The Power of Adaptability with Herman Pontzer

Summary

StarTalk Radio: The Power of Adaptability with Herman Pontzer Episode Released: July 25, 2025

Hosts:

• Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astrophysicist and Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium
• Chuck Nice – Comic Co-host
• Gary O'Reilly – Comic Co-host

Guest:

• Herman Pontzer – Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health at Duke University's Global Health Institute, renowned researcher in human energetics, and author of Burn (2022) and Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Biology Unites Us (2025).

---

1. Introduction to Human Adaptability and Diversity

The episode kicks off with an engaging discussion on what makes humans uniquely adaptable compared to other species. Herman Pontzer delves into the biological and evolutionary factors that contribute to humanity's ability to thrive in diverse environments.

Notable Quote:

Gary O'Reilly [03:45]: "Humans have survived and thrived in just about every location, every climate on Earth."

2. Genetic Similarity Among Humans

Despite the vast physical diversity observed across human populations, Herman emphasizes that humans are 99.9% similar in DNA. This genetic similarity underscores the shared origins and interconnectedness of all humans.

Notable Quote:

Neil deGrasse Tyson [03:45]: "So 999."

3. The Dual Inheritance: Culture and Biology

Herman introduces the concept of dual inheritance, explaining how humans possess both cultural knowledge and biological traits that enhance adaptability. This combination allows humans to manipulate their environments and develop diverse cultural practices.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [07:08]: "We have all these cultural things that we inherit from generation to generation about how to survive in different environments."

4. Race as a Social Construct

The conversation shifts to the topic of race, with Herman Pontzer arguing that race is a manufactured social construct without a substantial genetic basis. He highlights the continuous spectrum of human diversity, challenging the rigid racial categories often imposed by society.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [14:21]: "There aren't such neat categories that we can box people into. It's an expression of our humanness."

5. Examples of Biological Adaptation

Herman provides concrete examples of human adaptability, such as physiological differences across latitudes. He explains how populations near the equator tend to be taller and thinner to dissipate heat, while those near the poles are stockier to conserve heat.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [21:04]: "Populations near the equator tend to be taller, thinner people... populations near the poles tend to be a bit stockier and heavier."

6. High Altitude Adaptations: Himalayas vs. Andes

A fascinating segment covers how different human populations have adapted to high-altitude environments independently. In the Himalayas, Tibetans possess genetic adaptations that prevent altitude sickness by regulating red blood cell production, unlike their counterparts in the Andes.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [27:08]: "In the Himalayas, they don't have this issue of altitude sickness because of specific genetic adaptations."

7. Interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans

The discussion explores the genetic legacy of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Herman explains how modern non-African populations carry Neanderthal DNA, which has contributed to various physiological traits, including those beneficial for high-altitude living.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [29:39]: "Populations outside of Africa all have a little bit of Neanderthal in them... Asians, Native Americans will all have a little bit of Neanderthal in them."

8. Sociological Implications of Biological Diversity

Herman Pontzer emphasizes the importance of understanding biological diversity to inform social policies. By recognizing the nuanced differences in human biology, society can move beyond superficial categorizations and foster greater unity.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [49:27]: "We're moving into a personalized era where understanding how our bodies work and how they work differently can inform meaningful discussions."

9. Modern Lifestyle Mismatches and Health

The conversation transitions to modern-day challenges where rapid societal changes have led to lifestyle mismatches. Herman discusses how sedentary lifestyles, unlike the active ones our bodies evolved for, contribute to rising rates of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [46:57]: "Populations I live with are heart disease free, diabetes free, because their active lifestyles align with our evolutionary biology."

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Herman Pontzer reiterates the critical role of adaptability in human success and urges listeners to embrace a deeper understanding of their biology to navigate contemporary challenges effectively.

Notable Quote:

Herman Pontzer [50:29]: "The way biology unites us can hopefully make things better for everybody."

Promotion: For those interested in exploring these topics further, Herman Pontzer's book Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Biology Unites Us is highly recommended.

Closing Remarks: Neil deGrasse Tyson concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to "Keep looking up," reinforcing the show's mission to blend science with everyday life insights.

---

This episode of StarTalk Radio offers a profound exploration of human adaptability, intertwining evolutionary biology with sociocultural implications. Herman Pontzer's expertise provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of what it means to be human in an ever-changing world.

Transcript

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Chuck Nice]

I feel like I more deeply understand who I am in this world.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's the way it goes.

[Chuck Nice]

As a biological entity, I feel like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I more deeply understand Neanderthal sex.

[Chuck Nice]

Some perspectives on the origin of who and what we are coming up on Special edition. Welcome to startalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Today we're gonna be talking about the human condition that is centerline to what StarTalk Special Edition is all about. And of course, if it's Special Edition, it means we've got Gary O'Reilly.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Hey, Neil.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, Gary. Yep. Former soccer pro.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

And of course, Chuck. Nice, Chucky, baby.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, what's happening?

[Chuck Nice]

So, Gary, tell me about the human condition and what's gonna happen today.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right. I suppose in many ways this is the specialist edition because we are Talking about the science behind the things that make us different, that make us special, and that, as a species, makes us adaptable.

