0:05

I'm Alan Olga, and this is

0:08

Clear and Vivid, conversations about

0:10

connecting and communicating. There's

0:16

so many textbooks in psychology and other fields

0:18

that start with, only we humans do this.

0:21

And my first reaction is, are you

0:23

sure that that's the case? And

0:25

I have my doubts about it. So I see

0:27

this enormous amount, like an iceberg. You see, there's

0:29

an enormous amount of continuity, and then the little

0:31

tip of the iceberg, which is where our differences

0:34

are. I felt it made it my

0:36

task in life to show that there are lots

0:38

of similarities. This

0:40

year on March 14th, Franz de Waal died at the

0:42

age of 75. Franz

0:46

was a leading primatologist who found in

0:48

the lives of chimps and bonobos a

0:51

level of empathy and a capacity

0:53

for reconciliation, and an

0:55

ability to form political alliances and other

0:57

traits once reserved for humans.

1:01

This is a special episode of Clear and

1:03

Vivid in which our executive producer Graham Ched

1:05

and I look back on some of the

1:08

times we shared with Franz, learning

1:10

from him that things like morality and

1:13

even just a simple sense of fairness have

1:16

their roots in the brains of our primate

1:18

cousins. I first

1:20

met Franz de Waal almost 30 years

1:22

ago shooting an episode of Scientific American

1:24

Frontiers. He was a good teacher

1:26

with a dry sense of humor. Over

1:29

the decades, I interviewed him a total of

1:31

four times, including twice on

1:33

Clear and Vivid. And

1:35

each conversation brought me closer to

1:38

these animals who are

1:40

much more like us than we usually realize.

1:43

Graham, why don't you take it from here? Happy

1:45

to. That little clip of Franz

1:47

we just played is from an interview you did

1:49

with him from an episode in our PBS miniseries,

1:52

The Human Spark. In 2010,

1:54

while we were filming a group of

1:57

chimpanzees engaged in complex negotiations over a

1:59

couple of water on them at

2:01

the Yerkes Primates Centre in Atlanta. That's

2:04

where Franz spent many years watching and

2:06

filming both chimps and monkeys. When

2:09

we started Clearing Vivid back in 2019, Franz was one of

2:11

our early guests.

2:14

A great communicator, he wrote well over

2:16

a dozen books on primates, primates that

2:18

include us. He'd just

2:20

published a book called Mama's Last Hug, a

2:23

moving tribute to a female chimpanzee he'd

2:25

known for almost all her 40 years.

2:28

In your conversation with him, you talked about an

2:30

experiment he and a student, one

2:32

of many students, Franz mentored over his career,

2:35

an experiment that was perhaps his most

2:37

famous. It revealed a trait

2:40

in monkeys that's all too familiar to us

2:42

humans. So we do

2:44

experiments on the sense of fairness

2:46

in both chimps and monkeys. It

2:49

started with a very simple study that

2:51

we did on capuchin monkeys together with

2:53

Sarah Brosnan, a student of mine. We

2:56

discovered that these monkeys pay attention to

2:59

what others get. We think

3:01

that's maybe fairly normal, but if

3:03

you have these monkeys trained on a very simple task

3:05

and you give them food, they're

3:08

not just keeping track of what they did and

3:10

how much food they got, but they also look

3:12

what the neighbor is getting for the same task.

3:16

And so they

3:18

should be doing that. I think they should just pay attention

3:20

to what they do, but they do that. And you must

3:23

do that, of course, also. If I have the same job

3:25

as you and I

3:27

make twice as much money, you will notice and

3:29

you will be a bit upset about it. So

3:32

in the capuchin monkeys anyway, we started doing

3:34

experiments to see how they

3:36

would respond if they get the same rewards. Like

3:39

let's say both monkeys should give them

3:41

cucumber slices for the task, or

3:44

how they respond if you give them different rewards.

3:46

One monkey gets cucumber slices, the other one gets

3:49

grapes, and grapes are 10 times

3:51

better than the cucumber slices. So

3:53

then we did these experiments and we found that the

3:55

monkeys get very upset if they get less than the

3:57

other. They Don't want to perform.

