Update: New Normal?

Summary

Radiolab – “Update: New Normal?”
October 19, 2015
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Produced by WNYC Studios

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Episode Overview

This episode revisits a Radiolab show first aired 6-7 years prior, focusing on whether humans are destined for conflict or capable of deep societal change. Through three compelling stories, the hosts explore the power of individual and collective choice to break cycles that seem “ingrained in our nature.” The stories—a baboon troop’s surprising behavioral transformation, the coming-out journey of a transgender mayor in conservative Oregon, and Soviet foxes bred for tameness—illustrate the malleability of what’s assumed to be “human (or animal) nature.” Throughout, the hosts question: are we trapped by destiny, or can we choose a new normal?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Are Humans Doomed to Conflict? Street Interviews & Changing Attitudes

• [01:33] Science journalist John Horgan has long asked: "Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all?"
  • In the 1980s, about one in three thought war was inevitable; now nine out of ten say it will never end.
  • Interviewees cite “human nature,” greed, and violence as reasons:

    “A lot of people are big, dumb animals, and they're just gonna keep fighting over useless things.” ([04:15])

  • Hosts express a desire to challenge this fatalism.

2. STORY 1: Can Culture Overcome Primal Aggression? The Baboon Troop Experiment

The Experiment ([07:06]–[25:54])

• Robert Sapolsky recounts his decades observing wild baboons:
  • Traditionally aggressive, hierarchical societies—baboons were the model for hard-wired male violence.
  • In the 1980s, most of the most aggressive (“alpha”) males in one troop died suddenly after eating tuberculosis-infected meat from a tourist lodge’s garbage dump.
  • With the bullies gone, troop behavior changed dramatically:

    “You saw adult males sitting in contact with each other and grooming each other.” (Robert Sapolsky, [13:13])

  • Incoming outsider males arrived with learned aggression, but the “gentler” culture persisted:

    "Oh my God. The new guys are learning. We don't do stuff like that here." (Sapolsky, [16:04])

  • Key to the change: Females began grooming newcomers faster, breaking the usual cycle of isolation and aggression.

Does it Last?

• Richard Wrangham (Harvard evolutionary biologist) pushes back: this isn’t ‘natural’—true change requires genetic evolution ([18:48]).
  • Nevertheless, Sapolsky notes peaceful culture persisted for 20 years.
  • However, by the time of the episode’s update, “junk food” destroys all culture: Easy food access from humans leads to troop fragmentation; aggression and gentleness both vanish ([25:24]).
  • Memorable moment:

    “...they ran into some junk food, and then they have no culture.” (Jad Abumrad, [25:24])

  • A metaphor for modern society’s distractions, with culture replaced by hedonism.

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3. STORY 2: Radical Change in a Conservative Town – Stu Rasmussen, America’s First Openly Transgender Mayor

A Small Town’s Slow Transformation ([30:05]–[49:13])

• Set in Silverton, Oregon, population ~9,000.

• Stu Rasmussen, lifelong resident, begins to transition publicly over decades:

  • Starts with painted nails, then cross-dressing for events, gradually becomes more open about gender identity.
  • “The first test of the community.” ([34:10])
  • Locals at first whisper, gawk gradually become used to change.

• Gradual normalization (locals on why it worked):

  “It happened so gradually…” (Kyle Palmer, [34:56])
  “You’re talking about a native son who grew up here...he’s literally been in everybody’s home.” (Ken Hector, [43:09])

  • The town, faced with a national protest by out-of-town extremists, unites in support—hundreds cross-dressing in solidarity:

    “They came out, 200 people, men in dresses, grandmothers, babies. It’s just amazing...that was the town, that wasn’t me.” (Stu Rasmussen, [48:16])

The Update

• Stu is re-elected several times, featured in a musical, becomes a local celebrity.

• “It’s become pretty much passé...it’s routine now.”
  (Stu Rasmussen, [52:20])

• The story has become a source of hope for others: people call Stu with thanks; visibility helps others come out.

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4. STORY 3: Can We Breed Away Aggression? The Soviet Fox Experiment

The Science of Self-Domestication ([56:24]–[72:42])

• Brian Hare explains Dmitry Belyaev’s experiment in Soviet Russia ([57:12]):
  • Belyaev breeds foxes by strict selection for tameness; “mean” foxes are culled, “nice” foxes allowed to breed.
  • After only ten generations (~10 years), foxes behave like puppies: seeking human affection, even wagging their tails ([61:06]).
  • Unexpected side effects: floppy ears, curly tails, multicolored coats, smaller teeth, thinner bones ([61:57]).
  • Theory: By selecting for behavioral tameness, you alter neural crest cell development affecting the whole body ([64:50]):

    “What you’re doing as a byproduct...is selecting for guys who don’t get as many of those cells into their ears...their skin...their teeth.”

  • The process is analogized to possible changes in human evolution.

Are Humans Self-Domesticating?

• Human society may have “bred out” aggression via collective punishment of bullies, favoring cooperative individuals ([69:08]):

  “If you beat everybody up, you may not survive that.”
  “We have domesticated ourselves.” (Wrangham, [70:35])

• Traits of self-domestication in humans: smaller teeth, more gracile bones, potentially increased empathy/cooperation ([68:04]).
• The hope: Future selection continues toward peace as we’re forced to “bump into each other” more often.

  “The winners will be the domesticated ones. Everyone will get more empathetic...because that’s the only way you survive.” (Robert Krulwich, [71:42])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• "Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all?" – John Horgan’s perennial question [01:33]
• “You saw adult males sitting in contact with each other and grooming each other.” – Robert Sapolsky [13:13]
• “Oh my God. The new guys are learning. ‘We don’t do stuff like that here.’” – Sapolsky [16:04]
• “...they ran into some junk food, and then they have no culture.” – Jad Abumrad [25:24]
• "They came out, 200 people, men in dresses, grandmothers, babies. ...and that was the town, that wasn’t me.” – Stu Rasmussen [48:16]
• “It’s become pretty much passé...it’s routine now.” – Stu Rasmussen [52:20]
• “10 years is the answer.” – On how long it took to breed tame foxes, Krulwich/Hare [61:37]
• “The winners will be the domesticated ones... Everyone will get more empathetic to each other because that’s the only way you survive. And we get gentler and gentler and gentler till lambs literally lie down with lions.” – Robert Krulwich [71:42]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Opening & Street Surveys: [01:01]–[05:00]
• Baboon Story: [07:06]–[26:00]
• Silverton, Oregon/Stu Rasmussen: [30:05]–[49:13]
• Stu Rasmussen Update: [49:50]–[53:26]
• Soviet Fox Experiment: [56:24]–[68:04]
• Human self-domestication / Conclusion: [68:04]–[73:12]

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Conclusion

Radiolab’s “Update: New Normal?” is an inquiry into the mutability of supposedly fixed traits—aggression, conservatism, identity—across individuals, societies, and even species. Through vivid storytelling and scientific inquiry, the episode ultimately leaves the listener with hope (if cautious): what looks like destiny can, sometimes, be re-written through collective choice, cultural shift, and even—potentially—biology itself.

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Radiolab’s Signature Tone

The signature Radiolab blend of curiosity, playful analogy, rigorous inquiry, and surprise is richly present. Jad and Robert’s narration is alternately hopeful and skeptical, with moments of dry wit and warmth. The show’s conclusion leaves listeners both humbled by the difficulty of lasting change—and inspired by its possibility.

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

For delicious meals, you could go out to eat, or you could just make a Marie Callender's meal. Marie Callender's classic chicken parmigiano bowl is so good. It has marinara sauce that's made from scratch and creamy mozzarella cheese over pasta. It's delicious with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. And 30 grams of protein. You can find it in the frozen aisle. Marie Callender's what Having it all taste. Hey, this is JAD Radiolab. So what you're about to hear is a show we originally released about six, seven years ago. We decided to revisit it recently because it's been on our minds a lot. Let's just. I'll start it off and then I'll say more about it in a second. Wait, you're listening? Okay. All right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right. You're listening to Radiolabs Radio Lab from wnyc. Okay, you ready?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yep.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, let's open the show today. Test, test, test. On a sunny street corner in New Jersey. So where are we now? We are on Washington street, which is the main thoroughfare in Hoboken. It's a nice day in Hoboken. People are out and about after work. Is that sangria? What are you guys cooking here? And we're here with a guy. His name's John Horgan.

[Stu Rasmussen]

I'm a science journalist.

[Jad Abumrad]

He's. He's also a teacher. It is hot. And John is out today with our producer Lulu Miller, doing what he often does, which is to go up to someone he doesn't know. Excuse me, sir.

[Aaron Scott]

We're doing a survey.

[Jad Abumrad]

It only take a minute. At most a minute I can give you. And he asks them this one question. Here's the question. Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all?

[Stu Rasmussen]

No. Because of greed and one upmanship to explain.