[Chuck Nice]

So what makes us special mean, which makes our species special?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Among all species of life on Earth.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean, humans have survived and thrived in just about every location, every climate on Earth. Well, so far, that is that things are changing. This adaptability has seen the human form take many different body shapes, sizes, blood types, and skin colors. Yet with all this uniqueness, we are 99.9 similar in our DNA.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So 999.

[Gary O'Reilly]

9. Yes, yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Even. Even more than 99.9, but go ahead.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, now seems like a good time to understand a little more about the diversity and our diversity and adaptability through the lens of evolution and biology. So if you would introduce our guest.

[Chuck Nice]

I will. This is an old friend of mine who left town some years ago before COVID and we hadn't heard back from him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, maybe it wasn't as good a friend as you thought.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I'm thinking it. You're saying it.

[Chuck Nice]

Professor Herman Puntzer. Welcome back to StarTalk, dude.

[Herman Puntzer]

Hey, thanks for having me back.

[Chuck Nice]

So the last time you were here was like, early Covid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ec. Ec.

[Chuck Nice]

Ec. Early Covid. And all I remember is that you talked about zebra testicles. That's all I remember.

[Herman Puntzer]

It left an impression. That's good. That's good.

[Chuck Nice]

You'll have to dig that one up out of the archives. So right now you're a professor of evolutionary anthropology. Ooh, I love that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's great.

[Chuck Nice]

Ooh, ooh. And global health at the Duke University's Global Health Institute. You got your work cut out for you, dude. I can tell you that right now.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yes, It's a strange time to be in academia and public health. There's a funny intersection at the moment.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Okay. And you're recognized researcher in human energetics. I love it. Human energetics and of course, evolution, which is fundamental to that. Author of a 2022 book, Burn. And in 2025, Adaptable. How your unique body really works and why biology unites us. Cool. Penguin Random House.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Interesting title.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So let me just say, you left town, and you didn't tell me you left town because you used to be right here. Were you at nyu? Where were you?

[Herman Puntzer]

I was at Hunter College in the Grad center here in New York City. That's right. That's right. And coming over across town to hang out at the AMNH occasionally with some of our mutual friends.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're here in my office now at AMNH American Museum of Natural History, for those who just tuned in. So can we think of our adaptability as some kind of superpower distinguishing us from all other animals on Earth? Cause I've thought long and hard what is special? But we can't fly. We don't run fast. Almost everything that would kill us in the wild is cause the other creature is better at it than we are. So to think of our adaptability as a unique feature of being human. I gotta hear more from you on that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, what are we doing here? Seeing as though every other animal is better at something than we are.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How did we get there?

[Chuck Nice]

They got sharper teeth, they got better eyes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They run faster. They can take to the skies. They can swim. They can breathe water. Like, what the hell?

[Chuck Nice]

Like, breathe water.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. In the pantheon of superheroes, like, we suck.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah. You know, we're the superhero that can. We're the shifters, you know, the shape shifters, right? We can be successful anywhere on the planet because we've got this crazy kind of dual inheritance that we talk about. We have all these cultural things that we inherit from generation to generation about how to survive in different environments. We've got this body that's very. We might be generalists in a lot of ways, right? We're good at a lot of different things. Maybe we're not as good at sprinting as some animals, as good at climbing, but we can kind of do it all fairly well. And we end up getting everywhere across the entire planet. Think of another species. I don't know if you could that's been as successful in as many climates.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, wait, wait. Herman, the bacteria in your gut are traveling with you.

[Herman Puntzer]

That's true.

[Chuck Nice]

They're as parasites.

[Herman Puntzer]

And the mitochondria in our cells are all as well, right?

[Chuck Nice]

There you go. This was smart. Bacteria. They knew what? What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who to bet on.

[Chuck Nice]

Who to bet.

[Herman Puntzer]

Well, you know, I wanted to call the book Protein Robot because I like to think of us as, like, these kind of damp RVs trundling along the Earth, right? With all of our microbiome on board, like passengers with us.

[Chuck Nice]

Damp rv.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Damn, that sounds hard to clean.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. I'm not writing that Uber ride.

[Chuck Nice]

But you say in the subtitle of your book, why Our Biology Unites Us. So what are we to make of that subtitle?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, well, so I don't know of any other species that has a sort of adaptability range that we do, right? Everything from the ways that we learn how to make a living growing up, because we have these different cultures that help us adapt to different environments, to our physical characteristics that are a little bit different across the globe in different ways, often as a sort of local adaptation to different contexts. Skin colors are a great example of that. Body proportions are another example of that. And so we are all of us expressions of this sort of shared common superpower that our species has. Right. That adaptability is actually the expression of this, you know, the diversity is the expression of the adaptability. And so, you know, I think rather than thinking about it as a, as dividing us, it actually is showing our common origins in a way.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I'm just going to let you know, you keep talking about diversity and some people are going to come after you, buddy.

[Herman Puntzer]

Well, you know, I wanted to write this book when I was writing this book. Okay. It was 2022, 2023, and I thought, well, maybe this whole discussion about, you know, maybe the sort of universe wide discussion about diversity and all those debates are going to be passe by the time the book's out. And turns out, no, we're still very much talking about all this stuff. And so I'm glad it came out when it did. The goal is to have it be this sort of common ground. I want people to understand how the bodies work, why we're all different, how diversity happens, and have it be a kind of common ground that we can talk about these kind of big, often polarizing ideas and discussions with a common set of facts, common evidence base.

