wanna see one.

[Monica Padman]

When you do your time machine, you could go back and see one.

[Dax Shepard]

I could. I bet they're gonna be hard for me to find, but I guess I'll know exactly where the bones are.

[Monica Padman]

It says they're wandering the thick forests of ancient China during the. The last Ice age. So you'd have to go back there.

[Dax Shepard]

That's not bad. This was 16,000 years ago. Yeah, some definite North Face gear. Like I were going to Antarctica.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Boy, I'd love to see one. And they might think I was cute and not threatening, and they'd be nice to me. And then they could hug me the way I was saying. I would like to be hugged and maybe even rock to sleep.

[Monica Padman]

You wouldn't feel scared and threatened?

[Dax Shepard]

I would, but if I noticed that they thought I was cute. Cute and tiny, I would appeal to their sense of safety. That's the point I was making about two months ago.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

That you only act terrible when you're scared.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Or hungry.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They might want to eat me.

[Monica Padman]

Well, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Because you're just like. You're like a little piece of bread. Okay, now malnutrition is bad for you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

School age children who suffered from early childhood malnutrition have generally been found to have poor IQ levels, cognitive function, school achievement, and greater behavioral problems than matched controls and to a lesser extent, siblings. The disadvantages last at least until adolescence.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. At least. It's. They're not going to get better.

[Monica Padman]

Well, exactly. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Your brain's already.

[Monica Padman]

That's when your brain is.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

So mushy. Just trying to form is all.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a fair planet.

[Monica Padman]

See?

[Dax Shepard]

See?

[Monica Padman]

That's what the smart mouse says.

[Herman Poncer]

Uh huh.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a fair planet.

[Monica Padman]

Probably not. Okay, that's it.

[Dax Shepard]

That was it. Okay. That was light.

[Monica Padman]

Light and easy. Easy peasy.

[Dax Shepard]

All right.

[Monica Padman]

I like Herman. And we like each other.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we like each other. You have some anxiety, but it's okay. It'll pass.

[Monica Padman]

It'll pass. It will.

[Dax Shepard]

Tomorrow you'll be feeling 10ft tall and bulletproof.

[Monica Padman]

Gigantopithecus. All right. Love you.

[Herman Poncer]

Love you.

[Dax Shepard]

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