you know. you're going to. visionaries me sophie shevardnadze humans on one hand. and on the other hand there are people great sacrifices. such extremes. the professor of biology and stanford university and a recipient of a macarthur foundation. professor of biology and new rajat stanford university so great to have you with us because we

had some of us to talk about it so in our previous problems were talking to each other and director and screenwriter mr harris talk about this fear factor into more of his medicine sickle forms and without that today's program would be tend to cater to where this fear factor comes from but in more biological ways i want to start with this so many times i've heard this expression humans are the most dangerous animals on earth used the editing world to trace the origins of human behavior and you know how our brain works and what drives us so tell me is the the most dangerous just imagine for or is it actually true. well it certainly is true looking at the number of species we're driving into extinction though. the list some of this season may be that like risk opic viruses can do at least as good of a job in the other direction when you look at humans the challenge is that there's

this terribly confusing paradox which is we are indeed the most dangerous species on earth we are in news ripley violent species we have remarkable a ray of ways of making their miserable damaging all of that yet at the same time we're also the most cooperated species on earth where the most altruism where the most compassionate and for me this is science has what is the most challenging thing to make sense of is the biology of how we can be. all full and some settings and so wonderful in others and often it's the same behaviors it's very dependent on context so that's exactly what we're going to talk about today to try to actually deconstruct what you've just sat with

your colleague from charges france to has argued that there is no supreme force that makes it good or bad but there are her own rules that we by by fostering by the evolutionary need to survive ask if we follow the argument that being. evolutionary beneficial are so her to say that chris christie's why bought a branch in grapes so that they sound the territory and profit as we see from the war than any 15 years ago humans are just like humans in this regard so if evolution is responsible for this do to others is it also responsible for our. the evil of islam. years old though after a while when you study the. words like good and evil begin to seem irrelevant and unscientific we we are we are nothing more or less than our

biology and biology of behavior does not have offer a lot of room for concepts like evil or soul or. sanctity any any such thing. about us that's most striking is yes we can be exactly like chimps chimps have now been shown to have organized violence crème meditated violence something resembling warfare or territorial disputes something resembling genocide which is sort of the formal world court definition is being willing to kill somebody not for who they are but simply for what group they belong to and chimps do this and it's enormously familiar and it's just like us and they are physically violent they make weapons as do we but then we have something that no chimp could ever make sense of we can

press a button and kill someone on the other side of the planet we kill so monk whose face we have never seen we can kill someone where we don't even know for certain if we've even had an interaction with them if we have had any effect on them and at the same time what's also clear is lots of other primates have altruism has mo have moments of compassion have moments of self sacrificial compassion and then we do something utterly bizarre there in that we can press a different button on her computer. and send money to help a refugee on the other side of the planet we can feel pain and lose sleep over the misfortune of someone we have never met whose face we have never seen and in those regards we're a very very strange primates so how does slaying all that i mean you're saying

there is so much like chills and. anything that is good or evil or soul doesn't make sense in a scientific way it's irrelevant. what is it that makes us to france france as a lot of new your our scientists would argue that what makes us different from anyone else is the conscious the one thing that we can't see we can't pinpoint but it's obviously there would you agree with that when you look at the human genome and compare it to say the chimpanzee or the bonneau poaching room there's more than 98 percent similar. so they've been sequenced and you can then sit down and have this incredibly exciting thing if asking so one and a half percent differences in the d.n.a. where are the differences and what is it that makes us humans as opposed to the chimps and for the most part the list is really boring it's not half of the genes

have to do with olfaction others have to do with amused function oh there's have to do with reproductive isolation others have to do with how much hairier growing on your strollers these are not very exciting cynics and is in europe are always just sit there and say where are the genes that have something to do with granny who is going to be dramatically different we're asked what makes us who we are. and when you look closely there's a very few genes related to neural function and the ones that are do something very simple they have to do with the rounds of cell division. basically if you want to turn a chimpanzee brain and she was human brain just let it go through 34 more rounds of cell division so you've got 4 times as many neurons as you would have had as a chip and that's all you've got to do it's the same dura transmitters it's the