[Jad Abumrad]

John has been asking this question, will humans ever stop fighting wars? For years. Because for him, this question, it's not just about war. It gets at something really basic. Do we feel we can change who we are? In any case, the first time it popped out of his mouth, it was 2003, and a friend had asked him to give a talk at a church just a few days after the first invasion of Iraq. And so here I was in this church. And I can remember the mood was very somber. I was determined to try to make people feel that, okay, this is a setback, but still, you've got to believe that peace is possible. And I tried to list all the reasons. And as he was making his case and getting worked up. He looked at the 60 or so people who were there in the audience. He said, all right, how many of you here believe that war will end someday?

[Stu Rasmussen]

And I think one or two people.

[Jad Abumrad]

Raised their hands out of 60. And John thought, wait, is this really who we are? And so that's actually when I started.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Reading as much as I can about all these things and dug up some surveys from the 1980s.

[Jad Abumrad]

What he found was that about 20 years ago, people were asking this question.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Do you think war will ever end?

[Jad Abumrad]

Taking surveys. Now, granted, they were not the most scientific of surveys, but what the results seem to indicate is that we used to be optimistic. Back in the 80s, only one in.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Three thought that war was inevitable.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Huh.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was a minority.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Whereas today, will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all? If you take that question to the streets of Hoboken, as we did, you will find no. No. No, no, no, no. About nine out of ten people say no. Yes. Yeah, I think so.

[Stu Rasmussen]

No. No.

[Aaron Scott]

Never.

[Jad Abumrad]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Never.

[Stu Rasmussen]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

By the way, we called up John again recently to ask him, have the results changed? Because he has kept on doing this survey, and he said no. Six years later, it's still roughly eight or nine out of 10 people say no, we'll never stop fighting wars. Same results. Now, depressingly, the worst part is that when he asked them the next question, why do you think this? Invariably, he gets something like, I think there's a human nature for greed and to always want more. It's just human nature. A lot of people are big, dumb animals, and they're just gonna keep fighting over useless things.

[Stu Rasmussen]

It's in our genes.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's just the way people are. And I don't think we're ever gonna learn. Why do you say that? I just think that it's too ingrained in our human nature.

[Robert Krulwich]

So, so, so, so, so, so we.

[Jad Abumrad]

Want to challenge that last statement. Too ingrained in our human nature. That one. Okay. We know some things have been handed down to us from our primate ancestors. Violence, maybe. Who knows? Question is, how ingrained is that stuff?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, yeah. I mean, if you think that we have inherited something. Yeah. What can we do about it? Are we stuck?

[Jad Abumrad]

Or can we change? If we make the right choices, yeah. So what we've got for you this.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hour are three stories where choice, individual choice, challenges destiny.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Robert Krulwich]

Maybe.

[Jad Abumrad]

We hope. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Kryllowich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. Stick around. All right, so here's the thing. This is now Me in the present. This show was initially inspired by an anecdote that I had read about in the New York Times. This guy, Martin Bunzel, was telling a story of when he was 18, it was 1966, I believe. He was sitting on a plane, and a guy next to him looks at the stewardess and then says, ugh, not another Negro stewardess. Or something like that. And this guy, Martin Bunzel, who, by the way, is a philosophy professor, he says, thinking back on it, huh, that was an interesting thing, because had that guy on the plane said that a few years earlier, it would have been, like, commonplace. Had he said it a few years later, it would have been intolerable. But right then, it was neither. It was. Things were shifting. And he said, you know, it was like this guy was shouting through an open window between worlds. That was his phrase. He was shouting through an open window between worlds. And that phrase totally lodged in my head. And I've been thinking about that phrase a lot these days, this feeling that maybe the ground is shifting beneath our feet, not quite sure. And that's actually what brought us back to this show, that feeling. Because each of the stories in this show kind of suggest that window between worlds. So what we're gonna do is, as we redo the show after a couple of these stories, we're gonna check in real quick and see whether we feel like we've passed through this window into a new world or whether we're still stuck in the middle. And speaking of new worlds, we should say you just heard Lulu Miller briefly in that last few minutes. She, at the time, was our producer. Now, of course, she's become the superstar host of Invisibilia. Anyhow, so the show began with a, well, familiar voice.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Do you remember this guy, Robert Sapolsky?

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, yeah, that's Robert Sapolsky.

[Jad Abumrad]

We've had him on the show a couple times. He's a neuroscientist. Spends most of the year at Stanford.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Being a lab rat scientists doing neurobiology in the lab.

[Jad Abumrad]

But in the summers, most summers, I.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Go and spend time in East Africa in the Serengeti, studying wild baboons there.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why? What is. What is he working on? What's his reason to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, Sapolsky is interested in studying stress, the effect that stress has on the body. And turns out baboons are a perfect source of data because they're always under stress. You know, the one thing we know about baboons and have known forever is.

[Robert Sapolsky]

That they fight baboons constantly, not just metaphorically, but literally. Have been the textbook example of a highly aggressive, male dominated hierarchical society. Because these animals hunt, because they live in these aggressive troops on the savanna. Parentheses, just like we humans used to, and thus we evolved very similarly. They have a constant baseline level of aggression which inevitably spills over into their.

[Jad Abumrad]

Social lives, which is why he studies them. So what Sapolsky does basically, is he goes into the bush and he watches.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Here are field notebooks, and there's a floor of them there and a whole shelf.

[Jad Abumrad]

His office is covered with these field notebooks, Each one containing detailed notes of.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Who groomed who and who's not getting along with who and who's messing around with who in the bushes.

[Jad Abumrad]

He tells the following story of a particular moment in his baboon watching which completely changed his life, changed how he sees the world. It happened about 30 years ago. Spolsky was a young guy just out of grad school, studying his first troop.

[Stu Rasmussen]

My.

[Robert Sapolsky]

My first baboons.

[Jad Abumrad]

A troop he really loved.

[Robert Sapolsky]

These were animals I was very connected with.

[Jad Abumrad]

In most ways, it was a pretty average group.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah, your basic baboon troop. The females were highly affiliated with each other. They had a very stable ranking system. The males, meanwhile, highly aggressive, dumping on.

[Jad Abumrad]

Each other, because that's just what males do, right? Here's what he thought.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Okay. Mid 80s, big boom in tourism in Kenya. Wonders for the economy. Lots of new lodges, lots of lodge expansions. And there happened to be the next territory over, the tourist lodge.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this one particular lodge, he says, had gotten really big really fast.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And during that time, the lodge greatly expanded their garbage dump, which means basically.

[Jad Abumrad]

That they just dug a hole out behind the lodge and each day a.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Tractor came out with the leftovers and dumped it there.

[Jad Abumrad]

So what we're talking about here, if you can nasally imagine, is a big steaming pile of trash, half eaten, food baking in the sun, smell wafting in the breeze for miles and miles and into the nostrils of baboons everywhere. So it was not long before a troop of baboons, not Sapolsky's, but one.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Nearby, discovered the garbage and just started feeding on it. And here they are eating leftover desserts and chicken whatevers and dump full of food.

[Jad Abumrad]

Must be to a baboon like. Like wandering into heaven.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Manna in the wilderness. So this troop almost immediately shifted their entire behavior to they just slept in the trees above the garbage dump. And instead of getting up at six in the morning to start foraging, they would waddle down around two minutes of nine and the tractor would show up at nine o' Clock and dump the food. And they would have 20 minutes of sheer frenzy. And then they'd go back to sort of being couch potatoes.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this is how it went for a while.

[Robert Sapolsky]

So they're over there living off of garbage, and somehow some of the males in my troop figure this out.

[Jad Abumrad]

These males think, we gotta get in on this, we've gotta go over there and take their food.

[Robert Sapolsky]

What emerged was each morning, a bunch of males would run a kilometer or so to the garbage dump and fight their way in to get some of the garbage.

[Jad Abumrad]

So every morning there would be a showdown, Basically, yeah.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And they would come back with canine slashes and stuff like that.

[Jad Abumrad]

But they'd also have drumsticks, cakes, hamburgers. And this ritual, says Cybolski, went on for years.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And then a few years into it, I got word that there were a couple of baboons in this garbage dump troop that looked awful and something was wrong with them.

[Jad Abumrad]

Some guys from the lodge had called him and said, hey, you better get down here and look at this. And when he got there, what he.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Saw was horrible animals with rotting hands walking on their elbows. I mean, just really bad. So trying to figure out what this is about, get veterinarians involved, and we finally figure out it's tuberculosis.

[Jad Abumrad]

Turns out some infected meat had been thrown in the dump and then eaten by the baboons. And this was really bad news because while tuberculosis in people is a really.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Slow moving disease, TB kills non human primates in weeks. And it's a nightmare of a disease for them.