4:00

Normally the willing to perform twenty five times

4:02

in a row for cucumber slices. If the

4:04

partners getting grapes they do it and maybe

4:07

three times and then they become angry and

4:09

under stop and so we we did. That

4:11

was the caput sense and then later we

4:13

did to twist Simpson that simply go further

4:15

than the could put sins in the sense

4:18

that the one who gets to grapes may

4:20

also refused to perform. if the other one

4:22

doesn't get grapes a sudden it's employees. so

4:24

now me that again say that again. That's

4:26

that's and resilience of unknowns that's the better

4:29

of are you are. It's may also refuse

4:31

if the other one doesn't get the

4:33

better. Be worth because there seems to

4:35

be a sense of fairness as lady

4:37

want to impose this fairness on the

4:39

person who's giving our grapes and cucumbers

4:41

know I sing to. My

4:44

theory is that it's all about

4:46

cooperation. Both Capuchin monkeys and Sims

4:48

live in cooperative societies, but some

4:50

sun belt about a thinking ahead

4:52

to chimps are better at. Products.

4:55

In a future behavior and I think

4:57

they realize that if the part that

4:59

is not happy if the part that

5:01

is pissed off because they only get

5:03

cucumber am that have a bad relationship

5:05

is that partner they will they will.

5:07

It will harm their relationship and so

5:09

they prefer that. The partner also gets

5:11

cooked foods. That. In order to

5:14

preserve that relationship and seems probably also

5:16

do that in the Hudson conduct in

5:18

the wilds because they hunt together. If

5:20

if if one of them would always

5:22

take all the good food and and

5:24

leave nothing for the rest that would

5:26

undermine their cooperation because than the others,

5:28

Why would have worked with that individual

5:31

As I think it's all cooperation based

5:33

and in human society. That. if

5:35

you get lots inequalities in human

5:37

societies as we have nowadays in

5:39

american society as he gets his

5:42

wife's inequalities you're basically undermining the

5:44

cooperative nature of the society a

5:46

basic be harming them the fabric

5:48

of society and and me know

5:50

that actually from the health data

5:52

is that societies that are more

5:54

an equal they have also more

5:57

trouble of his health and longevity

5:59

and some that there is a connection

6:01

also in human society. Have

6:03

you learned anything from chimps that

6:06

we humans could benefit from if

6:08

only we were a little more like that? Yeah,

6:13

I find it hard to compare because, not

6:16

because we humans are not comparable with

6:19

chimps, I think we are very similar

6:21

in our psychological makeup to chimps, but

6:23

we live in these very large anonymous

6:25

societies now, so that's a big difference

6:27

with chimps. Humans live in small scale

6:30

societies where everybody knows everybody,

6:32

very much face-to-face kind

6:34

of societies, the way we humans used

6:36

to live. Our ancestors lived in that

6:38

kind of societies, but now we

6:41

live in these huge places where

6:44

people actually can get away with inequality,

6:46

so you have the 1%, as

6:49

we call them, the grape-eaters of this

6:51

society, and so people can get away

6:53

with these things that you couldn't get

6:55

away within a smaller scale society. So

6:57

it's a bit hard to

6:59

compare a chimpanzee

7:02

community of maybe 100 individuals with

7:05

our societies of maybe 300 million

7:08

individuals, so it's very hard to draw

7:10

the connections. But in terms

7:12

of basic psychology and emotional makeup,

7:14

we are still very similar, I think.

