December 16, 2010 • 32 mins
James Brown said that "it's a man's world," but he may have changed his tune if he'd seen the recent studies on gender and evolution. In this podcast, Julie and Robert ask what makes a person male or female -- and why the days of males may be numbered.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
I'm Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie, I
want to kick off the podcast by just giving a
shout out to our male all of our male listeners
out there, because according to some studies that we've been
(00:24):
reading today, uh, they might not be around forever. In fact,
the males as we know it may become extinct, what
like like woolly mammoth extinct, like wooly mammoth extinct. Like
it'll just be just be ladies out there. Uh And
and I guess it just I feel kind of I'm
kind of fearful for any podcast. It's not stuff your
mom didn't tell you whoa Um, I don't know. I
(00:48):
mean I think that you're a brave man to introduce
such a subject. I mean, this is this is gonna listen.
I think a really emotional response. Well not not really,
because if you're twoing in and you're expecting me to
like jump to the defense of males. As we discussed
the possibility of an all female planet and the extinction
of of the masculine gender, I'm I'm not gonna defend
(01:11):
guys too much because I I tend to and there's
a mistake in this too to rely too heavily on this.
But I tend to attribute attribute a lot of the
horrors of the world too to masculine dominance in the
culture and h and you know, lay a lot of
the crimes of humanity at the feet of the patriarchy. Wow,
(01:34):
I christen you, Robert b linhearted lamb uh. So let's
let's get into that a little bit more. I mean,
if if the uh, if men aren't going to be around,
what's going on? What would make them become extinct? To
to get to that point, we really need to discuss
what men are like. There's a tendency to sort of
(01:55):
like if you if you look at like you know,
see biblical accounts and and all, there's society of like, oh,
God created a I and then he created a woman.
But it kind of goes back like we were talking
about in a previous podcast about male nipples. The reason
males have nipples is because females have nipples and uh,
and and the nipples are it's kind of like the
car that that you get in a car and you're like, oh, well,
(02:16):
there's just an empty spot where the cigarette lighter goes. Well,
the other cars have the cigarette lighter because that's the
main model. Like the female is the main model, and
the male gender is just this, uh, this offshoot that's
necessary for procreation. Well so the afterthought, Wow, yeah, okay,
So to get there, I think we need to look
(02:36):
at chromosomes. Yeah, the chromosomes are key like ladies X
X men X Y. Okay, and so that why isn't
that the whole story about the Y being this imperfect
version of the X isn't too far off? Yeah, that's
my understanding of it. Okay, So we all know that
ourselves contain twenty three pairs of chromosomes, and twenty two
(02:58):
of those pairs are man matched pairs, and those are
shared by men and women. But the twenty three is different.
And I there's the rub, right, because in women, the
twenty three pair is made up of two chromosomes, and
men it's made up of an X chromosome and a
Y chromosome. Yeah, and it's that Y chromosome that determines
maleness and humans, and it holds genes necessary for forming
(03:21):
testies and making sperm. So the fact that it doesn't
have a matching pair poses a bit of a problem
for the Y chromosomes because all the other chromosomes they
come in two copies, and every time a cell divides,
mistakes and genes can creep in and so impaired chromosomes.
That means that if there's a mistake, you can go
back and a cell can always get the correct gene
(03:43):
sequence from the other chromosome. But that is not the
same situation for the Y. Yeah, there's been some some
really interesting studies. Uh. The one that I was looking
at was from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
and it's two thousand nine study. And again you need
a Y chromosome to the mail and they the study
found it three hundred million years ago the Y chromosome
(04:05):
had genes on it. Now we're down to about forty five.
And at the rate we're going, we're going to run
out of genes on the Y chromosome in about five
million years according to this particular study. Now, I think
you found an even uh shorter estimate, didn't you. Um.
The estimate that I looked at was a thousand years. Yeah.
And the reason though, is because the mistakes have crept
(04:28):
into the Y chromosome um and every time a gene
on the chromosome goes bad, it basically disappears. So that's
why it's gotten down so low. So scientists theorized that
the X and Y chromosome did start out with the
same amount of genes, but you're seeing in the Y
chromosome quite a depletion, okay, and entered geneticist Brian Sykes,
(04:50):
who is introducing this sort of lightning rod idea that
the chromosome, the Y chromosome will become extinct in a
d twenty five thousand years because of its lack of
ability to recombine with other chromosomes and repair itself. So,
I mean, this is what people have found. The researchers
have found that over a millennia, the Y chromosome has
(05:11):
lost most of its genes, which is really stunning and
it's not the sort of information they were actively looking for.
Is just as they were studying, they went, WHOA, what's
going on here with with the Y chromosome. Yeah, it's
worth mentioning that that there's a gene called the s
R Y and uh, this is important because it switches
on the development of testes and pumps out male hormones
(05:34):
that determines maleness or masculinity. Yeah, and when you look
at Brian Sykes, he's basically saying that regardless, regardless of
that function men as you had had already pointed out
to our genetically modified women, so flaws are never repaired
(05:54):
and if that goes on for generation after generation, Psykes argues,
eventually there are no functioning Y chromosomes left and those
I mean huge implications for the future of the world,
Like we could basically potentially go the way of the vole.
You could. Yeah, apparently the vole, which is kind of
like a mole, except it begins with a V. Right,
(06:15):
a rodent. Yeah, this is scientific explanation. It's a it's
a rodent typically found in Eastern Europe, Europe, and then
they're also a country rats in Japan that have this
as well. They have no Y chromosome and no s
R Y gene. So how are they getting by? Okay,
So what they're doing is because they have seemed to
have lost their Y chromosome somewhere down the line, they
(06:36):
have genetic material that confers maleness and has transferred itself
to another chromosome, So it's jumping chromosomes and applying that
chromosome on there. But if I'm under if I'm interestaining
this right, it's only going to produce two X chromosomes.
It's not actually going to reproduce another Y. So it's adapted,
(06:58):
but it's not necessarily carrying on its male nous. Yeah.
According to study I was looking at, they said that
there are several candidate genes that could potentially um uh
you know, jump in and take over from the s
r Y to uh you know again to switch on
the development of tests and pump out male hormones. Um.
And it's even possible that two or more different sex
(07:18):
determination systems based on different genes could pop up in
different populations, which I think which I think is and
this is in the human population. Um so you could
conceivably have have this situation where you have different in
a way different species sort of splitting off. Okay, so
be like divergent paths. Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a very
(07:40):
interesting problem without the s r Y, Like one group
of people like suddenly their systems are using this gene
to determine sex, but then this other group has this
other method like there there are other sex determining tools
in the toolbox, and it's kind of we're kind of
unsure what nature might go with for different groups. And
then of course these groups would not necessarily be compatible
(08:01):
with one and another. That's what the studies talking about.