[Jad Abumrad]

In just a short time, the garbage dump troop was completely decimated. Not to mention that the tough guys in Sapolsky's troop, the ones that had gone to the dump every morning, they got it too. The same kind of rotting hands, and.

[Robert Sapolsky]

They all die of it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow, that must have been really kind of tragic to witness.

[Robert Sapolsky]

This was not a good period for me. These were my animals. I had grown up with these guys.

[Jad Abumrad]

But, you know, while Sapolsky was heartbroken now that half the alpha males in his troop were dead, he did notice some strange things started to happen. Changes.

[Robert Krulwich]

How did it change?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, grooming. Spiked grooming.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you and I sit on a branch and I take little fleas out of your fur.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. Well, you know, usually when a female grooms a male, the males never reciprocate. But suddenly they were even weirder.

[Robert Sapolsky]

You saw adult males sitting in contact with each other and grooming each other.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ooh, you know how rare that is. Be like if suddenly, in the middle of round five of A heavyweight bout. Mike Tyson just decided to stop boxing.

[Robert Krulwich]

And nuzzle his opponent, Gorcombe.

[Jad Abumrad]

Evander Holyfield's hair. It would be like that if you're a baboon.

[Robert Sapolsky]

It would have been less shocking if these guys had wings or were photosynthetic or something. Up to then, I had seen like 30 seconds of male, male grooming in the course of 15 years.

[Jad Abumrad]

But at the time Sapolsky kind of wrote it off, this was just some freak event that wasn't going to last. So he actually stopped studying them even.

[Robert Krulwich]

After that big investment of time.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Scientifically, they were ruined by such a non natural event, removing half the study subjects.

[Jad Abumrad]

As a scientist, it became less interesting to you.

[Robert Sapolsky]

That was the rationale. It was just too painful to go and watch these guys. So I moved to the other end of the reserve, about 40 miles away and started with a new troop there. And for six years I would not go anywhere near this corner of the park because I just didn't want to be there.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, fast forward six years and we come to the moment that really changed things for him. Really flipped him into a different way of thinking. And it happened kind of by accident.

[Robert Sapolsky]

So about six years later, out there for the first time with who was soon destined to become my wife and decided I wanted to kind of show her where I had grown up. What part of the park?

[Jad Abumrad]

Ah, you wanted to go to the Old Haunt.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah, basically. So went there and the troupe was.

[Jad Abumrad]

There and they were acting pretty much the same as before. Lots of grooming, not so much fighting.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And isn't that nice? And there's still like this gray remnant.

[Jad Abumrad]

Troupe and he's sitting there with his wife, just pointing out all the different baboons. Oh, there's T Va and there's. I don't know, whoever. And then it hits him, this epiphany.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Whatever.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait a second.

[Robert Sapolsky]

There was only one male left. We'd been there at the time of the TB outbreak.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dun, dun, dun.

[Robert Krulwich]

I don't follow this. What? One male.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stick with me for just one second and you will get it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

The thing about male baboons, first thing you gotta understand, is around puberty, the males get a little antsy, they get.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Itchy, they're bored and they just pick up and leave. So in a troop, any of the adult males grew up someplace else, which.

[Jad Abumrad]

Meant that these new guys that were coming into Sapolsky's troop were coming in from the outside, from the old world order.

[Robert Sapolsky]

The jerky, real dog eat dog world out there.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you gotta figure These new males are coming in with old expectations that they're gonna have to kick ass to be respected, which would mean that this whole Kumbaya situation should evaporate the moment these guys show up. But it didn't. It stuck.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Oh, my God. The new guys are learning. We don't do stuff like that here.

[Jad Abumrad]

And if the new guys are learning a new way, well, that means the old way, the violent way, isn't the only way.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And this floored me. It was one of those moments. It will be one of the three or four best science moments in my life. The key question was, how do these guys unlearn their entire childhood culture of aggression, blah, blah, and somehow learn we don't do stuff like that around here?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well. Well, what?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, how do they unlearn something that was supposedly built in?

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, well, he doesn't really know exactly. Oh, but, but, but, but. Here's Sapolsky's hunch. Here's his hunch, and this is really cool. It may have to do with that precarious moment when the new guy comes in. Now, normally what happens in this sort of status quo is that the new guy arrives and it's just a really bad experience for him.

[Robert Sapolsky]

It's awful. I mean, you look at them and you just identify with, like, freshman year at. They're completely peripheral. Every male who's higher ranking dumps on them.

[Jad Abumrad]

And even worse, this freshman baboon is completely ignored by the ladies.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And you just sit there and say, somebody groom him. My God, I went till sophomore year until somebody groom him. Come on.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why don't they groom him?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Well, because if they did, some adult male would have attacked them.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the ladies hang back while he's out there biting and clawing and trying to scratch his way in. What you've got here is a cycle that has existed for a long, long time. But if you make one small change, just remove the alpha male, take him out of the equation.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Suddenly, the females are more relaxed and more likely to take a social gamble of reaching out to somebody new. The key thing is the females.

[Jad Abumrad]

Polski thinks that it's all about timing. If the females can get to the new guy early enough, everything is different.

[Robert Sapolsky]

It's remarkable. In your typical troop, it's three months on the average before the first female grooms you. In this troop, six days.

[Jad Abumrad]

Get out. Six days as compared to three months?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah. In a world in which, from day one, as an adolescent male, you're treated better, something about the aggressiveness melts away.

[Robert Krulwich]

The thing, though, is Jad that before we get too carried away, we do have to ask the question just how permanent this change is, as nice as it is. So I explained this whole story that you've just told to a professor at Harvard named Richard Wrangham.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yep.

[Richard Wrangham]

Professor Wrangham is here.

[Robert Krulwich]

He's an evolutionary biologist, studies chimps particularly. So I asked him. Well, okay, you've heard the story about the baboons. Oreoth.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Richard Wrangham]

No. It's a nice example of the potential for some change. Clearly, we should put boundaries on it. You know, lots of baboons have been studied across Africa, and this sort of example has never been found in a natural context.

[Robert Krulwich]

But I think, aren't these guys wild baboons that just happened upon a garbage dump?

[Richard Wrangham]

Yeah, it's just not a very natural context to have humans provide food that leads to several males dying.

[Robert Krulwich]

But that means that I could imagine going on a helicopter all over Africa, shooting all the alpha males, and then giving all the ladies a chance to create a different baboon culture. And me. What I guess I'm wondering is, do you think in an absurd situation like that, that the baboonery might change its essential nature?

[Richard Wrangham]

I don't think it'll change its essential nature. I can see that there can be a cultural influence that may last a little bit of time, but the larger influence clearly is the set of. Of genes that produce a particular kind of brain. A baboon is basically a baboon until you get some kind of genetic change. And that is something that Sapolsky has not seen there.

[Robert Krulwich]

So Professor Wrangham wants a genetic change to make sure that this is really real, permanent.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. But here's the thing. I don't know if this constitutes a genetic change, but it has been 20 years.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, 20 years. And Sapolsky's original baboon troop is still operating in this peaceful mode, even though dozens of new males have come and gone at this point. And the idea that something that was thought to be so unchangeable could change and change quickly and then stay changed as a result of something so airy and undefinable is culture. Well, that has caused Robert Sapolsky, dare I say it, to hope.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Absolutely. And it's not something that I do by. By nature.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're not a hopeful guy by nature? No, not at all. In fact, this story got him so hopeful, he decided to send it to Foreign affairs magazine, which is a magazine read by a lot of politicians.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah. And they went for it.

[Jad Abumrad]

And so we had to ask him after it was published.

[Robert Krulwich]

Did anyone write you back?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Um, no, basically not. I basically heard nothing from anyone.

[Robert Krulwich]

Nothing from anyone?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yes. Big yawning silence. I. I'm sure George Bush and Chaney read it each evening and tremble at its implications, but no, basically, as far as I can tell, it was a huge waste of time for me to write it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Ah, well, we read it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Thanks. My mother didn't even.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right, so six or seven years have passed, as we've mentioned, and so we decided that it was only right for us to catch up with Robert Sapolsky. Hello. Well, hello. Hi. Is the person next to you taping? Yeah.

[Robert Sapolsky]

No, we're trying to close a window here to decrease some noise, just to close this one.

[Robert Krulwich]

We found him in a very odd place, actually, for a baboon scientist.

[Robert Sapolsky]

In the library of a middle school with a bunch of kids outside.

[Robert Krulwich]

How did that happen?

[Robert Sapolsky]

My wife now directs the musical theater productions, so somehow I'm playing piano as a rehearsal pianist at this school.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's the musical?

[Robert Sapolsky]

We are doing Oliver this year.

[Richard Wrangham]

Really?

[Robert Krulwich]

Anyway, this has nothing to do with anything. We should. Okay. So, anyway, so I told Robert that we talked to Richard Wrangham, reminded him that Wrangham says, no, no, baboons are hardwired to be a certain way and circumstance is never going to change them in the end.