[Chuck Nice]

You have your work cut out ahead of you because everything you're saying that unites us, our culture uses to divide us. So you got some work cut out to you to change the definition of diversity in that way?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Just letting you know.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So, Herman, is there such a thing as a textbook average human? And what are the dangers if we start to perpetuate such a thought process?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, so no, there's not. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Arithmetically, there has to be an average. So your question should have asked, is there a normal person?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, what's normal?

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Exactly. That's a different thing. There's always an average. You can always take an average. But it's what?

[Herman Puntzer]

So here's what I would say about that, Neil. To push back a little and to agree with Gary, which I'm not sure if that's a good idea yet or not.

[Chuck Nice]

You don't have permission to agree with Gary and disagree with Gary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We'll see. We've still got a way to go.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

You know, my introduction to human diversity. Well, began an undergraduate in my coursework, but my actual physical, hands on introduction to this was dissecting a human, right? Yeah, we were in medical school. I didn't go to medical school, but I took the medical school gross anatomy class at Harvard. And so it was me and 50 aspiring doctors disassembling a person on these big dissection tables. And every day you show up and you get your tools out of little case and you start taking a person apart. And three months and 160 pounds of human later, you've seen everything.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know a couple guys in Staten island who do that for different reasons.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, but pay attention to the nuanced differences. That's what I want to know. But what you find, what you learn very quickly, and the reason you might think, like, why do we bother doing this? Kind of an old fashioned way to do science or to learn medicine. But the reason you do it is that you immediately learn that the branching of arteries through your torso as it comes out from your aorta and starts to feed all your organs, that set of branch, that pattern of branching is not the same for everybody. And in fact, often you find a branching pattern in the person that you're dissecting that doesn't match any of the variants shown in your dissecting text. And the nerves are the same way. And that's just the stuff you can see with your naked eyes. Our diversity is down to the core. And so I would say if you think about, if you think about like a parts list for humans, right, Maybe it's. I'd be curious as to think about this, but maybe it's 30,000 different parts that all kind of come together into your. To make you up. I would bet that just in the same way that there's like never been a perfect March madness bracket, there is no human that all the pieces match a textbook dissector piece for piece, because you might be right, you might be, you know, similar to the dissector on 99% of them, but there's 1% where you differ and there'll be a different 1% that I differ, et cetera, et cetera.

[Chuck Nice]

So the mathematical way to say what you just did is whatever average you might obtain, it's not useful because the variance is so high on that average. Yeah, because think about it, I mean, right, you can say an average and you look for someone who matches the average and no one does because everyone is scattered around to the left and right of the average on the chart. So. Okay, I'm with you on that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How should that inform us on a sociological level.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah. So, you know, once you start to appreciate how diversity, what it looks like that is sort of multi dimensional is not just, you know, for example, skin color in this country is historically used to divide us right into different categories. And if you're black or you're white, you're thought about, you're in this category or that category. If you really understand human diversity, you realize that there are sort of subtle differences across all these different modalities. You know, in terms of the way our cardiovascular systems work, digestive systems, skin, of course, sure. Nervous systems, all of it. There aren't sort of neat categories that we can box people into. And I think it forces us to kind of to see diversity the way that it is, which is again, this sort of individualized expression of these common forces. Right. So it's an expression of our humanness. Right. Rather than, oh, you're in this box and I'm in this box, and we can kind of caricature it and pretend that we know something about you just because we put you in this particular box. That's not actually how the body works or how diversity works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So to that point, I read a pretty cool paper out of, I forget which part of Harvard, but was the basis for the predicate, there's no such thing as race. And that race is a completely manufactured construct. And it was based on what you just said, that which is there's no box in which you can put enough people to say this is what white is or this is what black is. But the thing that I didn't really understand was how they scientists from Korea had more in common with one of the scientists from the Netherlands than one of the other scientists from the Netherlands on a biological level. Like that was in the paper too? That was part of it, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

So I mean, it depends on what they're measuring. They're measuring genetic differences or that kind of thing. But take this here's a kind of toy example, but it's a real biological phenomenon. Blood types. Okay. ABO blood type. Right. So I don't know if you know, if you're type A or type B or type O, whatever it is, all of us in this four, the four of us sitting here might have all the same blood type. Right. Maybe we're all type A. And that would mean that we have the same genetic variant. And in that way, in that particular locus, that gene, we're all more similar to each other than other people who have type B blood. All right? So in that measure we're all a group and we're all different from somebody else. We go by skin color, the amount of melanin in our skin. Right. Well, there's differences in that. Right. Who has more melanin, who doesn't have as much melanin. And that might break us down differently.

[Chuck Nice]

So there's an unlimited number of boxes that you could.

[Herman Puntzer]

Exactly. And not only that, but there aren't even hard edges on the boxes. Because if you look at something like skin color in this country, we often put people into sort of black or white. But of course, skin color is everything in between too. Right. So especially if you look globally, there's no, you know, you get everything from pretty dark because you have a lot of melanin in your skin to very light because you have very little. And there's everything in between. So there's no hard edge where you say, okay, now I stopped this category and I'm into that category.

[Chuck Nice]

And of course, President Obama could have legitimately been declared as a white president. Cuz he's exactly half white. Half white, but by his European mother. Right, right.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

But instead we call them a black.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

President because of the social norms in America.