So I'm also thinking about David Page of m I. T. S.
Whitehead Institute, who disagrees that the Y chromosome actually become
extinct because he says that in his research that the
Y chromosome has been secretly creating backup copies of itself
(08:21):
and its most important genes, not all of them. Cocy
theory exactly, Um, but I think it's important to know
it's not all of the genes, just the most important ones, uh.
And these are stored in the DNA as mirror images
or palindromes. Palindrome is you might remember from everyone from
(08:42):
English class. That's a word that's also a word that
has felt the same way backwards as farward, like race,
car or none or two yes my favorite. Um. So
basically Page is saying that you know, looking at that logic,
they're not it's not necessarily going to go stink. That's
how it's actually been repairing itself um and and still
(09:05):
been in circulation, so to speak. And so it kind
of brings me to a natural question though, if if
men in the Y chromosome more specifically, are imperfect the
imperfect expression of X are or they needed biologically anymore,
(09:25):
especially given our technological advances. Well, it's interesting when you
look at you look at at examples in nature. There
are plenty of examples of a sexual reproduction promogenesis. Yeah,
of course, there are also plenty of examples that I
find rather interesting of situations where the male is just
not necessary in the long run. There's another rodent called
(09:47):
the brown and techinnus, also known as mac Lee's marsupial mouse.
So maybe it's not maybe it's not a rodent, maybe
it's marsupial. But any rate, this is a particular species.
The male mates like crazy for like twelve hours at
a time. I believe this was featured on Life or
Planet Earth, one of those two programs. Just mates like crazy,
mate mate mate, mate, mate, mate mate, then day night,
(10:09):
and then eventually just humps himself to death, just dies. Uh.
And the benefit here is, at this point, he's he's
done his part. He's uh, he's Uh, he's facilitated, uh,
sexual reproduction. That's so cold. He's fulfilled his biological and
now he's dead. And by being dead, that's one less
mouth to feed, right, because otherwise he would just be
(10:29):
setting around, you know, eating food, watching TV until then. Yeah,
you know how how men are and uh, and this
way he's he has at least the common courtesy to
die afterwards. And you see this, you know, in in
insects as well in another species, where the male, having
performed his role, uh, just kicks the buck bucket or
the female devours his head. Yes, yeah, I do recall
(10:52):
hearing about that praying man. Yes, well, you also have
virgin births, which happened um in boa constructs for instance,
and I happened actually pretty recently, were a bow constructor
fused a copy of herself, of her of her eggs.
Excuse me, she took her eggs and she fused a
copy of her genetic material, which stimulated embryonic development. And
(11:17):
the reason they know that that happened because she was
housed with males, is that she had this caramel colored
broad of little bow constrictors, which wasn't a genetic trade
of any of the males and you know this, it
happens every once in a while. Wow. So they can
get by, Yeah, they can get by. They can bring
home the bacon fried up in a pan. There are
(11:38):
a couple of exams, other examples they don't have to
even acknowledge or a man. There are a couple of
other examples from the insect to the world that I
really like. One there is there. Well, there was a
study from North Carolina State University and they were looking
at termites and they found that like basically with termites,
(11:59):
you have like a young ueen goes out, finds it,
found a new colony, and then she has a termite king,
and as is often the case in the insect world,
the king is just there for the mating. Again, the
females are the species. The male is just the um,
you know, the the the byproduct that's necessary to facilitate
sexual production. Yeah, he's just a pool boy hanging out
around in the drone chamber. Yeah. So so so anyway,
(12:22):
they they start doing it, reproducing, but then the queen
eventually dies like she it's you know, it's a big
responsibility run in a you know, a whole community of
termites stress. Yeah, so then you need another queen. But
but here's the thing you don't in breeding is typically
a bad thing for a community. So uh, you know,
(12:43):
just on a genetic level. And I'm not talking about
because because there's no real social anything, and you know
in the termite world. Um, so they need a new queen,
right and we don't. But we don't need the king
to to start breeding with a daughter. So the queen
will a sexually reproduce to create the new queen, essentially
(13:05):
clone herself so that there's no no crossing of the
genetic streams so to speak. Yeah, and then then I
read there was another interesting study. Um, and this one
was featured in a BBC article not too long ago,
and they covered Amazonian ants, which are essentially an all
female species at this point. Like they at some point
(13:28):
they basically were like, you know, ladies, we can do
this on our own. We don't need the this drone
just hanging around. Uh, you know, we can just stick
with a sexual reproduction. So their number of benefits to this, First,
the ants don't waste any energy producing males, which which
again they don't do much, you know besides breeding. And uh,
and you know they've combined two positions you know, in
(13:49):
their their social uh strata. And it also doubles the
number of reproductive females that are produced each generation. Now,
the downside to that is that there's less diversity, which
means that like you get one new parasite, one new disease,
and it can essentially wipe out the entire species, which
is probably you know, a reason why why you don't
(14:10):
see as as many a sexual you know, species, because
because it will often you know, open them up for
potential just disaster when a new parasite, disease, et cetera coming. Right.
They want to encourage diversity right in a genetic pool,
right exactly. It's the whole reason for sexual reproduction over
a sexual in most cases. But I mean here's the
(14:31):
thing that I think it's spelling out for humans is
that eventually, I mean right around the corner, I mean,
two women will be able to fertilize an egg with
the other genetic material and it will still be a
diverse pool of genetic material. And this will be this
will be via a medical procedure or exactly exactly. And
(14:53):
I mean a good example is just you know, in
the animal world, is last summer, Japanese team announced that
female mice had been made pregnant using cells from other females,
and they gave birth to completely healthy babies. I think
the only thing that they noticed is that the babies
were about smaller than the other mice in the control group. So,
(15:17):
I mean, I think that's what's sort of spelling that
the future might be a matriarchal one. Yeah, like a
race short women and their robot physicians exactly. They're they're
female robot physicians. That might add well, Mike, why is
the wait, why does the physician have to be Like
maybe they'll be a little nostalgic for the the masculinity
(15:39):
of the past, and they'll they'll have the robots will
be like male robot doctors. Uh, you know, I would say,
friend of the ladies listening out there. Uh you know,
if you've ever had a guyn incologist, you're definitely gonna
want a female robot gynecologist. Yeah, even if it is
a robot, it's just that's a comforting aspect. But you're right,
(16:00):
maybe maybe some people would be nostalgic, Like maybe it'll
be kind of maybe it'll be programmed to say, I
don't have much time. My golf gang. My golf game
is right around the corner. Yeah, it'll be like or
maybe they'll go after the model. After the doctors in Madmen.