[Aaron Scott]

Yep.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Well, he and I, this isn't the first time we've disagreed, and I think.

[Robert Krulwich]

We probably had a we shall see sort of finish. So what have we seen since you last talked to us?

[Robert Sapolsky]

So what's been happening?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, what's been happening? Well, he says, well, there were a few possibilities here.

[Robert Sapolsky]

There's one scenario where it could have turned into exactly what was being predicted there, which was that the troop would go back to being a typical, highly aggressive baboon troop. The other possibility is the one that I was always, like, dreaming of, which is, so you're a kid who's grown up in that troop, and you've grown up on the commune there, and along comes puberty, and it's time for you to pick up and you move to a different troop. And what happens when the kids who grew up in this baboon culture switched to other troops?

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, Sapolsky admits that if just one baboon from the Nice troupe went off to join the Meanies, he'd probably get his ass kicked. But he thinks that if you get two nice baboons together, they make a little bit of a team, and it would be kind of like a critical mass of niceness. That just might spread and turn all the other guys nice in principle.

[Robert Sapolsky]

This, like, great, unique Pacific culture in these baboons could be transmissible in theory.

[Jad Abumrad]

Love that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, well, don't leave us hanging. What has happened?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Okay, so what actually happened is pretty damn grim.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, did they go back to being mean in some sense?

[Robert Krulwich]

It's really worse than that. You remember how this whole thing begins? Because there's a troop next to Sapolsky's troop, and they've been eating garbage in a garbage dump, right? Well, eventually Sapolsky's troop, because now the garbage dump is open and available, they went over there and began living at.

[Robert Sapolsky]

The tourist lodge and just living off of garbage.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now they just sort of squat with.

[Robert Sapolsky]

The garbage and essentially stopped functioning as a coherent troop.

[Robert Krulwich]

So this question of will they all become nice baboons eventually, or will they all revert back to being mean baboons? That got totally trumped by the garbage situation. There was so much food to eat for these baboons, and it came so free and so available that the natural business of baboonery just broke down.

[Robert Sapolsky]

A lot of the males wound up being killed by game park rangers there because, as per usual with this sort of thing, they got dangerous to the humans there because they got too habituated to humans. So lots of males were killed. The rest of the troop is just sort of fragmented. So I never got to find out what would happen in the long run.

[Jad Abumrad]

Because the garbage got in the way again.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yep, exactly.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Soren Wheeler, our senior editor.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, so the troubling thing here for me is that, you know, there was a traditional baboon culture, which was violent and hierarchical. There was this hint of a hope of a different baboon culture, which was grooming and happiness. And we had a question about which one of those two would spread or last. But the truth is, they ran into some junk food, and then they have no culture.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Exactly.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which I hate to say it, that sounds depressingly like America.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah. And there's bunches of them still there, I'm sure, as we speak. Actually, not as we speak, but 10 hours from now, they'll be waddling over to get some leftovers. They're probably not missing the culture that they had, but, yeah, those were my guys. I had my last season out there four years ago and haven't been back since.

[Robert Krulwich]

You know, it sounds like you need some. A little, you know, a little picker upper. To quote the artful. I don't know who's. We would do anything for you Anything we would climb a hill, Wear a daffodil. So just so you know, leave you all our will.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Oh, God, that's. I just managed to get that stupid song out of my head from the rehearsal earlier today. Thanks a lot.

[Jad Abumrad]

Would you climb a hill?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Anything?

[Jad Abumrad]

Wear a daffodil, Anything.

[Robert Krulwich]

We'll be right back.

[Jad Abumrad]

My name is Julie Rogers and I'm calling from a nice walk on the streets of Oakland. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information About [e-mail]. radiolab is sponsored by omgs.com There is new research on pleasure that's actually fascinating and the site OMG yes makes it accessible to everyone. OMG yes shares finding from the largest ever study into women's pleasure and intimacy. In partnership with researchers at Yale and Indiana University. They asked tens of thousands of couples what they wished they'd discovered sooner. They found the patterns in those discoveries. And all that wisdom and pleasure and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, animations and how tos on OMG yes.com and guess what? Half of OMGS users are men. Hooray for generous lovers.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right?

[Jad Abumrad]

You'll find specific research backed techniques. It's the science of sexual generosity in action. See what they discovered [e-mail] that's OMG yes.com.

[Aaron Scott]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Stay tuned for a trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Sapolsky]

I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and.

[Jad Abumrad]

Founder of the Honl Foundation.

[Stu Rasmussen]

I wanted to let you know about.

[Jad Abumrad]

A brand new season of the Planet.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

[Stu Rasmussen]

This is the podcast exploring bold ideas.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And big solutions from the people leading the way in conservation. Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologists and.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Photographs Christina Mittermeier, and one of the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Most successful conservations of our time, Chris Tompkins.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Join us on Planet Visionaries wherever you get your podcasts.

[Aaron Scott]

Hey, it's Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio. Sounds like I'm bragging, and I am. We're the number one most downloaded food podcast in America. You know, Milk Street Radio travels the world in search of the very best food stories you'll hear about smuggling eels on the black market, the secret intelligence of plants, and insider tips to eating in Paris. And every week listeners call in with their toughest culinary mysteries. Discover a world of Food stories by searching your podcast app for Milk Street Radio.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krolwit.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

Our topic today, choice and human destiny.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, with the way we are, is.

[Robert Krulwich]

That the way we're gonna stay?

[Jad Abumrad]

Ah, very nicely put.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. In the last section we were talking about baboons and their propensity to serious change, which is a maybe or a maybe not. We don't really know.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, we'll know in a thousand years.

[Robert Krulwich]

But let's switch our ape. We'll go to Oregonians, which is a rare subsect of human beings to set it up.

[Jad Abumrad]

We were thinking a lot about small groups on this show, you know, because that's what we are. We are small group primates. That's the phrase that's sometimes used to describe us humans. And it's a phrase that can carry some negative connotations, as in we evolved in these small groups, so we are predisposed to be small minded. No, small is not always a bad thing. I'm gonna tell you a story now. This is a small group story. It's just as a warning. Contains a moment or two that's a tiny bit graphic, but we hope you'll stick with it because it's a really cool story. Takes place in a small town, like really small. The kind of town where you can.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Dial the wrong number and still have.

[Jad Abumrad]

A conversation because you know everybody. So tell me where we are and.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Beautiful downtown Silverton, essentially. Our downtown has not changed since the late 40s, early 50s.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, yes, it has, but we'll get to that. This is Stu Rasmussen. He is our main character. A little while back, Stu gave myself and producer Aaron Scott a tour.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Movie theater on the corner, the old hardware store on this corner.

[Jad Abumrad]

A tour of his favorite place on earth, Silverton, Oregon, which is about 40 miles from Portland. About 40 years from Portland, actually.

[Stu Rasmussen]

You know, it's the town I grew up in. And this is my image for what I want Silverton to be. You know, I rode my bicycle down this street and came to the hardware store to. We're doing good, Vince. How are you?

[Jad Abumrad]

Does that happen to you a lot? People just honk and wave all the time.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Oh, yeah, it's a small town.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Everybody knows me.

[Jad Abumrad]

If it were up to Stew, this town would never change. It would stay frozen in that quaint, Norman Rockwell candy coated image from his boyhood. The weird thing though, is that that image in his head would probably never have included a guy like Stu. At least Stu as he is now. And if this is a show about change, here is a story about a pretty radical bit of change. Where you wouldn't expect to find it. Speaking of which, can you describe where we are and what we're looking at?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, we're standing in front of the Palace Theater on the corner corner of Oaken Water Street.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is one of those Gone with the Wind theaters with the big marquee and the bulb lights and everything.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Built in 1935 and in continuous operation ever since.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stu pulls out some keys and opens it up. He suggested that we do the interview here in the town's only theater. Even smells like a Gilded Age theater, which at 1pm still smelled like popcorn from the previous night and was filled with nothing but 200 empty red velvet seats.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Not what you expect in a small town theater.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, this is beautiful. Are you going to go ahead and turn the lights off?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. See you later.

[Richard Wrangham]

Okay.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

We plopped ourselves right here. What do you think? Best seats in the house. Right in the middle. Let's sit and pretend we're watching the movie of your life.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, there's a dull movie.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hardly. So the movie of stu begins in 1975. He's 27 and he's in a theater.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Just like this seminal moment in my life was when the Rocky Horror Picture show came out.

[Jad Abumrad]

Stu is in the projectionist booth because that's his job. He's changing the reels. And at some point during one of the musical numbers, he glances at the.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Screen and it was like, oh, what was the O? Here was this movie with a guy in drag on screen. He's a sweet transvestite. Transsexual. Transylvania. Those are words that I've never heard. I watched that again and again.