[Chuck Nice]

He's exactly half black.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

So in one of my books, I forgot which he imagined him running for president in an African country as the white guy. As the white guy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's hilarious.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is so funny. Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

I mean, historically it's even crazier. Like there were people who, you know, groups who now we consider as sort of obviously white in the US people from Ireland, people from Italy who in late 1800s would have been considered black.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yes. They weren't white until the powers that be that are. Because it's a socially constructed power move to make these groups until the powers that be decided that they were in the. In the white group, that they became.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

White until they felt outnumbered. Yeah, like we need some help. How do you guys like to be white?

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[Chuck Nice]

I'm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Brian Futterman and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Herman Puntzer]

This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So, Mohammed, if we look at the latitudes here on Earth, how have humans adapted in terms of their biology to survive at these different latitudes?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, there's a. So that brings up an important point to start with, which is that a lot of the variation that we see in head shape, size, all the different physical characteristics we see, this is all the rage in the late 1800s was how long versus how wide phrenology.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

If you were dolichocephalic or brachiocephalic or all these things.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Herman Puntzer]

So almost all of those kind of variations are just noise and slosh and genetic mutation that's tolerated because there's no strong selection to get rid of it. Right. So a lot of the variation that we see, the superficial variation, a lot of that is just sort of tolerated noise. Now that said, there are cases where you have a strong enough selection pressure that's. That's localized and strong enough and long lasting for generations and generations that you get local adaptation to a particular circumstance, a particular pressure. So latitude's a great one.

[Chuck Nice]

I have to clarify something here. Correct me if I'm wrong, Herman. When you say adaptation, you mean those who don't have the variation die, so they don't propagate their genes. So no organism adapts. You're talking about the ensemble statistics of a generation where only some that happen to have the variation walk through the proscenium into this next world where they can survive better.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, I just add to that that you can. One way to sort of lose that game is to die. The other way to lose that game is to not have any kids or not have as many as your name.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Your DNA, into the future.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Gotcha. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, pick it up. Sorry.

[Herman Puntzer]

So latitude is a great example of a pressure that's stable over time. You know, the Earth has been spinning on the same. You know, the equator's been the equator for a long, long time. And it's been hot at the equator for a long, long time and colder towards the poles. And so that heat differential, for example, has shaped body shape, size and proportions. We see populations near the equator that are on average tend to be taller, thinner people. Populations near the poles tend to be a bit stockier and heavier. And that's because you want to get rid of heat. If you're in a hot environment at the equator all the time, you want to hold onto your heat if you are towards the poles.

[Chuck Nice]

So the physics of that. I think we have an explainer on it where if you are rounder, you are better insulated against losing heat. Because how are you going to lose heat? Through your skin. Through your skin, basically, the more round you are. Yeah. And if you ever see a pigeon in winter, they puff up and they're very round.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Or cats when they.

[Chuck Nice]

That too.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cats do the same thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They make themselves round, round when they're cold.

[Chuck Nice]

And we do that too. We'll bring our arms in with the.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Fur and the feathers come up and they trap a layer of air.

[Chuck Nice]

That helps too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also try to round themselves. Whereas in the summer, the cat is all esplejo on the pavement.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's so true. Like, and it's so funny when you look at lions, they lay stretched.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But when your cat is cold and they're very similar, they wrap up.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so I just want to make sure that the listener got the physics of what you just implied.

[Herman Puntzer]

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I got a. So there's a fun field story there, a piece of my research that kind of touched on this in a way I wasn't expecting. We do research in northern Kenya. There's a population there, they're called the Dasnich. They live with their goats and camels and cattle. It's a pastoralist group. They, like the Maasai, might have been more. They're more. You know, you might have heard of the Maasai. It's a similar kind of population. And we started work there in 2017, and we were talking to one of the NGOs, the charities that had set up shop in this little village called Illeret is this German charity. We're talking to the head of the charity and because we know we wanted to get sort of health and nutrition research product started, we thought we should talk to people who have been doing health and nutrition sort of outreach. And he said, oh, it's terrible, it's terrible here. Everybody, all the kids, you know, 70% of the kids are malnourished here. And we thought, oh, my gosh, that is really. That is terrible. And so we kind of thought about that and kept that in our minds. And as we're kind of visiting that village and the surrounding villages, it doesn't square though with what we're seeing, because these kids don't look malnourished. These kids are running around happy, laughing. You know, families are big, people look healthy. And so we thought if they say that they're malnourished, then that's important to know. But that seems counterintuitive based on just interacting with this population. Fast forward a couple years. We've got ourselves a big data set on thousands of children who've been measured from the day they're born every few months to the time they're five or six years old. And what you can see when you look at these kids, heights and weights, is that they're born around the same size as all the other kids in the world. And then their weight starts to fall off a little bit, but their height grows fast, right? So by the time they're three, four years old, kids in this population are taller than three or four year olds in most of the rest of the world because they have been adapted, that population has been adapted to be tall and thin. And so this German charity was looking at the ratio of weight, which was the same as everywhere else, maybe a little bit low to height, which was Tall, because they were adapted to be tall. That ratio looked bad. It made them look malnourished. Too thin, too light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're just skinny.

[Herman Puntzer]

They're just skinny. But they're built. They're actually, they are built to be skinny.