You know, it's like they're always like smoking in there
while they're telling the lady. So it is so because
they'll they'll miss it. They'll you know, it'd be like, oh, well,
(16:20):
you know, victory over all the horrible things that were mailed.
But then they're like, but I kind of miss those jerks.
So you know, let's start programming robots stuff to behave
really horribly maybe. So this presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. Actually it makes me think
(16:45):
about the article that you sent me called the End
of Men this is the Atlantic, Yeah, yes, yeah, and
it was it was sort of spelling out a future
not necessarily through science, maybe more socio economic terms. I
actually might even call it says economic Darwinism, in which
the future of um of the earth seems to be
(17:06):
geared a lot more toward women right now. So what
happened to the men? Are they they're not going extinct,
but they're just what being relegated to like brood chambers. Yeah, yeah,
they're they're in their main caves. It turns out that
they're not adapting as well as women. Uh, it turns
out and that this economic environment that if you're really
(17:26):
flexible you communicate well, uh, you can mitigate arguments, so
on and so forth, and in the global economy that
you're going to be pretty useful. And Uh. There's a
book called The Evolution of Culture by Leslie White, and
the crux of that idea or that book was that
social systems are determined by technological systems. So we're at
(17:49):
a point in our history, are technicol technological history, where
women are beginning to dominate the workplace. And so you're
looking right now at this year or the balance of
the work force has tipped towards women for the first
time ever. And for every two men who get a
college degree this year, three men, three women will do
(18:09):
the same. And right now women earn six of all
master's degrees. So there's definitely a trend here happening, and
a lot of this is being diascerbated by the fact
that typical male industries like construction, for instance, I've sort
of evaporated in the recession. But I think what's interesting
(18:30):
about that article is that it's it is pointing uh
to a time in our history where women are entering
the workplace and dominating fields that were typically thought as
thought of as a mail fields and doing them really well.
And of course, the the wage gap still exists. Women
are still getting paid less than men, and so you
(18:52):
have to wonder too if the economy is rewarding women
for not being paid as much and actually employing them
over men. That that's certainly got to be an asked
aspect of it. Kind of serve men, right though, you
think so, yeah, kind of like like, oh, you're only
messed up there, didn't you You thought you were you
were a cheating amount of something that you're just opening
the door, that's right. Well, I mean, yeah, that's that's
the good thing about this is that it's just a
(19:14):
matter of time where pay will become equal. Yeah, particularly
when you've tipped the scales in the workplace with more
women working there than then. But I should also note
that CEO's top positions as are still filled by men obviously,
and only three percent of the fortune CEO CEOs or women.
I mean that's kind of astounding. And then NFL coaches
(19:35):
m alright, guys, they're most like they're not none of
them are women? Are they yet until they see my game?
But um, the reason that I wanted to bring this up,
but not to get into you know, cultural um happenings
for today because we're more of a science podcast, is
to talk about Ronald Ericsson. He's a biologist, so he's
(19:57):
kind of a cowboy biologist and yeah he I mean,
he's the Marble Man. In fact, I think they eat.
He owns the property where a lot of the Marble
Man stuff was shot and he's really proud of that. Um.
But he's the guy that's responsible for separating uh sperm
carrying the mail producing Y chromosome from the X chromosome.
(20:18):
And he's the guy who basically brought this to market
and saying, hey, Almo, assuming that a lot of people
are going to want to have boys and be able
to determine sex, and this is the guy who who
made that happen. Of course, the big irony now is
that people are choosing girls over boys something like two
(20:39):
to one, and in some clinics upwoards to seventy. So
it's also spelling out a story that's being told in
something like the Atlantic giving us stats about women and
how they're dominating the workplace. And then when you look
at these clinics and you see that people are opting
for more women than men, we kind of gotta wonder
(21:01):
what's going on. And in fact, this guy, I mean,
he's quite a character. He basically says, and I thought
it was going to be all about men, because historically
that's what we've chosen men over women. But you know,
here I am a grandfather of a granddaughter who is
now a genetic scientist. Yeah, there was a time, and
(21:24):
this has pointed out in several works, but also in
the comedic film Sting Ray Sam, which I encourage everyone
to check out, that there there was a there was
a time where the idea of having a a female
child was was pretty disastrous if you were either really
(21:44):
poor or really rich, right, I mean China is still
kind of shaking that off, yes, because if you're really rich,
you need a male air and a female is not
necessarily gonna cut it. And then if you're really poor,
it can be rather heartbreaking too. You know, you're you
have this female child who can't you know, necessarily work
on the farm like you need or do the manual
labor that needs doing, um, and may suddenly find herself
(22:07):
morally compromised by the society around her. Right, You've got
the whole dowrything to worry. Yeah, that too. So so
it was kind of like a middle that for a while.
They even the idea that like the you know, the
female child could be the you know, the you know her,
you know, daddy's favorite was more of a middle class thing, right, yeah. Yeah,
And I mean again, you look that historically and you
(22:28):
see that men in ancient Greece were tying off their
left left testicle, uh, in the hopes of producing a
male air. I mean, people were taking it very seriously.
And some women, you know back in the day, we're
actually losing their lives if they didn't produce a male air. Well,
that's worse. That's I'm sorry to grow at the torture. Yeah.
I didn't mean to bring it down there. Um. But
(22:50):
so some people are in a panic over this, and
specifically I will talk about Japan, where they're they're in
a national panic over the rise of something they've called herbivores,
which are men who are gardening and organizing dessert parties
and basically declining to have sex while their female counterparts
are out in the workplace and they're being known as carnivores. Huh.
(23:14):
That's interesting. I've I've seen some some interesting documentaries about this,
particularly BBC's Japan Rama. Uh. They did a whole show
about sexuality in Japan, and in particular they were looking
at like a taku culture of the nerd culture in Japan,
where a lot of them in a very kind of
awesome way. It's like there was this, uh, there's this
kind of feel. It's kind of kind of this sort
of the way a lot of people look at nerds.
(23:35):
It's like, oh, these guys can't get dates, you know.