[Jad Abumrad]

Fast forward 10 years. Stu now owns the theater just like his dad had before him. He's an upstanding member of the town. He's on the Silverton City Council, then on the library board. And then he starts to transform. And everyone will tell you it began with the nails.

[Stu Rasmussen]

I think I probably started having my nails done in 94 or 95. And started out with very masculine nails without polish and square ends. And then slowly grew them out. Then I went into what I considered a masculine nail color of blue.

[Jad Abumrad]

And then he says he gradually started to paint them red. Then he put acrylic tips, which got longer and longer.

[Stu Rasmussen]

This was the first test of the community. Hello, Laurie.

[Jad Abumrad]

Good evening, sir.

[Stu Rasmussen]

How are you?

[Robert Krulwich]

How are you?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Because I would be at the theater taking tickets.

[Jad Abumrad]

Can I have Two tickets. He'd be dressed, as usual in his plaid shirt and jeans, and his hand.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Would come out for their ticket, and.

[Robert Krulwich]

What in the hell are those?

[Stu Rasmussen]

You can't miss it.

[Robert Krulwich]

And, you know, he had long fingernails.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Dennis Bean, longtime Silvertonian. One time when I had to give him my ticket. And that's Megan DeSalvo. She's 17. And he ripped it and. And, like, his nails, like, went down the palm of my hand and just gave me the chills.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah, I think probably his nails were the first thing most people noticed.

[Jad Abumrad]

Kyle Palmer, veterinarian and city councilman, born.

[Stu Rasmussen]

And raised here in Silverton.

[Jad Abumrad]

Was there talk? Was it. I mean, people sitting.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Oh, definitely talk. But it happened so gradually, which is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Something you hear again and again. It happened gradually.

[Stu Rasmussen]

You know, first it was the nails, and then at some point in time, he changed the focus of. Of the movie theater and was really making a game attempt to get new releases down in the theater.

[Jad Abumrad]

And frequently, you know, when there was a theme kind of movie, he would get into costume. My name is Ken Hector, former mayor of Silverton, Oregon. And very often the costume would be female attire. This was step two of Stu's very careful transition. According to everyone we spoke with for years, after the nails, he would, quote, promote that week's movie by dressing up.

[Stu Rasmussen]

One of the new Star wars movies was out, and it wasn't a coincidence he was dressed as Queen Amidala.

[Jad Abumrad]

Come back, I love you, whatever name.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Is from the movie.

[Jad Abumrad]

Years ago, remember some years ago, there.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Was a movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's John Bock, also a lifelong Silvertonian.

[Robert Sapolsky]

That whole day, he wandered around town.

[Jad Abumrad]

In a wedding dress, complete with a veil.

[Stu Rasmussen]

That, of course, got everybody talking.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, a lot of people laughed.

[Stu Rasmussen]

About it, and at first, I don't think people put it together with, this is Linda Webb.

[Jad Abumrad]

She's a registered nurse.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Sexuality, transgender, or any of those things. I think we thought he was just dressing up to go along with his. Yeah. With his movies. There was clearly a. Let's go by the movie theater tonight, because we've got to know what Stu's wearing.

[Jad Abumrad]

For Stu, this was just the beginning of something. He was. He wasn't just clowning around. When did your gender complexities begin?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Probably 14 or 15, I think. I was a shy young man and interfacing with girls. My mother was a bit strange on. On that in that girls were evil and they would. No girl was good enough for her son, and da, da, da, da, da.

[Jad Abumrad]

So did you date at all.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Not until I was out of high school.

[Jad Abumrad]

So girls were kind of scary, it sounds like.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Oh, girls were scary. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

While everybody else went on dates, he says he would build computers from scratch. And even today, in his basement, you'll find an entire electrical shop. Oh, my God.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Fun stuff. RF generator, spectrum analyzer, logic analyzer, other logic analyzer.

[Jad Abumrad]

In any case, Stu says the best that he can explain himself gender wise, is just to say that when he looks in the mirror, he likes himself better when he's dressed as a woman.

[Stu Rasmussen]

I don't know how to describe it. It's just. I can't understand it. I mean, some people like to dress up and look like a cowboy or lumberjack, whatever. You know, it's your mental image of yourself that you look in the mirror and you like.

[Jad Abumrad]

So after the nails, after dozens of episodes of socially acceptable cross dressing, Stu took the next step. He began to perform some experiments. Like, he would go to the lumber yard just to get some.

[Stu Rasmussen]

A couple of pounds of nails or something.

[Jad Abumrad]

All the while, he would be wearing a padded bra under his flannel shirt just to see what would happen. So this for you was like a test? It was like a calculated test to.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Gauge if it was possible if I could survive with breasts.

[Jad Abumrad]

So when he was 52, he drove into Portland, visited a doctor who put him to sleep. And the doctors made two small incisions.

[Stu Rasmussen]

One under each breast, about an inch and a half or two inches long.

[Jad Abumrad]

And they pulled back the skin on each side, slid in an uninflated balloon.

[Stu Rasmussen]

And then pumped it up with water until the skin was stretched to the point that it was almost transparent.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hmm, that sounds very painful. Was it?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, I was asleep at the time.

[Jad Abumrad]

But when he woke up, he was a different man because he now had several pounds of new stuff hanging off his chest. What were you thinking at that moment?

[Stu Rasmussen]

I was thinking, what happened? Have I done? It was like, there's no going back. I can remember being in Mac's place downtown at a table, and he was coming across the street with his breasts prominently showing. And it was the first time any of us realized that he had actually had surgery. And one lady was going, look, look. And the other lady was going, don't look, don't look.

[Jad Abumrad]

You'd see Stu going across the street.

[Robert Sapolsky]

And, oh, my God, look at stuff. My God, what is he doing?

[Stu Rasmussen]

It just sort of shocking.

[Robert Krulwich]

There was a buzz around town.

[Jad Abumrad]

Was it a situation where he'd walk by and then heads would turn, hushed voices would ensue? Yes, basically this is Victoria Sage, Stu's longtime girlfriend. They've been together for 36 years. So we would be walking in our local Goodwill, and we'd be a few aisles away from each other, and I would hear, that used to be Stu Rasmussen. Like he had changed somehow. Stu's just trying to fulfill that body image he's got in his head, but he's also going to, in a way, ask you to adjust your body image of your mate. Has that been difficult?

[Robert Krulwich]

Hmm?

[Stu Rasmussen]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. No, I'm sorry. If you want to get kinky about it, a man with tiny is kind of cool, huh? Okay. Did. Was there ever any concern?

[Stu Rasmussen]

There was for me, not so much.

[Jad Abumrad]

For Stu, I think, partly because he didn't hear as many whispers as I felt I did. But I was concerned for the theater business. Not without reason. A lot of kids in the town stopped coming to the theater because their parents wouldn't let them. Ticket sales took a hit, and it wasn't long before pickup trucks full of teenage boys would drive by the theater yelling slurs. Oh, I don't know that I go so far as well. Yeah, I guess. I guess faggot is a slur. I guess. So you get to this point in the sped up movie narrative of Stu, this point right here, where even though he took it so slowly and was so careful, it's still easy to imagine things turning ugly.

[Stu Rasmussen]

I don't know. What was that movie about the boy that was, you know, drug and beat to death because he was gay in a small town in the Midwest? You know what a boy's name?

[Jad Abumrad]

Matthew Shepard.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Might be a little extreme, but according to Linda Webb, Silverton's not so different from Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard lived. It's a small town, very traditional, very conservative.

[Stu Rasmussen]

You know, you got a lot of rednecks in Silverton.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's how Dennis Bean puts it. So it's not crazy to expect the worst. But here's the surprise and the whole reason we came here to Silverton. The worst did not happen. There was no redneck rebellion. In fact, the opposite happened. Something historic.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Repeat after me.

[Jad Abumrad]

Aye. Aye. On January 5, 2009, the town of Silverton elected Stu mayor of the city.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Of Silverton, Marion County, Oregon.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Congratulation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Clinton has elected the nation's first openly transgender mayor.

[Stu Rasmussen]

The nation's first openly transgender mayor.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, change is definitely in the air this election. Take Stu Rasmussen, for example.

[Stu Rasmussen]

As openly transgender as he runs his hometown in heels.

[Jad Abumrad]

Speaking of heels, this is in fact the sound of Stu's 4 inch heels pounding on linoleum as he goes to a city council meeting.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Hello, Harold.

[Jad Abumrad]

How are you?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Couldn't be better. How are you?