[Chuck Nice]

So once again, there's a European bias brought into Africa to pass judgment on who's there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, well, that'd be awesome. And these are folks who are.

[Chuck Nice]

So, had the Kenyan anthropologists gone to Germany, they would say y' all some fat ass folk, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Too much brats. Too many brats. Guys gotta cut back. Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

But I mean, and it even goes further because, you know, the folks from Nairobi who I was working with, those folks from Nairobi aren't part of that ethnic group. They don't share that same, you know, to the same extent, that same kind of tall, thin body build.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Herman Puntzer]

And so I'm actually more similar to my Nairobi colleagues, even though our skin colors are different on that dimension than either of us are to this northern Kenyan population that's tall and thin. Right. So like the whole.

[Shankar Vedantam]

To, to.

[Herman Puntzer]

To even begin by using the kind of American racial categorization to try to make sense of what's going on there, you're sunk from.

[Chuck Nice]

It's folly.

[Herman Puntzer]

The beginning.

[Chuck Nice]

It's folly.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Isn't there an example of adaptability with people in the Andes and then across in the Himalayas? They're living at a similar altitude, but one of them will suffer altitude sickness, one of them won't. Why?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

What's up with that?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, yeah. So people, humans have gone into the high altitude parts of the world. Three big examples of this, the Ethiopian Plateau, and those populations aren't well studied, so we don't know a whole lot about that physiology. The Himalaya, right. Tibet, Nepal, and that's been well studied. We know a lot about that. And the Andes in South America. And these are all independent evolutionary forays into high altitude. And the problem is you don't have any oxygen up there. The air is still 21% oxygen, but the air pressure is so low that there just aren't as many molecules of oxygen available for you to get into your bloodstream. And so everybody's oxygen starved at these high, high altitudes. And so there have been independent evolutionary changes, adaptations to this same, this, this real challenge of getting enough oxygen. In the Himalayas, there is an allele that helps determine how much red blood cells you make. So, okay, let me back up. Red blood cells are the cell that carries oxygen. You need that. And they have a tough job at altitude because there isn't enough oxygen to go around. And so what most people do, and most populations do at algae, you make a lot more red blood cells. Your body responds to the oxygen debt by making more red blood cells. And that's good for a while, but it makes your blood thicker and can lead to altitude sickness. And we still see a lot of altitude sickness. In the Andes, for example, they haven't kind of. Their bodies haven't figured out how to deal with that. In the Himalaya, they don't have this issue of altitude sickness. Why not? Because it was an allele that has been gone to fixation is completely the norm. The norm genetic variant in the Himalaya that helps them deal with oxygen debt without overproducing red blood cells. They produce enough to get to keep the oxygen going, but not overproduce it and get sick. They also have bigger lungs, they have a bigger spleen, which is this reserve red blood cell tank that we all carry around. So there's a whole bunch of adaptations that go to try to get enough oxygen in them.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So where do the Neanderthals fit into that particular scenario? In the Himalayas.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, I wondered if you wanted to go there. So let's do it. Let's do it.

[Chuck Nice]

Call them out.

[Herman Puntzer]

So the first thing you have to understand is that humans historically have slept with anything that they encounter.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Don't look at me and say that.

[Herman Puntzer]

And so humans, right, Homo sapiens, we evolve in Africa about 300,000 years ago. And as we sort of become so successful, so adaptable, our superpower at full display, we get into Europe, we interact with Neanderthals there. What do we do? We admix with them, to use the sterile scientific term. And we have children, and we can still see the genetic evidence of that today.

[Chuck Nice]

A quick question I have to slip in there. You said 300,000 years ago, we come out of Africa, get into Europe, and admix with the Neanderthal. Implies Neanderthals either left Africa earlier or evolved as Neanderthal in Europe.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Now, we know from DNA testing that pure Africans have zero Neanderthal DNA. So there must have been some deep European origins of the Neanderthal, is that correct?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, that's right. Whether it's deeply in Europe or sort of into the near east is much debated. But yeah, it's outside of Africa. So, you know, humans and Neanderthals, of course, have a common ancestor about 600,000 years ago. Those two branches go their separate ways. Ours in Africa, theirs in the Near East. And Europe. And at some point they become what we would consider to be the Neanderthal gene pool. And when our branch comes back in and oversect intersect with them again, we have these matings and this admixture.

[Chuck Nice]

And so we are fertile with each other because we have the same common ancestor, even though it's such a recent one down from the line. And an interesting fact that I discovered in my own work for Starry messenger, that book was we grew up with the archetype of this stupid backward Neanderthal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, the caveman that knows nothing like that.

[Chuck Nice]

Never. That never stopped dragging its knuckles.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Then we find out that black Africans have no Neanderthal blood. Yet there's admixtures in current European white people, not just Europeans. By the way, did papers, research papers start saying how creative and inventive Neanderthals were? There's a complete shift in the early 1990s. Herman, am I right here? Herman? Talk to me, Herman.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, I mean that's one retelling. I think that's pretty, that's fair to the history of what happened there. I think there was already a re upcoming imagining of what Neanderthals were like before that, but not that I saw.