But there were some of these are talking that were like,
you know, I don't really want a woman in my
life because I have all these awesome hobbies and collections
going on. If even if there was a lady would
just get in the way of this stuff. So no, no,
thank you, I'm fine. And and again I think that's
kind of awesome in a way, it's not very good
for the future ones, um, you know, culture and nation
(23:57):
in the long run if everybody's buying into that. No,
but it does kind of point out that a certain
amount of gender performance on humans parts, right. I mean,
we obviously have biological differences, and there are some differences
in our brains. You know, women tend to have, you know,
more gray matter in the communication parts of their brains. Um,
men have more braun But at the end of the day,
(24:18):
if we all just you know, had long hair, didn't
shave um, except for I guess men in their beards,
we would look remarkably similar. You know, am I performing
my gender and wearing earrings and lipsticks in certain clothing?
So your solution is that everybody should stop bathing and
that's going to fix everything? Yes, it is. I already
(24:42):
told you I'm a fan of the funk, and I'm
just kidding. But you know, I do think that there's
aspect of adaptability here that we're talking about. And if
you look at women in the workplace the last hundred years,
I've had to adapt. So I don't think it's all
bad news for guys out there. I mean, I think
that the chromosomes are repairing themselves and they can adapt. Yeah. Well,
(25:06):
like I said earlier, often fall into the trap of
blaming everything horrible and human civilization on males. And I
think a lot of it can really be related to
their feet because it's you know, you end up with
a culture dominated by by males, it tends to be
more warlike, more violent, and uh yeah, I mean just
(25:28):
look at the news. I really don't think I have
to make that strong of a case for this because
the the the headlines pretty much do it for me.
But an interesting thing was brought up by that Atlantic
article was that was there's this theory that it's not
really a male female thing in terms of like who's
going to be brutal. It's like whatever the dominant sex
is just might be brutal and violent just because it's
(25:51):
dominant like that. So it's more like a human nature thing,
right yeah, And I think as opposed to any sort
of what we sometimes think are intrinsic values attached to
a gender, right right, it's uh, it's kind of you know,
it's kind of like the whole absolute power of corrupts
absolutely kind of a deal. The Atlantica article that we
mentioned earlier, they they made this case based on on
the fact that that the rate of violence committed by
(26:13):
middle aged women has increased since the nineteen eighties, and
that you see more and more like high profile female
killers and serial murders. So, as you know, is the
female stock and society rises, so perhaps does their capacity
for violence? Isn't an interesting argument, And and again it's
(26:34):
it's I tend to sort of I tend to like
that in that it is maybe a little more of
a humans are messed up as opposed to you know,
men are bad, women are good, because yeah, I think
we're beyond that now, Yeah, because we all know women
can be pretty horrible as well. I mean, it's not
men do not have an exclusive copyright on on being wretched.
And I think that women are sometimes thought of as
(26:56):
more altruistic because they have the children and are the
the the caregivers, and you know, that's that's out of necessity,
you know. And um, you know, maybe maybe women are
replicating their DNA because they're selfish, because they'd like to
see their you know, DNA come to life. Um you know,
(27:16):
I'm not saying. You know, I'm a mother and i'd
have a little DNA replicate myself, but um, you know,
I didn't necessarily do that, so I could see some
gene sequencing and action. But I'm just saying that you
know to to UH to say that, oh, you know,
women are are better than men in that sense or
have a better moral compass isn't necessarily true. I'm all
on board with what you're saying, is that, you know,
(27:39):
sometimes it just depends on the circumstance and what the
power structure is. And so far, what's proven out is
that when you do have men in charge, that there's
a some some sometimes catastrophic events happening, sometimes not, but
you know, there definitely is more of violence. And then
there's also the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk. Um.
(28:00):
This is I think interesting to point out. This may
be why men aren't as much of a good fit
in today's economic environment because excessive risk is seen as
bad and cooperation, adaptability, flexibility, those are all things that
are fitting into the archetype of what we're seeing right
(28:23):
now now. I um, I was, I was curious. I
also looked up prison stats and I found those. I
found a report from the Bureau of Prisons and they
had they have these different codes for UH for for
different types of crimes. They have like code on codes
that are in the hundreds like one D one oh one,
one oh four, and then there are two hundred codes
(28:44):
like two oh one two, And the two hundred codes
are things like fighting it fighting, threatening bodily harm, and
assaulting people. The one hundred codes are killing, attempted murder, um,
a serious assault, possession of a wet and all right.
And when in examining gender specific violence, they found it
(29:05):
was extremely rare for women to commit uh, these one
hundred level or you know, more like murder level crimes.
And part of this was in that they were like, oh, well,
we need a separate system for determining like male violence
and female violence as far as the prison system is concerned.
So that's a that's interesting to take into account. But
then again, you're looking at female or male violence within
(29:29):
within the culture, within the larger culture, and there's so
many different layers of that nature versus nurture and so
on and so forth. Yeah, I don't know, it's a
sticky subject. I mean, we started out just talking about
how the Y chromosome it can't repair itself so great
and the implications of that, Yeah, I mean the far
reaching you can't ignore that. Yeah. So I mean I
(29:49):
guess it boils down to them the answer, Like any
of these things it's more of a a middle ground
thing where it's the answer is not that female should
be in charge and men shouldn't, or that men should
be extinct and we just need a fe l uh
culture female race uh in and of itself, but more
of a uh you know, more gender equality, more uh
you know, an improvement in communication between the genders, all
(30:14):
these things that are pretty uh, pretty common sense at
least I think to most moderns. Yeah, once that makes
sense in the whole evolutionary scheme of things. I mean,
you know, we don't necessarily need to go and fight
tigers anymore, and and and uh and lived the way
that we lived before, where excessive risk was really great
in testosterone levels that were high or really great. So
(30:36):
it would make sense that so many thousands of years
later we would evolve into creatures that were a little
bit more sensitive to their environments. It just happens that,
you know, this discovery of the y chromosome and this
information from the Atlantic, you know, crossed our desk at
the same time, and it made an interesting story I
think of what's going on. But still I'm looking to
(30:58):
the future when other planets will be populated by short
women and their robot physicians. I think it's gonna happen,
and uh it'll be. It'll be interesting for those that
are alive to see what I think that you need
to uh touch to uh Branson about that, just as
a side project, you know. So if you have thoughts
(31:20):
on any of that, you can find us on Facebook
or Twitter um on either we or blow the Mind.