[Jad Abumrad]

Good. Now, call us, you know, city elitist or whatever, but a mayor in a plunging V neck sweater and a black miniskirt. Not what you would expect in a tiny, conservative Republican town. So we wanted to know, why did this happen here? So producer Aaron Scott and I walked around town for a couple days and we. We interviewed dozens of people, including, gentlemen, a guy named Ken Hector, who Stu beat out for mayor. He's a conservative Republican, definitely not one of Stu's big fans. It was just a difference in philosophy about. I don't want to sound pretentious, but, you know, as a mayor, I think there's certain expectations about professionalism that you should exhibit. He would come in with a tight clinging top with cleavage down to here. You're almost pointing at your belly button there. A little bit higher. Come on. You know, when you're at the council meeting, show some dignity here and just dress in the appropriate attire for the occasion. Ken even tried to get the city council to impose a dress code on Stu. But when we asked him, you know, are you surprised that the town has embraced Stu and even gone so far as to elect a mayor? He said, no, not in this case. You know, Stu's a rarity in that. You know, there's a lot of people in this town who are extremely religious, very conservative people. Were it a stranger who came into town suddenly, I'm sure the support and perception might have been different. But you're talking about a native son who grew up here. And he said, look, Stu runs the only theater in town. So he's out there every weekend standing out in front of the Palace Theater taking tickets. So everybody knows him. Not only that, back in the day, he used to be the cable guy. So he's literally been in everybody's home. He's still the guy you call if you have trouble with your computer. So it might sound strange to you, but it's really not. And that is when it hit me, actually, under the right circumstances, a small town can be like the most progressive place on earth. And it's exactly because everyone's all up in your grill. You were forced to know people. Like, for instance, how long have you known Stu?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Oh, my goodness. I grew up with Stu. I mean, we. I remember when Stu was like an.

[Jad Abumrad]

Altar boy at the church with my brother. This is Susie Simas, a retired teacher.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah, his parents and my parents were.

[Jad Abumrad]

Friends, like a Lot of folks in Silverton. She has known Stu for so long and in so many different contexts that you can't do that New York thing with him where, like, you see someone on the sidewalk and you size him up instantly and think, eh, freak. No, to her, he's way too complicated for that, you know? To her, he's Stu the altar boy. Stu the computer geek. Yeah, I probably would call him a geek. Stu the city councilman. Stu the mayor. Or it's just Stu. Just Stu.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Just Stu.

[Jad Abumrad]

Whatever.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's him, you know.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Go on about your business.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, to be clear, a lot of the people we talk to inspect. Some of the same folks who said, yes, dudes just do, are still not happy about this situation.

[Stu Rasmussen]

No, I mean, I don't think God's a cross dresser.

[Jad Abumrad]

They either felt it was morally wrong, as in the case of this minister, Tom Smith. And Genesis 1:27 says, so God created man in his own image. Or some folks, like Linda Webb's husband John, just felt like he takes it way too far.

[Robert Sapolsky]

It's right there. It's in your face.

[Robert Krulwich]

He dresses kind of like a street walker.

[Stu Rasmussen]

You feel that that's confrontational.

[Robert Krulwich]

I do.

[Jad Abumrad]

But most of the people who had objections it was a little more nuanced and went something like this.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, I personally did not vote for.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Him for mayor because I didn't feel it was a good idea to have someone that looked like that representing us.

[Jad Abumrad]

But on the other hand, he is.

[Robert Sapolsky]

A good man and he's got this town at heart.

[Jad Abumrad]

In other words, according to John Bock, the problem really isn't Stu or the town. It's the outside. All those people out there who are going to hear about Stu and then judge them. Which is what makes November 25, 2008, such an interesting day. Stu had just been elected mayor. He'd squeaked it out by about 400 votes, but he hadn't yet been sworn in when a group of Christian extremists from Kansas showed up in town and started marching up and down Main street yelling at people. And at one point, they even unfurled an American flag, put it on the ground and stepped on it just to show how offensive they found Stu.

[Robert Sapolsky]

It's our duty to come out here.

[Jad Abumrad]

And preach to everyone. The man is disgusting.

[Robert Sapolsky]

These folks hate Stu because they will not by any means warn him about.

[Jad Abumrad]

The sin that's taken him to hell.

[Stu Rasmussen]

So unpleasant. And then bringing up Sonic that say things like, God hates Silverton. God hates your mayor. God hates fags, Your pastor is a whore.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's an abomination for a man to put on a woman's clothes and to be the opposite sex. A few folks from the town decided to start a counter protest.

[Robert Sapolsky]

We stood across the street from these.

[Jad Abumrad]

People, by and large, just a few guys at first. Now, earlier, someone had suggested all the.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Guys ought to dress up as girls and all the girls ought to dress up as guys.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yossi Davidson said his initial reaction was, yeah, right, but there he was in a dress. I admit it.

[Stu Rasmussen]

But that really actually was the first.

[Jad Abumrad]

Time he says that. At first, he and the two or three other guys who had on women's clothing felt a little weird, but then people just don't.

[Stu Rasmussen]

It was just amazing.

[Robert Krulwich]

Of a couple of hundred people, I mean, men dressed like women, women dressed like men.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Some of the people that I saw down there were surprising to me because I had labeled them in my head as conservative. And people would drive by, people with signs. God loves Sultan, God loves Stu, with costumes.

[Robert Krulwich]

The town was really alive, and the.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Crowd just kept getting bigger and bigger.

[Jad Abumrad]

What were you thinking at that moment? From what I understand, you were standing off to the side just watching what was going through your mind.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah, well, honestly, I tried to discourage people from even giving them the time of day, saying, don't give them any attention. I couldn't get that to happen. They were so angry. They came out 200 people, men in dresses, grandmother's babies. It's just amazing. And that was the town that wasn't me. Sorry, I get a little emotional.

[Jad Abumrad]

That must have been a turning point for you.

[Stu Rasmussen]

The biggest one. Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

Props to Aaron Scott, who did a huge chunk of the reporting for that piece and co produced it with me.

[Robert Krulwich]

We'll be right back.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. So that story was. We did that about six, maybe seven years ago, and it just feels like the world is different now. Like, with regards to transgender issues, even the language we use, I mean, has changed. Back then, we said transgendered, and now we would just say transgender. But with Caitlyn Jenner in the news and all this stuff, we just thought. We wondered, like, how have things changed for Stu in these last six, seven years?

[Robert Krulwich]

So, hello there. Hello.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Long time.

[Robert Krulwich]

We decided to send producer, reporter Aaron Scott back to Silverton to sit down with Stu and with Stu's partner Victoria, just to catch up.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, it's been seven years since. Or will be going on seven years. Six years since we ran the story the first time. What has been going on in your world?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, since the election, that's been about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the first Thing he told me was that he got reelected after two years, and then he was reelected again. And then after six years as mayor, he's. He's now out of the game.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Hallelujah. I am truly enjoying my vacation.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he did tell me that back when this story first aired, things did get kind of nutty.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Well, you know, it's probably the most unusual phone call we've ever received. Victoria and I were sitting at home. The phone rang, and it was a fellow from New York City who said I was bicycling, playing on Manhattan, listening to the original Radio Lab piece, and he thought it would be really fun to do my life story as a musical.

[Jad Abumrad]

I don't know what I feel, but I know it's a big deal. Then they reveal, and he did. That fellow is Andrew Russell. He put on a big production up in Seattle. It got standing ovations.

[Stu Rasmussen]

The most surreal and bizarre experience in my life, sitting in an auditorium with 400 strokes strangers watching, as in song and dance, my life goes by.

[Jad Abumrad]

He can call me she and she.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Can call me he and he can.

[Aaron Scott]

Call me she and she can call.

[Jad Abumrad]

Me he and he can call me he and she can call me she when you refer to me by gender. So there was this musical, which seemed to do pretty well. And then a movie producer called him up and said that he wanted to option Stu's life for a movie. And now Victoria says those whispers that they used to get, those have turned into people wanting autographs or stopping them in the shoe store and saying, aren't you Stu? Aren't you that mayor?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Can I get a picture with you? Well, sure. What's the big deal?

[Jad Abumrad]

But one of the most interesting things for me was that a lot of that attention was at the beginning. These days, Stu says that. That, you know, his transgender issues have grown in the national news and on TV shows. Stu says that back in Silverton, the fact that he's transgender, it's become pretty much passe.

[Stu Rasmussen]

So here we are.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says it's just kind of routine now for him and everyone else. Except he did say there's this one thing every time the story airs or re airs, which it does from time to time.

[Stu Rasmussen]

When it goes, the phone starts ringing, and we can tell where it's from.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says he gets these calls from people who are struggling with their own gender issues or trying to figure out how to come out to their families. And people actually call your home phone?

[Stu Rasmussen]

Yeah, usually anonymously. They won't identify themselves, necessarily, because they're still either closeted or not really ready to come out. But they're saying thank you so much for for being yourself and for telling your story to others so that I can validate my life from that. Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Does that ever get old?

[Robert Sapolsky]

No.

[Stu Rasmussen]

For somebody who was in the position that I was and made the change, and then to have other people either following along or emulating it in one way or another is very gratifying because it validates my life. And that says, well, you weren't a complete waste of time.