[Chuck Nice]

Even Gary Larson was full, full in on the, on the backward Neanderthal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Not to mention the, the Geico guys.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

I would say that populations outside of Africa all have a little bit of Neanderthal in them because as we kind of get out of Africa into the near east and those intermediate, those matings happen, those genes kind of get washed. Every population that's kind of downstream of that. Right. So Asians, Native Americans will all have a little bit of Neanderthal in them left over from that kind of crossing event that happens in the near east in Europe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense because it's, you know, those were the crossroads. All those areas outside of Africa were actually the crossroads for trap for human travel. So it kind of makes sense. Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

So there's this great example of another kind of discovery from ancient genome. But by the way, all this is mind blowing stuff. It is, it is from DNA that we've gotten out of fossils. Right. Which is sort of. That's, that's very mind blowing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Jurassic Park.

[Herman Puntzer]

Completely. Completely. And we discovered a whole new species of human ancestor or human relative, I should say. That's Neanderthal, like in Asia called the Denisovans.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I heard about that. No one heard about that. I didn't know anything about that. But so, so the Denisovans, were they contemporary with the Neanderthal Yeah, that's right.

[Herman Puntzer]

That's right. Kind of Denisovans go one way, humans and Neanderthals the other way. And then Neanderthals and humans split a little bit later. So they're even a kind of more distant relative of us in a way.

[Chuck Nice]

So just I'd like. Because I'd like it knowing what's the etymology of Neanderthal and the etymology of Denisovans.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Denisovans.

[Herman Puntzer]

Denisovans. So Neanderthals are so named because those initial fossil was found in the Neander Valley and in German, valley is tal, so is Neanderthal. And that's why it's Neanderthal and not Neanderthal. Because T H A L is tall in German. That's. If you want to get pedantic. Don't we all love.

[Chuck Nice]

It's America. We pronounce it how we want.

[Herman Puntzer]

That's right. That's right. That's fair.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And then don't encourage him.

[Chuck Nice]

Don't encourage me.

[Herman Puntzer]

And then Denisovans are found that the site is. The original site is Denisova. It's a Denisova cave in. In Siberia somewhere, I believe.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah. And they had just a couple of finger bones, and those aren't really diagnostic. You can't figure out what species it is just from the bone, from the morphology, the shape of the bones. But they drilled into it, got the DNA out and go, holy. This is a whole other group. This isn't Neanderthals and it's not Homo sapiens. It's something else. And that was the discovery that there is this, you know, unappreciated species that we didn't even know about.

[Chuck Nice]

So they got the DNA from the bone marrow.

[Herman Puntzer]

Any of your bone material will have cells in it. So, yeah, that's not just the marrow, but any of it.

[Chuck Nice]

Why does DNA last that long? It's a pretty delicate molecule, isn't it?

[Herman Puntzer]

It doesn't last kind of fully intact. So your DNA, if you stretch it, if you took all the DNA in your body and you stretched it out, you'd be dead. That's the first thing you should know. But second of all, it would get to, like the moon and back or something like that. All your DNA stretched out. Then we discovered that not only is there this other species of human relative, but there's evidence of mating with them as well. Oh, so it wasn't just Neanderthals, it was also Denisovans. And then you find out that this gene variant that has been so key to the success of Himalayan Groups. Where did it come from? It came from Denisovans.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Herman Puntzer]

So, you know, so there were these mating events with Denisovans. That gene variant ends up in the human gene pool, sloshed around. Doesn't give you any advantage at sea level. You know, only when those populations begin to go up at high altitude does it turn out, oh, by the way, that variant's actually really good at high altitude. And then it becomes the. The variant that everybody has because of the selective process of, you know, reproduction and survival.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So let me ask you this just for the sake of people being able to visualize what we're talking about.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it seems like you're talking about different species, but what I like is, if you were to take pictures of our DNA and superimpose them, what would that look like? And how alike or different would we.

[Chuck Nice]

Be between us and the recent ancestors?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Between us and the recent ancestors. So Denisovans, Neanderthal, Homo sapien, and then you take those pictures, you kind of superimpose them. What would it look like?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah. So this is exactly what we do when we get the genetics to begin with, to try to make sense of it. The best way to picture it is like a tree, right? So imagine a tree where all the branches are very hard and clustered very tightly around the crown. That is the entirety of the human species over here. And then there's a branch that comes off real low and ends up over here somewhere. That's the Neanderthal branch. And then it's like you discovered. Oh, my gosh, I didn't look closely enough. There's a branch that's even lower, it goes out even a bit further, and that's the Denisovan branch. And so if you were to overlay the A's, T's, C's and G's of the genome on top of each other, you'd find they're very, very similar, all of those individuals. You have to really compare them, thousands and thousands of base pairs to sort of see that clustering. Just because all mammals are pretty similar, all primates are real similar. And so all these human ancestors and relatives are real similar, too.

[Chuck Nice]

Take me back to when we went from grunts to articulate speech.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, that's an amazing.

[Chuck Nice]

What's up with that?

[Herman Puntzer]

That's very hard to know for.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You got Morgan Freeman on me. What happened for us to have grunt versus speech?

[Herman Puntzer]

Oh, yeah. So the anatomy of. That's pretty well known. The anatomy of the vocal tract, for example, has changed, which allows us to have this sort of two Compartment vocal tract. Right. So your larynx is down here real low, and that gives you a vertical component to sort of shape the frequencies that come out of, out of your, your lungs as you, you make noise. And then you have this horizontal component from your. The mouth and, and those get shapes differently and give you all the aiou sounds. So we know the anatomy of speech very well when that evolved.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Herman Puntzer]

Right. That is really hard to know for sure. And in fact, I don't think anybody knows for sure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, I would say we know it had to be at least when Homo sapiens made it with Neanderthals, because somebody had to say, hey, girl, what's happening?