7:18

By the way, you can search for Franz

7:20

de Waal, capuchin monkeys, and you'll see why

7:22

that clip went viral. Each

7:25

year we invited Franz back to talk

7:27

about his latest book, Different, Gender Through

7:29

the Eyes of a Primatologist. He

7:32

was rueful about a term he'd used in an

7:34

earlier book that became a meme, the

7:36

alpha male. I

7:38

have a lot of trouble with that view. First

7:42

of all, because male dominance

7:44

is not universal in the animal kingdom,

7:46

and our two closest relatives are a

7:48

good example in the sense that

7:51

male chimpanzees are dominant over females with

7:53

male bonobos, which are equally closer as

7:55

the bonobos, the

7:57

females are dominant. This

8:00

is relative to percent not so

8:02

nasa clear that In addition, Physical

8:05

dominoes is just a small part of

8:07

the picture. Or yes, yes, mail chimp

8:09

on Caesar Physically dominant. But in my

8:11

previous books I described Mama, the alpha

8:14

female of it's infancy colony Hoover's alpha

8:16

female for forty years see as an

8:18

enormous amount of power. So yes, physically,

8:20

C C did not dominate the males.

8:22

But that doesn't mean that he did

8:25

not decide to lot of things including

8:27

the status of males and in the

8:29

sense that you could not become alpha

8:31

male and that colonies without the support

8:33

of my mother. The females him

8:35

if he doesn't have her supports

8:38

and us have a problematic position

8:40

to be in for him because

8:42

the females are usually a large

8:44

group who are very cohesive and

8:46

so the but office of course

8:48

our special in that to have

8:50

collects of female dominance I would

8:52

say is basically a me too

8:54

movement in the sense that the

8:56

females have decided to put a

8:58

stop to two male aggression that

9:00

day they object to mail harassment,

9:02

the certainly no rapes possible in.

9:04

A bit over society because the females

9:07

would never tolerate something like that since

9:09

have a different society. some the temples

9:11

and it make the comparison so interesting

9:13

as a debt that is of course

9:16

a tendency in the among the as

9:18

the policies they don't like. The bonobo

9:20

said the soda bonobo. They try to

9:22

push his size and do the right

9:25

in their books. Things like the bonobo

9:27

was a very strange primates and then

9:29

they dismiss them, but they are genetically

9:31

exactly equally closer. As a symptom cease

9:33

they have a very different society. They

9:36

are much more peaceful. They're much more

9:38

a rock toss. A

9:41

very sexy primates and so

9:43

yeah, people try to push them

9:45

out of the picture because

9:47

they have. To. Sort

9:50

of picture of the human evolution that

9:52

is based on violence and male dominance

9:54

but I think him down exactly equal

9:56

irrelevant sympathies and been open and we

9:58

should try to. That's an

10:00

evolutionary process that includes both of

10:02

them, and you paint a picture

10:05

of the alpha male. even in

10:07

the same population, Being alpha doesn't

10:09

necessarily make you a bully. Know

10:12

that there are. There are bully

10:14

alphas and. There. Are. Socialized.

10:18

Health is her. Alphas that share more

10:20

in the her a break up fights

10:22

and don't causes much violence the right?

10:24

Yes. Oh and it did. The business

10:26

literature has settled on a picture of

10:28

the alpha male that is a bully.

10:30

Such a retired literature it is. So

10:32

make sure that you are the boss.

10:34

Make sure that everyone knows you're the

10:37

boss. To her he has the biggest

10:39

office. A bit of him on over

10:41

the head you get. You get the

10:43

women. you know that's the story in

10:45

the business books. And. Even

10:47

though. The popularity of

10:49

term alpha Male comes partly from my

10:51

work because it started after I wrote

10:54

some fancy politics and thought the lot

10:56

about alpha males a day have reduced

10:58

it to some sort of from a

11:00

dictator. Most alpha males

11:02

that I know. That

11:04

the I substance who are bullies

11:06

efforts to do exists. but most

11:08

alpha males that I know. Has

11:12

been very protective of the

11:14

underdog from somebody Defense juveniles

11:16

against adults, day defense emails

11:18

against males they break up

11:20

fights they are very emphatic

11:22

to arts are victims of

11:24

fights and and so they

11:26

can become extremely popular the

11:28

this by the end of

11:30

their life they may be

11:32

the most popular male and.

11:34

A group of because they were such

11:36

great leaders and so I'm the most

11:38

alpha males that I know. They are

11:41

very different from bullies. They are really

11:43

individuals who keep a group together. His

11:46

book on gender made a powerful

11:48

case of gender fluidity. isn't some

11:50

bizarre aberration, only sand and humans.