[Jad Abumrad]

A lot more than a lot of people get. Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Foreign. Special thanks to producer Annie McKeown for helping us on all the update parts of this show.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, this is Tracy from Changsha, Hunan, China. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Aaron Scott]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of all, protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest Guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical, human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans research, resiliency, empathy and hope. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jad Abumrad]

Radiolab is sponsored by omgs.com There is new research on pleasure that's actually fascinating, and the site OMG yes. Makes it accessible to everyone. OMG yes shares findings from the largest ever study into women's pleasure and intimacy in partnership with researchers at Yale and Indiana University. They asked tens of thousands of couples what they wished they'd discovered sooner. They found the patterns in those discoveries. And all that wisdom and pleasure and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, animations and how tos on omgs.com and guess what? Half of OMGS users are men. Women Hooray for generous lovers, right? You'll find specific research backed techniques. It's the science of sexual generosity in action. See what they discovered today@omg yes.com that's OMG. Yes.com.

[Robert Krulwich]

Are we about to do foxes right now?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, we are.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab. And today we're talking about, well, change really. Or what looks like change.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you remember back to the baboons, when we started this program?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

The question we were asking then was, will those baboons, if they do enough generations, will they create a new culture?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Will it stick?

[Robert Krulwich]

Will it stick?

[Jad Abumrad]

Let's hope.

[Robert Krulwich]

Let's hope. But we don't know. And the town that chooses a mayor, is that town expanding the sense of possibility or is this just a little blip? Let's hope. Yeah, exactly. But now let's get really serious. There are indeed changes that do stick, and we're going to examine a rather startling example of it right now. But to do that, we need an evolutionary biologist, and we found one at Duke University.

[Jad Abumrad]

You guys talk to each other now?

[Aaron Scott]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hello?

[Richard Wrangham]

Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

Who's this?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Brian Hare.

[Aaron Scott]

That's fantastic.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the first thing Brian Hare did was tell me about another guy, Dmitry Belayev, named Dimitri Belayev.

[Aaron Scott]

And Dmitry Belyaev was a very famous geneticist in Russia. He was alive during World War II and doing genetics work.

[Robert Krulwich]

But after World War II, he was in a little spot of trouble.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why? What'd he do?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because he was a real Darwinian. He believed in evolution and genetics.

[Aaron Scott]

But thinking about evolution like a Darwinian evolutionist does, that was not popular in Stalin's Russia.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is popular the word, or was that a death sentence?

[Aaron Scott]

It was a death sentence. So the writing was on the wall. And he knew that he should probably take the Trans Siberian Railroad from Moscow. Quickly, quickly. And he went to Novosibirsk. And the way that Dmitry Belev decided to hide his continued interest in studying Darwinian evolution was he would begin a fox farm where he would make fur coats.

[Robert Krulwich]

So what is Mr. Bialev actually doing?

[Aaron Scott]

What Dr. Belyaev was actually interested in was to understand how does domestication happen?

[Jad Abumrad]

That's his question. That's a dumb question.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, it's not a dumb question at.

[Jad Abumrad]

All, because you just bring the.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, think about a wild animal. It is impulsive, it is aggressive, it growls.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is that, a wolf you're playing there?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's a wolf that I've got there in the background. Now, this is a domesticated version.

[Jad Abumrad]

Good boy. Good boy. Come here, doggy.

[Robert Krulwich]

The nature of the animal has completely changed here. And if you want to Learn something about the nature of a creature, creature, how it can change.

[Aaron Scott]

Domesticated animals are a wonderful place to start. So Belyaev, he decided, why don't I just experimentally domesticate some animals? And his cover was that he was going to make better fur coats.

[Jad Abumrad]

When was this, by the way?

[Aaron Scott]

1959.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay. So Sputnik was up, Russians were feeling good, and he was making fur coats, so to speak.

[Aaron Scott]

So to speak, began one of the most exciting experiments in biology.

[Robert Krulwich]

So here's what Dmitry Belyaev does. He goes to a bunch of fox farmers and he says, okay, I want to buy a bunch of foxes.

[Aaron Scott]

And he says, well, all I got to do is take this group of foxes and break them into two groups. And one group, I'm not going to change them in any way.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay.

[Aaron Scott]

So it's like a control line.

[Jad Abumrad]

So one group is just normal foxes.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Normal.

[Aaron Scott]

But the other line, I'm going to decide who is going to be allowed to breed and who is, unfortunately going to be a fur coat.

[Robert Krulwich]

So some of the foxes get to have puppy foxes of their own, and some foxes become fur.

[Aaron Scott]

So what he did, and the test was marvelously simple.

[Robert Krulwich]

He would go, or one of his.

[Aaron Scott]

Assistants would approach a cage where the fox was kept. A baby fox, sort of a juvenile fox. The experimenter would stand, say, a foot away and would just try to touch the fox.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hi, little fox. Come on. Hi, little fox.

[Jad Abumrad]

Run, fox, run.

[Robert Krulwich]

But if the fox would make this.

[Aaron Scott]

Kind of sound and sort of cower in the corner like most foxes would do.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is that? What's that sound?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's the. That is the sound a fox makes when it's frightened.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. Frightened fox sound, huh?

[Jad Abumrad]

So what happens if it makes that sound?

[Aaron Scott]

Well, they did not breed that fox in the next generation.

[Robert Krulwich]

Or to put it another way, they kill him.

[Aaron Scott]

That pretty much, yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's just wrong.

[Robert Krulwich]

But now, every so often, like, maybe one out of every 20 foxes, there would be a fox that would not run back. Would not.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it wasn't afraid then.

[Aaron Scott]

Then they would choose that fox to breed in the next generation.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yay.

[Robert Krulwich]

And they did this over and over again, generation after generation. They would breed the nice foxes together, get rid of the bad foxes, breed the next set, get rid of the bad foxes. Breeding. Read the next set. Next set. Next set. Next set. Next set.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, right, Right. What happened in the end?

[Aaron Scott]

Well, eventually they had foxes that were attracted to humans.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, Jed, how long do you think it would take to get foxes from being wild, ferocious animals to being animals who would Lick your face.

[Jad Abumrad]

After this, kind of, like, how many years? Exterminating? Breeding?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

After the breeding technique, I would think, well, a long, long time. I mean, I would take, like. Like, how many years?

[Robert Krulwich]

How many years? How many years?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, it took wolves, like, thousands of years to become dogs. I don't know. I mean, a long time.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, here's the. Here's the thing. 10 years is the answer.

[Jad Abumrad]

What?

[Robert Krulwich]

10 years it took. Shut up. Don't tell me to shut up.

[Aaron Scott]

I'm telling you.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's 10 Fox generations.

[Jad Abumrad]

10 years.

[Robert Krulwich]

But now, here's the crazy thing.

[Aaron Scott]

What was exciting and surprising was that these same foxes, they actually show a whole suite of changes that he did not select for on purpose.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like. What do you mean?

[Robert Krulwich]

Physical changes. These foxes, as they became more gentle, for some unaccountable reason, their ears, instead of pointing straight up, flipped over.

[Aaron Scott]

That's right. It was a big accident that they now have floppy ears, the tails on.

[Robert Krulwich]

A fox, which in a wild fox, they're straight now.

[Aaron Scott]

They have curly tails. They have multicolored coats that are no longer just gray.

[Robert Krulwich]

The tips of their paws lose color.

[Aaron Scott]

The teeth get smaller, and their bones became very thin.

[Jad Abumrad]

Their bones got thinner.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Aaron Scott]

Yes. So what happens to the skull and the face is it actually becomes more feminine.

[Robert Krulwich]

The whole animal becomes more delicate and more puppy like.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Wow.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's. I don't know what to make of that.

[Robert Krulwich]

And it's not over. This experiment has been going on. It's now been 50 years. 45,000 foxes later.

[Jad Abumrad]

45,000.

[Robert Krulwich]

And Brian, by the way, who has read about this, said, I gotta see this for myself. So he went to Novosibirsk just to check it out.

[Aaron Scott]

I did. I took the Trans Siberian Railroad, which, you know, two days of looking at green grass, and there's, like, one species of tree, and I think there was a butterfly that was kind of pretty.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was it birch trees that you were looking at? Birch tree, then another birch tree, then another birch tree, then another birch tree. Pretty much another birch tree.

[Aaron Scott]

You got it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Another birch tree.

[Aaron Scott]

You got it. You got it. You got it. So I show up and they had thousands of foxes, giant buildings that are probably, you know, as long as a football field full of just rows and rows of foxes. And when you see them, they actually wag their tail. They whine like a puppy dog. They're cute and cuddly, and they love people and they don't bite. So it sounds perfect, except for the one thing I forgot to tell you is that when they're yapping and Excited to see you. They cannot help but pee for joy.