[Chuck Nice]

What's this happen?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Bring your fine ass on over to this cave right here. Let me holler at you.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you, Chuck, for reenacting.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's like we were there.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, it's almost like we were there. Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

They say time travel's not possible, but I don't know. There you go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, okay, wait.

[Chuck Nice]

So. But I heard that our ability to form sounds as you articulately described, the two dimensionality, the frequency and volume and texture of our vocalizations, that this was a genetic defect, if you will, from whatever was going on in the grunting community. There was some genetic alteration that changed it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So wait, this is. We all share this mutation?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, it's a mutation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a mutation. So everybody else was like. And then somebody was just like, oh, dear, you're so ghost.

[Chuck Nice]

My God.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Exactly.

[Herman Puntzer]

What is it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, seriously, is this how we're going to communicate?

[Chuck Nice]

So we don't want to think of speech as a mutation. We want to think of it as an adaptation. Maybe there's no difference, but we want.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It to be a feature, not a bug.

[Chuck Nice]

A feature. Exactly.

[Herman Puntzer]

All adaptations start off as mutations.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, ah, there's another T shirt.

[Herman Puntzer]

So, you know, natural selection is the survival of the fittest, but mutation is the arrival of the fittest.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, mic drop, yo.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is dope. Oh, another T shirt.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We're in the mode.

[Herman Puntzer]

The arrival of the fittest, you need variation, you need mutations. For natural selection is go. Oh, yep, that's the one that's going to work here. And that one's not right. If there's no variation, if there's no mutation, there's no way for natural selection to happen.

[Woody Harrelson]

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[Kristen Bell]

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[Brian Futterman]

I'm Kristen Bell, and if you know my husband Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much.

[Herman Puntzer]

We're really doing this, huh?

[Brian Futterman]

Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your van or license and done. We sold ours in minutes this morning, and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon.

[Herman Puntzer]

Goodbye, Truckee.

[Brian Futterman]

Of course, we kept the favorite.

[Herman Puntzer]

Hello, other truckee.

[Brian Futterman]

Sell your car with Carvana today. Terms and conditions apply.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Let's look at this situation of adaption of our environment. Yep, the adaptation.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, you said adaption. That's the word.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I know. I'm making them up as I go along.

[Chuck Nice]

You're embarrassing your fellow.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's our bloody language, but use it as we wish.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, you're sitting next to me. You are not uttering adaption.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, man. I'll see you after class, sir.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, go, go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So our adaption is being forced to speed up because of the environments we're being pushed into. Out of rural farming, into town, cities and cities in particular, at a rapid rate.

[Chuck Nice]

That is.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, as a rapid rate. But are we now being mismatched? Are we being confronted with circumstances that, you know what, this body is evolved for this environment, not that environment.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think the proof is already evident that we are mismatched. And I think it's more not the. I'm sorry, Herman. I'm answering no, no, no.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So Herman's got an answer for this.

[Chuck Nice]

Does that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I do this sometimes. I think it's more not the circumstance, but technology and the circumstance together.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So, for instance, in disease, we have diseases now, which are chronic and major. But how long ago were they not, Herman.

[Herman Puntzer]

Oh, that's. Yeah. So the populations I live with, hunter gatherer groups and even farming groups that I work with today, they are heart disease free, diabetes free. So the things that we're going to die from, they're protected against. And of course, the flip side is the things that we're protected against because of antibiotics and vaccines, that kind of stuff really gets them. But these lifestyle diseases were only an issue in the last couple hundred years.

[Chuck Nice]

Herman. If they're an isolated community, that means there are no outside influences. Viruses, bacteria, other ailments that could influence them until they meet someone from the outside, such as yourself. How many indigenous people have you killed with your.

[Herman Puntzer]

That's a lovely question, Neil. I really appreciate you bringing that up.

[Gary O'Reilly]

See, at least he's blamed you and not the British, because normally I am go to.

[Chuck Nice]

We're done blaming you guys. It's time to blame somebody else here.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, but, you know, so that. But that question raises the point that I think people get wrong all the time, which is people think that they're. That any human population is ever isolated. That's never the case. Right? I mean, there are always interactions. There's always gene flow and people flow and migration and movement. So there are no isolated groups anymore. Even these groups that we work with who are hunting and gathering or farming, it isn't that they don't interact with people who aren't. It's just that they like to keep their. Their. Their old ways.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're basically the Pennsylvania Dutch of Africa.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, that's like.

[Herman Puntzer]

No, that's exactly it, actually. That's exactly what it's like. They. They live in a world that they interact with people all the time and. But they prefer to keep their own culture. So you raise this issue about, you know, accelerated adaptation. Yeah, it's the brain, man. Because we have. Our brains are born unfinished, right? We learn. We've created this entire cultural inheritance that we each inherit and learn. It takes you 15, 20 years to learn it all so you could be a proper adult, a functioning adult. And so we have all this. And that cultural evolution can happen much faster than our biological evolution can. So we have these sort of. These two parallel tracks happening all the time. It's a really fun thing about humans.