We also update both those accounts with all sorts of
cool science related links from around the net, and you
can also share your thoughts via the now old school
technology email at bolower the Mind at how stuff works
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(31:45):
is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
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iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
I'm Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie, I
want to kick off the podcast by just giving a
shout out to our male all of our male listeners
out there, because according to some studies that we've been
(00:24):
reading today, uh, they might not be around forever. In fact,
the males as we know it may become extinct, what
like like woolly mammoth extinct, like wooly mammoth extinct. Like
it'll just be just be ladies out there. Uh And
and I guess it just I feel kind of I'm
kind of fearful for any podcast. It's not stuff your
mom didn't tell you whoa Um, I don't know. I
(00:48):
mean I think that you're a brave man to introduce
such a subject. I mean, this is this is gonna listen.
I think a really emotional response. Well not not really,
because if you're twoing in and you're expecting me to
like jump to the defense of males. As we discussed
the possibility of an all female planet and the extinction
of of the masculine gender, I'm I'm not gonna defend
(01:11):
guys too much because I I tend to and there's
a mistake in this too to rely too heavily on this.
But I tend to attribute attribute a lot of the
horrors of the world too to masculine dominance in the
culture and h and you know, lay a lot of
the crimes of humanity at the feet of the patriarchy. Wow,
(01:34):
I christen you, Robert b linhearted lamb uh. So let's
let's get into that a little bit more. I mean,
if if the uh, if men aren't going to be around,
what's going on? What would make them become extinct? To
to get to that point, we really need to discuss
what men are like. There's a tendency to sort of
(01:55):
like if you if you look at like you know,
see biblical accounts and and all, there's society of like, oh,
God created a I and then he created a woman.
But it kind of goes back like we were talking
about in a previous podcast about male nipples. The reason
males have nipples is because females have nipples and uh,
and and the nipples are it's kind of like the
car that that you get in a car and you're like, oh, well,
(02:16):
there's just an empty spot where the cigarette lighter goes. Well,
the other cars have the cigarette lighter because that's the
main model. Like the female is the main model, and
the male gender is just this, uh, this offshoot that's
necessary for procreation. Well so the afterthought, Wow, yeah, okay,
So to get there, I think we need to look
(02:36):
at chromosomes. Yeah, the chromosomes are key like ladies X
X men X Y. Okay, and so that why isn't
that the whole story about the Y being this imperfect
version of the X isn't too far off? Yeah, that's
my understanding of it. Okay, So we all know that
ourselves contain twenty three pairs of chromosomes, and twenty two
(02:58):
of those pairs are man matched pairs, and those are
shared by men and women. But the twenty three is different.
And I there's the rub, right, because in women, the
twenty three pair is made up of two chromosomes, and
men it's made up of an X chromosome and a
Y chromosome. Yeah, and it's that Y chromosome that determines
maleness and humans, and it holds genes necessary for forming
(03:21):
testies and making sperm. So the fact that it doesn't
have a matching pair poses a bit of a problem
for the Y chromosomes because all the other chromosomes they
come in two copies, and every time a cell divides,
mistakes and genes can creep in and so impaired chromosomes.
That means that if there's a mistake, you can go
back and a cell can always get the correct gene
(03:43):
sequence from the other chromosome. But that is not the
same situation for the Y. Yeah, there's been some some
really interesting studies. Uh. The one that I was looking
at was from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
and it's two thousand nine study. And again you need
a Y chromosome to the mail and they the study
found it three hundred million years ago the Y chromosome
(04:05):
had genes on it. Now we're down to about forty five.
And at the rate we're going, we're going to run
out of genes on the Y chromosome in about five
million years according to this particular study. Now, I think
you found an even uh shorter estimate, didn't you. Um.
The estimate that I looked at was a thousand years. Yeah.
And the reason though, is because the mistakes have crept
(04:28):
into the Y chromosome um and every time a gene
on the chromosome goes bad, it basically disappears. So that's
why it's gotten down so low. So scientists theorized that
the X and Y chromosome did start out with the
same amount of genes, but you're seeing in the Y
chromosome quite a depletion, okay, and entered geneticist Brian Sykes,
(04:50):
who is introducing this sort of lightning rod idea that
the chromosome, the Y chromosome will become extinct in a
d twenty five thousand years because of its lack of
ability to recombine with other chromosomes and repair itself. So,
I mean, this is what people have found. The researchers
have found that over a millennia, the Y chromosome has
(05:11):
lost most of its genes, which is really stunning and
it's not the sort of information they were actively looking for.
Is just as they were studying, they went, WHOA, what's
going on here with with the Y chromosome. Yeah, it's
worth mentioning that that there's a gene called the s
R Y and uh, this is important because it switches
on the development of testes and pumps out male hormones
(05:34):
that determines maleness or masculinity. Yeah, and when you look
at Brian Sykes, he's basically saying that regardless, regardless of
that function men as you had had already pointed out
to our genetically modified women, so flaws are never repaired
(05:54):
and if that goes on for generation after generation, Psykes argues,
eventually there are no functioning Y chromosomes left and those
I mean huge implications for the future of the world,
Like we could basically potentially go the way of the vole.
You could. Yeah, apparently the vole, which is kind of
like a mole, except it begins with a V. Right,
(06:15):
a rodent. Yeah, this is scientific explanation. It's a it's
a rodent typically found in Eastern Europe, Europe, and then
they're also a country rats in Japan that have this
as well. They have no Y chromosome and no s
R Y gene. So how are they getting by? Okay,
So what they're doing is because they have seemed to
have lost their Y chromosome somewhere down the line, they
(06:36):
have genetic material that confers maleness and has transferred itself
to another chromosome, So it's jumping chromosomes and applying that
chromosome on there. But if I'm under if I'm interestaining
this right, it's only going to produce two X chromosomes.
It's not actually going to reproduce another Y. So it's adapted,
(06:58):
but it's not necessarily carrying on its male nous. Yeah.
According to study I was looking at, they said that
there are several candidate genes that could potentially um uh
you know, jump in and take over from the s
r Y to uh you know again to switch on
the development of tests and pump out male hormones. Um.
And it's even possible that two or more different sex
(07:18):
determination systems based on different genes could pop up in
different populations, which I think which I think is and
this is in the human population. Um so you could
conceivably have have this situation where you have different in
a way different species sort of splitting off. Okay, so
be like divergent paths. Yeah, yeah, Okay, that's a very
(07:40):
interesting problem without the s r Y, Like one group
of people like suddenly their systems are using this gene
to determine sex, but then this other group has this
other method like there there are other sex determining tools
in the toolbox, and it's kind of we're kind of
unsure what nature might go with for different groups. And
then of course these groups would not necessarily be compatible
(08:01):
with one and another. That's what the studies talking about.