[Robert Krulwich]

As I do whenever I see you.

[Jad Abumrad]

What I don't understand, though, is it makes sense to me that they're getting nicer because they're breeding them to get nicer. But why is all this other stuff happening to their bodies? What's going on?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, you know, this is the unsatisfactory answer to that problem. Nobody really knows why.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dah.

[Robert Sapolsky]

But, okay, I'm rolling up my end.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is Tecumseh Fitch.

[Robert Sapolsky]

So here's a synchronize sync.

[Robert Krulwich]

An evolutionary biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and he has a notion.

[Robert Sapolsky]

My hypothesis for what's going on here. And this is just a hypothesis, here's.

[Robert Krulwich]

What he told me. You gotta go back to when a fox is a very, very little, itty bitty thing, an embryo inside its mother's womb.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Very, very, very early embryo, like 2 months old.

[Robert Krulwich]

To become a fox that can survive in the world, this little embryo needs to grow strong teeth.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yep.

[Robert Krulwich]

It has to grow fur. Need the fur, has to have bones, strong. Needs to grow glands. It needs to grow hormones. And all of these things that you need as an adult fox, all of.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Them come from the same founder population of cells in an embryo.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow, I didn't know that.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

They're called neural crest cells.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Neural crest cells.

[Robert Krulwich]

When the fox grows these cells, they're.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Doing these epic migrations. These guys are like pineapple that are moving throughout the body and blazing these trails all over the place. Some of them go out into the.

[Robert Krulwich]

Skin, some of them go up into the cartilage of the fox's ears.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Some of them go into the jaw. They form all these different tissues. Teeth, tail, big parts of the nervous.

[Robert Krulwich]

System, major parts of the brain and the adrenal glands.

[Jad Abumrad]

What's the adrenal gland?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, that's the most important one for our purposes. The adrenal gland pumps out when to be afraid. The adrenal glands say, run away. Run away, Run away.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's the thing that makes the fox go. Whatever that sound was.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's the one that makes that sound. So when you're breeding fear out of an animal, maybe what you're doing is you're slowing down the migrations of these cells. They don't deliver the feedback. And if they don't deliver all the other things that they usually do, what.

[Robert Sapolsky]

You'Re focusing on, what you as the experimenter are doing is saying, I want the guys whose adrenal glands don't mature quickly that might have the function of making the animal more tame. But what you're doing as a byproduct of that is selecting for guys who don't get as many of those cells into their ears and don't get as many of those cells into their skin and don't get as many of those cells into their teeth.

[Robert Krulwich]

So if you get some of the cells you need to make your ears firm and straight, but not quite enough, then your ear will go up to a certain point, and since the cells aren't going to complete the deal, the rest of your ear flops over.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah. You haven't completed.

[Jad Abumrad]

Is that why dogs have little floppy ears?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, because the cells have been slowed down to the point where they don't finish the job.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh. They are literally arrested.

[Aaron Scott]

Bingo. And the argument is that actually when you select against aggression in animals, you're changing the timing and the rate of development such that the experimental foxes are actually frozen as juveniles. They actually never really grow up.

[Robert Krulwich]

So then to domesticate a fox, just like to domesticate a wolf into a dog, what you're doing is you're making them permanent puppies. It's a Peter Pan kind of thing.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So if we wanted to apply this to us, and we wanted to say breed a gentler, sleeker human being.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

We should just kill the football players, Is that the idea?

[Robert Krulwich]

What do you mean, kill the football? You don't have something against football players?

[Jad Abumrad]

No, actually I like football, but I mean, like with the foxes, you just eliminate the meaning.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, the. Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Would the same thing happen to us?

[Robert Krulwich]

That's where it gets really interesting. Remember the professor we interviewed a few hours back, Richard Wrangham, Vividly.

[Richard Wrangham]

Well, when we think about humans, obviously we're getting just super speculative, but he.

[Robert Krulwich]

Says if you choose to go back.

[Richard Wrangham]

If we go back just 30,000, 50,000.

[Robert Krulwich]

Years, and you look at the collection of skulls, the early versions of us from way back, you see some interesting fox like changes.

[Richard Wrangham]

Well, if you look at domesticated animals, they have smaller teeth than their wild ancestors. And in humans, we've been getting smaller teeth over the last few tens of thousands of years. Just like the foxes, we've been getting more gracile bones. That means to say that for a particular length of limb bone, it becomes a little bit narrower, just like the fox. So it is tempting to think that the same kind of process has been going on in humans as has been going on in domesticated animals, which is that there has been natural selection in favor of a kinder, gentler human.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wait, A second though, who's doing the selecting? In the case of the foxes, Mr. Byalov shot you if you were too aggressive. Who's selecting the. Who's domesticating the humans?

[Richard Wrangham]

Well, one idea that has been specifically suggested is that it was the growing tendency for our hunter gatherer ancestors to settle down in stable camps.

[Jad Abumrad]

You mean like summer camps? Like sing songs around the fire?

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm talking about communities. Look, if you are in a very small family group, well, then it pays to be big and strong and mean. Because if you're the biggest guy and you meet a smaller guy and he's got some potential, you grab him, eat his potatoes, beat him up, and then move on to the next hill, you never have to see him again. But let's say that as time passes, human society grows a little bit. You form camps, we might have 30 or 40 people. That way you can build bigger fires and you can catch more bunnies and you can defend against enemies. But in this world, if you beat everybody up, you may not survive that.

[Robert Sapolsky]

One pitted against anybody else one on one, the big, strong, mean guy is generally gonna win. When big, strong mean doesn't win, and we see this in some primates, is when you can start to form coalitions, when you can start to have multiple.

[Jad Abumrad]

Individuals who say, hey, mean guy, stop it.

[Robert Sapolsky]

Yeah, you're bigger than any one of us, but you can't take on both of us or all three of us or our whole group.

[Richard Wrangham]

Now we've got other males in the community who aren't going to go away. And they say, okay, we've got to deal with this guy. And maybe they deal with him by shouting him down, ostracizing him, or even capital punishment.

[Robert Krulwich]

And Richard Wrangham's theory is that if that happens enough times to enough bullies who then can't have kids and spread their genes because they have the unfortunate condition of being dead, then we've essentially.

[Richard Wrangham]

Bred out the more aggressive genes or.

[Robert Krulwich]

We have domesticated our.

[Robert Sapolsky]

We're really talking about groups versus individuals here. And so in a sense, I think we're really talking about the beginning of society and a kind of rule of law in the way that we think of it today.

[Robert Krulwich]

And this pressure to be a little more gentle and to be a little bit more cooperative. This hasn't gone away.

[Robert Sapolsky]

I think, if anything, we're being selected to work together more, to be able to tolerate being packed in even tighter. If you put 20 chimps on a jet plane and tried to send them across the Atlantic, let me tell you that only one or two would walk off that plane alive. We do this all the time. We take it for granted as human beings that big groups of people can get along with one another.

[Richard Wrangham]

I do think that it's reasonable to imagine that humans have a future of increasing self domestication.

[Robert Krulwich]

What I sense you proposing is that as the earth gets more crowded, all the creatures on earth, at least sentient creatures, have to start learning to live with each other a little more because they keep bumping into each other. The winners will be the domesticated ones. Everyone will get more empathetic to each other because that's the only way you survive. And we get gentler and gentler and gentler till lambs literally lie down with lions.

[Richard Wrangham]

You said it beautifully.

[Robert Krulwich]

But do you, do you believe it?

[Richard Wrangham]

Well, we may have to go through one or two ups and downs before we get there. And of course there's something slightly alarming about the fact that one possible mechanism by which domestication has happened in humans is through literally execution of the more aggressive types. But in the long term, sure, let's hope that all of us become more.

[Jad Abumrad]

Floppy eared.

[Richard Wrangham]

More floppy eared?

[Robert Sapolsky]

Exactly.

[Richard Wrangham]

Little white patches on the ends of our tails.

[Robert Krulwich]

Remember when we started working together and how mean I was?

[Stu Rasmussen]

You have.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh my God. We've domesticated you.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes, you have.

[Stu Rasmussen]

Domesticated.

[Jad Abumrad]

I've noticed your ears have been looking a little different recently. Show me your teeth. Smile. Anyhow, we should go to break or not break. We should just go to the big break, which is the break that exists between us and everything else.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes, let's listen to the way we end it all. Bye.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi, this is Emma Jacobs, outgoing Radiolab intern. Radiolab is produced by Chad Abumrad. Our staff includes Soren Wheeler, Michael Raphael, Ellen Horn and Lulu Miller, with help from Adina Ryan, Emma Jacobs and Elsa Chang. Special thanks to Bill Hare.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Brian Hare's father. To Aaron Scott, Ann Hepperman, Dr. Anna Kukova, Dr. Irina Plaina and Chris Lehman.