[Gary O'Reilly]

There was a study done in comparison on. Back in the day when there were bus drivers and conductors on board, and the health of the driver as opposed to the conductor, even though they go to the same place, they travel together all the time.

[Chuck Nice]

They breathe the same air they breathe.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The same air they see, the same people. One is sedentary, the other is obviously mobile, stamping tickets and checking up and down on the levels of the bus. These are situations now that we have not really been evolved to have a sedentary lifestyle. You talk about the hunter gatherers in Africa. So what are the overall health implications for modern health now that we're finding ourselves mismatched with?

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, that was a seminal study in the 1950s showing that the drivers who sat all day ended up getting heart attacks at a kind of scary rate. Their buddies who are walking up and down the aisles didn't had healthy hearts. And so that was one of the early clues that physical activity, daily physical activity, is absolutely essential for keeping your heart healthy. Well, why is that? Well, because we've evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in our active lifestyle. That's the way our bodies are built. That's sort of the lifestyle our bodies expect.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So you've got Paleo diets. There's no way we're going back to a Paleolithic lifestyle?

[Herman Puntzer]

No.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So what's our answer?

[Herman Puntzer]

Well, the London bus is a great example. Right. Because you have the benefits of activity without having to cosplay as a Neanderthal or something like that. It's an example of how you can have physical activity in your daily life. You guys are New Yorkers. You guys walk around the city and get lots of physical activity.

[Chuck Nice]

We meet our step minimum every day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. And it's not just the steps. The last study that came out about New Yorkers who tend to be thinner than most other places in the country, it's the pace at which New Yorkers walk as well. New Yorkers tend to walk much faster than any other place. So the two together, the fact that they walk everywhere and they walk briskly is what makes.

[Chuck Nice]

We're in a hurry even when we don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When we don't need to be.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Herman Puntzer]

There's a lovely study from the seventies by this husband and wife team. They looked at the average walking pace of people down sidewalks and how big the city was. They went all over the world to do this. And the bigger, more dense your city is, the faster you walk. Oh, cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

So, Herman, the history of anthropology as applied properly or improperly on our species or on our populations, in almost every case led to some legislation, some laws related to those conclusions, be it to justify slavery, be it to limit immigration. So is there a policy implication that your work would bring to the front that is either progressive or regressive in the history of this exercise, I think.

[Herman Puntzer]

It does have big societal sort of implications. Right. When we think about how the body works and we have a fluency in how our different systems work, we use that fluency with how our bodies work to understand diversity. I think that absolutely it's going to. And what it's going to do is it's going to inform how we move ahead from the really old school ways of thinking about the body were very genetic, determinist. We move into the 1900s and even recent times, and it's very environmental. You know, it's all nurture in the nurture nature debate. And I think we're moving to a third period here where we're in a personalized era. Right. Whether it's personalized genetics or it's personalized ways of thinking about my health. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And if we personalized diet, even perhaps.

[Herman Puntzer]

Personalized diet, and if we leave that discussion just purely to the influencers or purely to, you know, the political class that doesn't have any fluency in how the body works or these sort of old school ideas about these caricatures about our diversity, we're going to be in real trouble. So I think that the book does kind of help inform those big discussions we're having right now. Look, whether it's iq, whether it's sex and gender, whether it's health and vaccines, whether it's all of these issues that are right in front of us today, they all fundamentally rest on how we understand how our bodies work and how our bodies work differently. And so, you know, the book isn't trying to get anybody to, you know, I'm not trying to make anybody think like I think, but what I do want to have is people, a common evidence base for us to have those discussions, a fluency that we can have these discussions usefully and meaningfully. So I think there are societal implications. I think the way they shake out are going to be hopefully make things better for everybody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And because of that, I'm cutting your funding. That's it. You no longer have a dime.

[Herman Puntzer]

Yeah, I would laugh harder if it was.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I just say if it wasn't so true, if it weren't so tragic and true.

[Chuck Nice]

So, Herman, thank you for returning to StarTalk.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh my gosh, we miss you.

[Herman Puntzer]

We have a fun conversation, guys. Thanks.

[Chuck Nice]

We miss you. You have a unique combination of expertise that deeply informs what we care about here on StarTalk Special Edition. So that means we want to sort of have access to you further going forward.

[Herman Puntzer]

Hey, I'm always happy to be your evolutionary anthropologist on call. I'm here.

[Chuck Nice]

Everybody should advice ahead.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Now you say it.

[Chuck Nice]

I want one dude. Delight to speak to you. Thanks for enlightening us yet again.

[Herman Puntzer]

Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. And of course, we're all gonna look for your book Adaptable how youw Unique Body Really Works and why Biology Unites Us. All right, the word unite is something we need today, so thank you for being a part of that conversation. This has been StarTalk Special Edition. Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. As always. Keep looking up.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Are you on the right track? What do you want to be remembered for? Is this really all there is? Asking big questions about your life can feel overwhelming, but the Hidden Brain podcast, hosted by me, Shankar Vedantam, is here to help you get started. All through the month of July, Hidden Brain will bring you our you 2.0 series with a special focus on purpose, passion and meaning. If you're feeling adrift, alone or burned out, this series is for you.

[Kristen Bell]

Join us did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications, kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely. And parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight [e-mail] podcast.