So I'm also thinking about David Page of m I. T. S.
Whitehead Institute, who disagrees that the Y chromosome actually become
extinct because he says that in his research that the
Y chromosome has been secretly creating backup copies of itself
(08:21):
and its most important genes, not all of them. Cocy
theory exactly, Um, but I think it's important to know
it's not all of the genes, just the most important ones, uh.
And these are stored in the DNA as mirror images
or palindromes. Palindrome is you might remember from everyone from
(08:42):
English class. That's a word that's also a word that
has felt the same way backwards as farward, like race,
car or none or two yes my favorite. Um. So
basically Page is saying that you know, looking at that logic,
they're not it's not necessarily going to go stink. That's
how it's actually been repairing itself um and and still
(09:05):
been in circulation, so to speak. And so it kind
of brings me to a natural question though, if if
men in the Y chromosome more specifically, are imperfect the
imperfect expression of X are or they needed biologically anymore,
(09:25):
especially given our technological advances. Well, it's interesting when you
look at you look at at examples in nature. There
are plenty of examples of a sexual reproduction promogenesis. Yeah,
of course, there are also plenty of examples that I
find rather interesting of situations where the male is just
not necessary in the long run. There's another rodent called
(09:47):
the brown and techinnus, also known as mac Lee's marsupial mouse.
So maybe it's not maybe it's not a rodent, maybe
it's marsupial. But any rate, this is a particular species.
The male mates like crazy for like twelve hours at
a time. I believe this was featured on Life or
Planet Earth, one of those two programs. Just mates like crazy,
mate mate mate, mate, mate, mate mate, then day night,
(10:09):
and then eventually just humps himself to death, just dies. Uh.
And the benefit here is, at this point, he's he's
done his part. He's uh, he's Uh, he's facilitated, uh,
sexual reproduction. That's so cold. He's fulfilled his biological and
now he's dead. And by being dead, that's one less
mouth to feed, right, because otherwise he would just be
(10:29):
setting around, you know, eating food, watching TV until then. Yeah,
you know how how men are and uh, and this
way he's he has at least the common courtesy to
die afterwards. And you see this, you know, in in
insects as well in another species, where the male, having
performed his role, uh, just kicks the buck bucket or
the female devours his head. Yes, yeah, I do recall
(10:52):
hearing about that praying man. Yes, well, you also have
virgin births, which happened um in boa constructs for instance,
and I happened actually pretty recently, were a bow constructor
fused a copy of herself, of her of her eggs.
Excuse me, she took her eggs and she fused a
copy of her genetic material, which stimulated embryonic development. And
(11:17):
the reason they know that that happened because she was
housed with males, is that she had this caramel colored
broad of little bow constrictors, which wasn't a genetic trade
of any of the males and you know this, it
happens every once in a while. Wow. So they can
get by, Yeah, they can get by. They can bring
home the bacon fried up in a pan. There are
(11:38):
a couple of exams, other examples they don't have to
even acknowledge or a man. There are a couple of
other examples from the insect to the world that I
really like. One there is there. Well, there was a
study from North Carolina State University and they were looking
at termites and they found that like basically with termites,
(11:59):
you have like a young ueen goes out, finds it,
found a new colony, and then she has a termite king,
and as is often the case in the insect world,
the king is just there for the mating. Again, the
females are the species. The male is just the um,
you know, the the the byproduct that's necessary to facilitate
sexual production. Yeah, he's just a pool boy hanging out
around in the drone chamber. Yeah. So so so anyway,
(12:22):
they they start doing it, reproducing, but then the queen
eventually dies like she it's you know, it's a big
responsibility run in a you know, a whole community of
termites stress. Yeah, so then you need another queen. But
but here's the thing you don't in breeding is typically
a bad thing for a community. So uh, you know,
(12:43):
just on a genetic level. And I'm not talking about
because because there's no real social anything, and you know
in the termite world. Um, so they need a new queen,
right and we don't. But we don't need the king
to to start breeding with a daughter. So the queen
will a sexually reproduce to create the new queen, essentially
(13:05):
clone herself so that there's no no crossing of the
genetic streams so to speak. Yeah, and then then I
read there was another interesting study. Um, and this one
was featured in a BBC article not too long ago,
and they covered Amazonian ants, which are essentially an all
female species at this point. Like they at some point
(13:28):
they basically were like, you know, ladies, we can do
this on our own. We don't need the this drone
just hanging around. Uh, you know, we can just stick
with a sexual reproduction. So their number of benefits to this, First,
the ants don't waste any energy producing males, which which
again they don't do much, you know besides breeding. And uh,
and you know they've combined two positions you know, in
(13:49):
their their social uh strata. And it also doubles the
number of reproductive females that are produced each generation. Now,
the downside to that is that there's less diversity, which
means that like you get one new parasite, one new disease,
and it can essentially wipe out the entire species, which
is probably you know, a reason why why you don't
(14:10):
see as as many a sexual you know, species, because
because it will often you know, open them up for
potential just disaster when a new parasite, disease, et cetera coming. Right.
They want to encourage diversity right in a genetic pool,
right exactly. It's the whole reason for sexual reproduction over
a sexual in most cases. But I mean here's the
(14:31):
thing that I think it's spelling out for humans is
that eventually, I mean right around the corner, I mean,
two women will be able to fertilize an egg with
the other genetic material and it will still be a
diverse pool of genetic material. And this will be this
will be via a medical procedure or exactly exactly. And
(14:53):
I mean a good example is just you know, in
the animal world, is last summer, Japanese team announced that
female mice had been made pregnant using cells from other females,
and they gave birth to completely healthy babies. I think
the only thing that they noticed is that the babies
were about smaller than the other mice in the control group. So,
(15:17):
I mean, I think that's what's sort of spelling that
the future might be a matriarchal one. Yeah, like a
race short women and their robot physicians exactly. They're they're
female robot physicians. That might add well, Mike, why is
the wait, why does the physician have to be Like
maybe they'll be a little nostalgic for the the masculinity
(15:39):
of the past, and they'll they'll have the robots will
be like male robot doctors. Uh, you know, I would say,
friend of the ladies listening out there. Uh you know,
if you've ever had a guyn incologist, you're definitely gonna
want a female robot gynecologist. Yeah, even if it is
a robot, it's just that's a comforting aspect. But you're right,
(16:00):
maybe maybe some people would be nostalgic, Like maybe it'll
be kind of maybe it'll be programmed to say, I
don't have much time. My golf gang. My golf game
is right around the corner. Yeah, it'll be like or
maybe they'll go after the model. After the doctors in Madmen.