same and zombies it's the same everything else but if you put enough neurons together all sorts of stuff will serve emerging including consciousness and a wonderful way of describing it the people who doing merchants' complexity science they say things like with enough quantity you invent quality just stick a nuff neurons in somebodies brain and consciousness is going to pop out the other side not because any given neuron is anything else here than it would be in a chimpanzee or a fruit fly but simply with enough of them emergent properties come out and so memory and there is consciousness and is static sense theology and all these other things that chimps could never make sense of which they could if they really had 4 terms as many neurons it's really all that's needed very well to

contradict your assertion just killer magic notion of consciousness that made a specialist human faeces but i think very flaming that to me so many of the back to what you are saying he said that he wants to have to draw a line between the sun called right kind of violence and the wrong kind of balance out how do you explain that what he what exactly i mean by that well that's that she huge puzzle of us like every single culture on earth has prohibitions against killing. at the same time virtually every culture on earth will reward you enormously if you've killed the right person if you've killed in any of the states if you have you know do the exact same thing with your brain and the exact same thing with your muscles where you pull the trigger on a weapon and in one setting it is the most horrendous damaging thing imaginable and

in another setting is it a wondrous thing that they will give you a medal for people who vote for you because of the people who makes with you because you're good at doing that sort of say and it's the exact same behavior it's just in a different context and that's not just the case for damaging behaviors it's the same for our affiliate of ones as well ok so a wonderful moment somebody is troubled they're emotionally distressed and you put your hand on there and depending on the context that's a moment of deep compassion or wonderful moment or in another setting you were during the 1st step of the train a loved one. straying into a direction you shouldn't be and his exact same muscles it's the exact same behavior in other words understanding the biology of our behaviors the mechanical bases it is not very interesting is not very challenging the challenge is

understanding a context for it because they need to leave different things in different set a. break right now whatever back we'll continue talking to robert. professor of neurology biology at stanford university. capable of extreme statement as. long as. counting the cost and charting the future we demand any good theory to proceed it is time to assess the economic game just as the crisis change the game will come to

me and if there's going to be a recovery what kind. and are there lessons to be learned. happened on the front of the. way or both the food. bank itself moved to. closing this we've got to go through hard luck the thing in the decide to move the work ahead take away and i don't mean to start then if. this is the only thing that we do is music because everybody fights his way. to. the floor and you can use all the fees out of this bill frist would have called. the. thank you what i think is this is the fund that is

a constant thank. you. oh i'm back to. talking to a professor of neurology in biology and staffers a person a professor emeritus biology it could any well as you refer to military psychologists who suggest that in the middle of combat soldiers shot at each other not our hate trait but fear of being killed or because they were told to stand up and 5 by the commanders bath out of the feeling of kinship with that others so they should kill because others. and if you think about it we did

a lot of stupid in appalling things because there's. houses where i mean that things that we might be uncomfortable about several supine if others do that well what happens we're a very conforming species classic studies in the 1950 s. you sit somebody down you show them a picture with 3 para loans were one of the lines is clearly longer than the other to the nearest person which is the longest line and 99 percent of it's when people you know say that's the longest then you do the study where the person is sitting there and there's 10 other people in the room and everyone looks at this picture and you get to ask everyone which is the longest line and the other 10 people who are working for the experimenter go 1st and every single one of them says the line that shorter is a long one and you know what was seen classic psychology stuff 75 percent of people

are willing to conform under those circumstances to be willing to say. well i guess i was room yeah i guess that is the long the longest lie so those were studies in the fifty's but more modern versions of it now of involved doing neuroimaging on people when that's happened and what do you see as 2nd the 1st person says yeah that's the longest line wait that's not the longest line that's not what i thought was the longest line and what you see in a fraction of a 2nd is activation of this part of the brain called be an egg. which you with anxiety and with here and what you see at that point is being different from everybody else is a terribly enzyte he provoking thing 1st you and you see at the point that subjects decide ok i don't know what they're talking about but good i'm going to say that