11:53

He told the story of a chimpanzee name's

11:55

Donna. Sudden.

11:57

i was a baby when i met her and

12:00

And already at that time, we didn't really know

12:02

that she was different, but you could see that

12:04

she played with

12:07

adult males. She thought out

12:09

adult males to wrestle with,

12:11

which young males very often do, but

12:14

not young females. And so in that sense, already she

12:16

was different from the rest. Then

12:19

when she grew into adolescence,

12:21

years later, she became a

12:23

very robust female. She developed

12:25

the big shoulders and the

12:27

big hair and the big head of

12:30

a male. And she started to act

12:32

like a male. She would display with them if

12:34

the males were displaying around, which

12:36

we usually call bluff behavior with all

12:39

the hairs on end and intimidating everybody.

12:41

She would run along with

12:43

them and she was part of that.

12:45

And she associated more with males than

12:47

with females, actually. So

12:49

she became, from a distance,

12:51

if you didn't know it, you would swear she

12:54

was a male. She

12:56

became a male-like character. And of course,

12:58

I cannot ask her about her

13:00

identity, her sexual

13:02

identity, but clearly

13:05

she acted more like a male than like a

13:07

female. And what I think

13:09

is so interesting about her, compared to our

13:12

current discussion about trans people

13:14

and so on, is that

13:17

she was extremely well accepted. I've never

13:19

noticed any problem with her. She was

13:21

extremely well accepted by both males and

13:23

females in the group. I

13:26

wonder, did she ever get

13:28

pregnant and have a baby? She

13:31

had no offspring at all.

13:33

And she was not interested in

13:35

sex. Initially, we thought she

13:37

might be a lesbian female, but she was

13:40

not interested in sex, neither with males nor

13:42

with females. So

13:44

overall, it seems to

13:46

be that we're not condemned to

13:49

inherited behaviors, but

13:51

we can look for clues in

13:54

our cousin's behavior for how we

13:56

can change through our own socialization.

14:00

of self-socialization. Yeah. Yeah,

14:04

there's a lot more flexibility than

14:08

people assume. So people assume that

14:11

like some conservative politicians nowadays, they say

14:13

such things as like those men and

14:16

women and the trolleys. And

14:19

I think things are not so simple for us

14:21

and things are not so simple for our closest

14:24

relatives. There are indeed

14:26

males and females, but

14:28

whether they are mutually attracted is

14:30

not always the case. So for

14:33

example, I consider Bonobos perfectly

14:35

bisexual in the sense that I don't think

14:37

it matters much for them, whether they have

14:39

sex with a male or a female. So

14:42

sexual orientation is not as clear

14:44

cut as people think. And

14:47

maybe also sexual development. Look at the

14:49

case of Donna and I've also known

14:51

males who are not

14:54

exactly into the macho game. So

14:56

they may be big males who

14:58

are not interested in getting

15:01

a high ranking position among the other males

15:03

and stay out of confrontations. So

15:06

you have all that variability going on,

15:08

what we call nowadays in society, we

15:10

call it gender diversity. So

15:12

you find all that gender diversity also in

15:14

the other primates. And

15:16

it's unfortunate that our current

15:19

societies are intolerant of diversity.

15:21

So we like to put people in pigeonholes

15:23

like you are male, you are female, you

15:26

are homosexual, you are heterosexual.

15:29

We like these pigeonholes, but not

15:31

everything fits and

15:33

not everybody fits. And

15:35

we are intolerant of the ones who don't fit

15:37

in these pigeonholes. Franz

15:40

de Waal died on March 16th of

15:42

stomach cancer. His bequest

15:44

to us all is a richer understanding of

15:46

who we are and how we got this

15:48

way. Alan

15:51

will be back with our next regular episode of

15:53

Clear and Vivid next Tuesday. Meanwhile

15:56

our Patreon subscribers can check out the video

15:58

of Alan and Franz watching Chimpanzee. tons of

16:00

these wrangle over water cannons. Chip

16:03

politics in action. Law

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