You know, it's like they're always like smoking in there
while they're telling the lady. So it is so because
they'll they'll miss it. They'll you know, it'd be like, oh, well,
(16:20):
you know, victory over all the horrible things that were mailed.
But then they're like, but I kind of miss those jerks.
So you know, let's start programming robots stuff to behave
really horribly maybe. So this presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. Actually it makes me think
(16:45):
about the article that you sent me called the End
of Men this is the Atlantic, Yeah, yes, yeah, and
it was it was sort of spelling out a future
not necessarily through science, maybe more socio economic terms. I
actually might even call it says economic Darwinism, in which
the future of um of the earth seems to be
(17:06):
geared a lot more toward women right now. So what
happened to the men? Are they they're not going extinct,
but they're just what being relegated to like brood chambers. Yeah, yeah,
they're they're in their main caves. It turns out that
they're not adapting as well as women. Uh, it turns
out and that this economic environment that if you're really
(17:26):
flexible you communicate well, uh, you can mitigate arguments, so
on and so forth, and in the global economy that
you're going to be pretty useful. And Uh. There's a
book called The Evolution of Culture by Leslie White, and
the crux of that idea or that book was that
social systems are determined by technological systems. So we're at
(17:49):
a point in our history, are technicol technological history, where
women are beginning to dominate the workplace. And so you're
looking right now at this year or the balance of
the work force has tipped towards women for the first
time ever. And for every two men who get a
college degree this year, three men, three women will do
(18:09):
the same. And right now women earn six of all
master's degrees. So there's definitely a trend here happening, and
a lot of this is being diascerbated by the fact
that typical male industries like construction, for instance, I've sort
of evaporated in the recession. But I think what's interesting
(18:30):
about that article is that it's it is pointing uh
to a time in our history where women are entering
the workplace and dominating fields that were typically thought as
thought of as a mail fields and doing them really well.
And of course, the the wage gap still exists. Women
are still getting paid less than men, and so you
(18:52):
have to wonder too if the economy is rewarding women
for not being paid as much and actually employing them
over men. That that's certainly got to be an asked
aspect of it. Kind of serve men, right though, you
think so, yeah, kind of like like, oh, you're only
messed up there, didn't you You thought you were you
were a cheating amount of something that you're just opening
the door, that's right. Well, I mean, yeah, that's that's
the good thing about this is that it's just a
(19:14):
matter of time where pay will become equal. Yeah, particularly
when you've tipped the scales in the workplace with more
women working there than then. But I should also note
that CEO's top positions as are still filled by men obviously,
and only three percent of the fortune CEO CEOs or women.
I mean that's kind of astounding. And then NFL coaches
(19:35):
m alright, guys, they're most like they're not none of
them are women? Are they yet until they see my game?
But um, the reason that I wanted to bring this up,
but not to get into you know, cultural um happenings
for today because we're more of a science podcast, is
to talk about Ronald Ericsson. He's a biologist, so he's
(19:57):
kind of a cowboy biologist and yeah he I mean,
he's the Marble Man. In fact, I think they eat.
He owns the property where a lot of the Marble
Man stuff was shot and he's really proud of that. Um.
But he's the guy that's responsible for separating uh sperm
carrying the mail producing Y chromosome from the X chromosome.
(20:18):
And he's the guy who basically brought this to market
and saying, hey, Almo, assuming that a lot of people
are going to want to have boys and be able
to determine sex, and this is the guy who who
made that happen. Of course, the big irony now is
that people are choosing girls over boys something like two
(20:39):
to one, and in some clinics upwoards to seventy. So
it's also spelling out a story that's being told in
something like the Atlantic giving us stats about women and
how they're dominating the workplace. And then when you look
at these clinics and you see that people are opting
for more women than men, we kind of gotta wonder
(21:01):
what's going on. And in fact, this guy, I mean,
he's quite a character. He basically says, and I thought
it was going to be all about men, because historically
that's what we've chosen men over women. But you know,
here I am a grandfather of a granddaughter who is
now a genetic scientist. Yeah, there was a time, and
(21:24):
this has pointed out in several works, but also in
the comedic film Sting Ray Sam, which I encourage everyone
to check out, that there there was a there was
a time where the idea of having a a female
child was was pretty disastrous if you were either really
(21:44):
poor or really rich, right, I mean China is still
kind of shaking that off, yes, because if you're really rich,
you need a male air and a female is not
necessarily gonna cut it. And then if you're really poor,
it can be rather heartbreaking too. You know, you're you
have this female child who can't you know, necessarily work
on the farm like you need or do the manual
labor that needs doing, um, and may suddenly find herself
(22:07):
morally compromised by the society around her. Right, You've got
the whole dowrything to worry. Yeah, that too. So so
it was kind of like a middle that for a while.
They even the idea that like the you know, the
female child could be the you know, the you know her,
you know, daddy's favorite was more of a middle class thing, right, yeah. Yeah,
And I mean again, you look that historically and you
(22:28):
see that men in ancient Greece were tying off their
left left testicle, uh, in the hopes of producing a
male air. I mean, people were taking it very seriously.
And some women, you know back in the day, we're
actually losing their lives if they didn't produce a male air. Well,
that's worse. That's I'm sorry to grow at the torture. Yeah.
I didn't mean to bring it down there. Um. But
(22:50):
so some people are in a panic over this, and
specifically I will talk about Japan, where they're they're in
a national panic over the rise of something they've called herbivores,
which are men who are gardening and organizing dessert parties
and basically declining to have sex while their female counterparts
are out in the workplace and they're being known as carnivores. Huh.
(23:14):
That's interesting. I've I've seen some some interesting documentaries about this,
particularly BBC's Japan Rama. Uh. They did a whole show
about sexuality in Japan, and in particular they were looking
at like a taku culture of the nerd culture in Japan,
where a lot of them in a very kind of
awesome way. It's like there was this, uh, there's this
kind of feel. It's kind of kind of this sort
of the way a lot of people look at nerds.
(23:35):
It's like, oh, these guys can't get dates, you know.