also 2nd they do that you need to look quiets down i'm safe i'm part of the crowd again i'm part of i'm not standing up for himself where a terribly conforming species because. it least in the united states where there is such an emphasis on individual list cultures and all of that we are very into the individualistic in the ways that we go about conformity and everyone else. you know being a non-conformist is very anxiety provoking for any primate out there but in particular seem so we can bring out the best of our behaviors but far more often it brings out the worst because we go along with the crowd. could that explain that millions of people follow nasserism to the death but they get it they did it asshole shit just doing what everyone. around well the interesting

thing very is sort of by the time he gets humans if you're looking at a hamster a. hampster crew walk rates more with a full civil lying than it does with a stranger how does the hamster know this this could be a sibling from a different litter or whatever they 2 never clee connect recognize row with its rules factory signature schumann's don't do yet how do we figure out who is a relative we have to think about it and assumes we think about it we can be manipulated into thinking that this person feels so close to me they're practically a relative or that person feels so different from a that they hardly even count as she. and the jerking used for it is kinship and no speciation sue kinship with every little experience earth is really good to have whether you are looking at high tech armies or. nomadic pastoralists

here's what they do is the military is trained to think of each other as brothers brothers an army english cliche that is you become a band of brothers when you join the military serial kinship so very critical moments you are willing to give yourself your life for this other person and normally there's a fair degree of like related is everyone who joined the nazis was german nerve german gene stock but during world war 2 you had american troops fighting the nazis where one guy in this american group would be an italian american guy in a polish american car in a russian jewish american guy in a black. and you would have a guy fighting on the american side who's german american and he was more related

to the guy he was trying to shoot at the other in the field than he was to the black guy or the jewish guy or the italian guy right next to him. and you would be willing to give up this life for this showing when you do this sooner or can ship stuff it is very easy to manipulate us into feeling so related unconsciously implicitly to each other that's where you get some great schuman moments and some turbulence but it's kind of scary when i think about it the whole scenario so you know i can't shake because as opposed suter kingship visit parks forests that makes human of rice and marks to kill each other in droves i mean when you look at the past the war a spatial test they go a little bit more in the whole human race could have been wiped out. yup. you know pseudo kinship could have its good moments if you're a dalai lama you can say that every person on earth feels like

a sibling to us far as you can tell he actually feels that way and you can have great moments like that but yes for the most part pseudo kinship is a scary thing and even scarier is speciation if you want to have a genocide go successfully against the people you don't like convince everyone in your side that most people are like rodents those people are like cancers those people are like vermin and they're like viruses there are like they hardly even kennel disunion and the nazis were brilliant at that all of nazi propaganda posters were about jews as rats used as rodents when the tutsis in rwanda were killed genocidally by the hoochie there the who to consider all of them this conqueror as a vermin when donald trump tries to make americans turn against immigrants trying

to come to the country he refers to them as it is he is as an infection mexicans coming to the united states or coming to inspect a country that's what every good. you know demagogue and fascist meter of that sort who's headed to you is if you could make your followers think of them as less than human use your 3 quarters of the way towards completing your agenda so i won't touch because we don't have that much higher level i won't touch on that of the apollo the pandemic that we're living through right now maybe also. indicate shit but 1st i've heard many psychologists say that the current code 900 make has put us in a survival mode. which is very sad i mean i fully realize that right now and i'm in a pretty comfortable situation in my home no one's holding a gun to my hat it's not like alliance chasing as i know how exactly does this