But there were some of these are talking that were like,
you know, I don't really want a woman in my
life because I have all these awesome hobbies and collections
going on. If even if there was a lady would
just get in the way of this stuff. So no, no,
thank you, I'm fine. And and again I think that's
kind of awesome in a way, it's not very good
for the future ones, um, you know, culture and nation
(23:57):
in the long run if everybody's buying into that. No,
but it does kind of point out that a certain
amount of gender performance on humans parts, right. I mean,
we obviously have biological differences, and there are some differences
in our brains. You know, women tend to have, you know,
more gray matter in the communication parts of their brains. Um,
men have more braun But at the end of the day,
(24:18):
if we all just you know, had long hair, didn't
shave um, except for I guess men in their beards,
we would look remarkably similar. You know, am I performing
my gender and wearing earrings and lipsticks in certain clothing?
So your solution is that everybody should stop bathing and
that's going to fix everything? Yes, it is. I already
(24:42):
told you I'm a fan of the funk, and I'm
just kidding. But you know, I do think that there's
aspect of adaptability here that we're talking about. And if
you look at women in the workplace the last hundred years,
I've had to adapt. So I don't think it's all
bad news for guys out there. I mean, I think
that the chromosomes are repairing themselves and they can adapt. Yeah. Well,
(25:06):
like I said earlier, often fall into the trap of
blaming everything horrible and human civilization on males. And I
think a lot of it can really be related to
their feet because it's you know, you end up with
a culture dominated by by males, it tends to be
more warlike, more violent, and uh yeah, I mean just
(25:28):
look at the news. I really don't think I have
to make that strong of a case for this because
the the the headlines pretty much do it for me.
But an interesting thing was brought up by that Atlantic
article was that was there's this theory that it's not
really a male female thing in terms of like who's
going to be brutal. It's like whatever the dominant sex
is just might be brutal and violent just because it's
(25:51):
dominant like that. So it's more like a human nature thing,
right yeah, And I think as opposed to any sort
of what we sometimes think are intrinsic values attached to
a gender, right right, it's uh, it's kind of you know,
it's kind of like the whole absolute power of corrupts
absolutely kind of a deal. The Atlantica article that we
mentioned earlier, they they made this case based on on
the fact that that the rate of violence committed by
(26:13):
middle aged women has increased since the nineteen eighties, and
that you see more and more like high profile female
killers and serial murders. So, as you know, is the
female stock and society rises, so perhaps does their capacity
for violence? Isn't an interesting argument, And and again it's
(26:34):
it's I tend to sort of I tend to like
that in that it is maybe a little more of
a humans are messed up as opposed to you know,
men are bad, women are good, because yeah, I think
we're beyond that now, Yeah, because we all know women
can be pretty horrible as well. I mean, it's not
men do not have an exclusive copyright on on being wretched.
And I think that women are sometimes thought of as
(26:56):
more altruistic because they have the children and are the
the the caregivers, and you know, that's that's out of necessity,
you know. And um, you know, maybe maybe women are
replicating their DNA because they're selfish, because they'd like to
see their you know, DNA come to life. Um you know,
(27:16):
I'm not saying. You know, I'm a mother and i'd
have a little DNA replicate myself, but um, you know,
I didn't necessarily do that, so I could see some
gene sequencing and action. But I'm just saying that you
know to to UH to say that, oh, you know,
women are are better than men in that sense or
have a better moral compass isn't necessarily true. I'm all
on board with what you're saying, is that, you know,
(27:39):
sometimes it just depends on the circumstance and what the
power structure is. And so far, what's proven out is
that when you do have men in charge, that there's
a some some sometimes catastrophic events happening, sometimes not, but
you know, there definitely is more of violence. And then
there's also the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk. Um.
(28:00):
This is I think interesting to point out. This may
be why men aren't as much of a good fit
in today's economic environment because excessive risk is seen as
bad and cooperation, adaptability, flexibility, those are all things that
are fitting into the archetype of what we're seeing right
(28:23):
now now. I um, I was, I was curious. I
also looked up prison stats and I found those. I
found a report from the Bureau of Prisons and they
had they have these different codes for UH for for
different types of crimes. They have like code on codes
that are in the hundreds like one D one oh one,
one oh four, and then there are two hundred codes
(28:44):
like two oh one two, And the two hundred codes
are things like fighting it fighting, threatening bodily harm, and
assaulting people. The one hundred codes are killing, attempted murder, um,
a serious assault, possession of a wet and all right.
And when in examining gender specific violence, they found it
(29:05):
was extremely rare for women to commit uh, these one
hundred level or you know, more like murder level crimes.
And part of this was in that they were like, oh, well,
we need a separate system for determining like male violence
and female violence as far as the prison system is concerned.
So that's a that's interesting to take into account. But
then again, you're looking at female or male violence within
(29:29):
within the culture, within the larger culture, and there's so
many different layers of that nature versus nurture and so
on and so forth. Yeah, I don't know, it's a
sticky subject. I mean, we started out just talking about
how the Y chromosome it can't repair itself so great
and the implications of that, Yeah, I mean the far
reaching you can't ignore that. Yeah. So I mean I
(29:49):
guess it boils down to them the answer, Like any
of these things it's more of a a middle ground
thing where it's the answer is not that female should
be in charge and men shouldn't, or that men should
be extinct and we just need a fe l uh
culture female race uh in and of itself, but more
of a uh you know, more gender equality, more uh
you know, an improvement in communication between the genders, all
(30:14):
these things that are pretty uh, pretty common sense at
least I think to most moderns. Yeah, once that makes
sense in the whole evolutionary scheme of things. I mean,
you know, we don't necessarily need to go and fight
tigers anymore, and and and uh and lived the way
that we lived before, where excessive risk was really great
in testosterone levels that were high or really great. So
(30:36):
it would make sense that so many thousands of years
later we would evolve into creatures that were a little
bit more sensitive to their environments. It just happens that,
you know, this discovery of the y chromosome and this
information from the Atlantic, you know, crossed our desk at
the same time, and it made an interesting story I
think of what's going on. But still I'm looking to
(30:58):
the future when other planets will be populated by short
women and their robot physicians. I think it's gonna happen,
and uh it'll be. It'll be interesting for those that
are alive to see what I think that you need
to uh touch to uh Branson about that, just as
a side project, you know. So if you have thoughts
(31:20):
on any of that, you can find us on Facebook
or Twitter um on either we or blow the Mind.
We also update both those accounts with all sorts of
cool science related links from around the net, and you
can also share your thoughts via the now old school
technology email at bolower the Mind at how stuff works
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
(31:45):
is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
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