situation change for their survival mode one of the most ancient actually basic instincts and how we humans well if if you had a zebra in your room with you and the zebra was getting all the same news that you were about coop at 19 it would not be having stress response it doesn't have the capacity to abstract over space and time and we can sit here and we can think about all the people who have died we can think about what it must feel like to have your lungs fill up with fluid what it must feel like to go to an emergency room and they don't have a ventilator for you we can think about what it must feel like to be in the united states one of the 20000000 people who have lost their jobs in the last 2 months who are thinking about the shortages that could well be happening or any version of

this and we can think about how somebody else is emotions and we can think about a scenario that's imaginary at this point but has a decent chance of the curry in the future and we can be as panicked at that point and this sickens and feeling as if we are being hunted by a lion as the zebra would feel what he really was being a concert on iran. so if you look at this point demi in terms of pseudo kinship which she said could be a horrible thing they call also be a wonderful thing would you think this city of key ship was brought out in the us in a good way or in a bad wager in the me because i do feel like a lot of people are consolidating and the whole world has put aside their differences i'm not even talking about the presidents i'm talking about people to sort of be in this together and fight this together and i see people helping each other volunteers helping old people that i never thought i don't see in and normal

environment what are your impressions of what this thing debbie has brought out in us. for we're it's really good. impression you have a. the people risking their lives in the emergency rooms the people risking their lives delivering food to people and working as pharmacists for the sick people coming in there coughing and although we've seen some incredibly who are extra and you know this is going to a good time for people pulling together after the 911 attack in the united states and 2100 people in new york city home from new york city originally in people there are like trained to be rotten and used to your job search because that's what all new yorkers are like and for months afterward people were trying to teach other he was under nerving and yes at times like this people pull together

but then there are the people who are refusing to wear face masks and there are the people who are refusing to go along with public health measures and because they don't care if they get somebody else sick so we have this like initially assume contribute pretty great great stuff my guess would be as this pandemic osama longer and longer and as more people lose their jobs and as more people die we're going to start seeing far less of the goods to go kinship or more of the bad stuff . and now i'm also considering the dark side and i see how the domestic violence has risen at 35 percent with number couple of weeks ago it could be even more now. what do you think could be there are bad moments that could resurface then asked because of uncertainty because of strasse that has a fear and an artistic sense survival what can we extract.

well at her worst moments in terms of stress her memory gets better we get anxious and we get depressed what's probably most important is what stressed to the frontal cortex in the brain what stress is make the frontal cortex work less effectively and what the frontal cortex is good at is keeping you from doing something stupid in disaster risk because it gets there in the very last 2nd and tells you that may not be such a good idea i know you think that's exactly what you should do right now but trust me you're going to regret it it controls our worst impulses and what stress there is is make us more impulsive in all behaviors which stress also does is make us less in the past think we feel more empathy for people immediately around us but who counts isn't us as much narrower during periods of stress when we even know

what part of the brain is involved in that so he's making terrible decisions what that often takes the form of is looking for somebody else to take your pains out on scapegoating looking for who's record and now here's no shortage of people looking for somebody to blame for every disaster there are people who are if anything weaker and poorer than you are. pleasure talking to. your brain i wish i could have an opportunity to. share with him his stay safe thank you very much for your thoughts. we hope everyone. better.

yes. we go to work. straight home. 54 jets and more than 1300 military personnel are headed to air

force base in alaska where is that to say come on i'll show you what's the reason for any type of enhanced u.s. military presence in this area rush up. what is it suddenly about the south china sea that makes it so that it 11000000000 barrels of oil. take a look at this map who really owns what kind of says no it belongs to us india says no we claim that that belongs to us both of these countries have nuclear weapons capabilities there is reason for concern so that's why we're going to drill down on the story for you today right here on the news with rick sanchez where you know as we always like to say we do believe by golly it's time to do news again.

hello and welcome to cross not where all these are considered on counting the cost and charting the future when demand only comparing to recede it is time to assess the economic damage oh has the crisis changed the global economy and if there's going to be a recovery well crime will be and are there lessons to be learnt.