#1230 William von Hippel: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm joined by a return guest, Doctor William von Hippel. He is now senior research scientist at Wop, and today we're going to talk about his latest book, The Social Paradox, Autonomy, Connection, and why we need both to find happiness. So Doctor von Hippel, welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

00:28 William von Hippel: It's great to see you again, Ricardo. It's been a while.

00:31 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, it's been a while. So in the book, uh, you focus on the human needs for autonomy and connection. Why did you choose those needs? Why do you think they're so so relevant?

00:48 William von Hippel: Yeah, that's a good question. The, um, you know, humans have lots of needs, and one could focus a book on any of them, really. For me, the, the key to autonomy and connection is I regard them. I regard them as the two most fundamental needs that we have since we separated from our chimpanzee cousins. And so chimpanzees, they, they also connect, but not nearly as strong as we do, and I think that was the first and foremost need that we developed when we moved to the savannah. And then secondarily, Autonomy became more important for us because as humans, we have so many different ways that we can be a success, you know, many animals have just one or two strategies that they can do to be successful, but as a human, there's countless ways that you could be valuable to your group, uh, particularly in today's world, but even for our ancestors. And so, what I believe is that autonomy is what allows you to choose the path that will be most that you think gives you the best prospects. And so, rather than doing what other people want for you, you say to yourself, well, what do I really enjoy? What can I spend my time really learning, and where can I make the biggest difference? And so, we need, you know, we need to contribute more to our group than we cost them. We need to bring in more calories than we're consuming, and autonomy is what allows us to find the best way to do that. So I see them as the two most fundamentally evolved needs that since the time that we left the rainforest for the savannah.

02:14 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean, what is exactly the social paradox you refer to in the book? I mean, does it have to do with any sort of conflict between these two different types of needs?

02:29 William von Hippel: Exactly. And so, the, the thing is that, um, in order to be self-governing, in order to be autonomous, you have to. Um, DO what you want to do. You have to pursue your own needs, but of course that doesn't make you a very good relationship partner. And in order to be connected, you need to, to tie yourself to others and you have rights and responsibilities, but of course, then you have to sacrifice your autonomy. And so these two needs are at loggerhead all the time. Now the. The paradox comes in, not just because there are conflict with each other, but for reasons that we can discuss, um, I think that we evolved to pursue autonomy more than we pursue connection, but in fact, autonomy is just something that we want. Connection is what we really need. Autonomy is even in service of connection. Becoming a better group member is to allow me to be better connected to others. And so if I keep pursuing what I want, which is autonomy, it actually costs me what I need, which is connection.

03:23 Ricardo Lopes: So let's talk about, because you are an evolutionary psychologist, let's talk about the evolutionary basis of these needs. So starting with connection, how has the need for connection evolved?

03:41 William von Hippel: So if you, if you look at our chimpanzee cousins, you know, they're, they're very clever animals. They can, for example, discern the gaze of another member of their species, what that animal would be able to see from their vantage point. That's way too complicated for a zebra to be able to do. But for a chimp, which is a pretty smart animal, they can do it. The problem is that chimps are fundamentally competitive with one another, and so they disguise the direction of their gaze by having entirely brown eyes. Now we as humans, Um, because connection is so important to us, because cooperation is so important to us, we actually advertise the direction of our gaze by the white sclera around our eyes. No matter where my face is aiming, you know, you can tell immediately where I'm actually looking, which is very difficult to do with the chimp, gorilla, or orangutan. And so, The, the, the key thing here is that, what that tells you is that somewhere along the way, since we separated from chimpanzees, cooperation became so fundamental to us that I actually want you to know what's attracted my gaze, because if, if you know where I'm looking, Then you can see if it's an opportunity, you can help me get it, and if it's a threat, you can help me deal with it. Whereas if I were a chimp, I don't want you to know where I'm looking because if it's an opportunity, you try to steal it from me, and if it's a threat, you try to run away first. And so what that shows you is just how fundamentally baked in our cooperation and connection is for us compared to our closest cousins.

05:03 Ricardo Lopes: And what are the functions of connection? I mean, does it serve specific evolved functions?

05:12 William von Hippel: Absolutely. And so, you know, the first thing that connection does, and it's, if you back up a little bit and you ask, well, you know, what are the costs of connection? Are there any expenses to it? Because obviously, if it's free, evolution's going to give it to all animals, but, but not all animals have it, you know, snow leopards have no desire to connect. And so, the, once you realize that, you say, OK, well, You know, it's a disease vector, it's a source of competition. Connection can bring you all sorts of difficult things, but at the same time, the most fundamental thing that it brings you is safety. And so, you can see, for example, herbivores all over the earth. Fundamentally, unless they're really big like a male elephant, they want to be around each other all the time because that's just more eyes looking out for predators. And so connection gives us that, but it gives us much more than that because we as humans can now leverage what connection can do far beyond any other animal. And, and one of the, like one example that's something you might never think of is, is the power of secondary learning. And so, you know, if I'm a, a snow leopard, to go back to them, the only way I can learn to hunt is go out with. My mother and, and watch her hunt and try to get involved as I get bigger and, and sort of learn the tricks of the trade by being there. But if you're a human, um, all you got to do is be sitting around the campfire and, and you may be way too young to be taken on a hunt yet, but your parents can tell a story about a hunt and how it went well or how it went poorly. And so, all the cumulative knowledge of our species are. All this cultural learning that we have can be passed on via these really simple, well, for us, very simple mechanisms of communication, way too complicated for the other animals, with the end result being that connection gives us something really, really powerful. It gives us an enormous amount of knowledge. It gives us things like division of labor. And as a consequence of these, of these capacities, Our groups become, have emergent properties beyond single individuals, which is what quickly allowed us to become apex predators on this planet, you know, in the 6 million years after we left the savannah, at first we were skulking around the edges, but by 2 million years ago, we were already on our way back to the top.

07:12 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and how about autonomy? How has it evolved?

07:18 William von Hippel: So to come back to my earlier example, let's think about animals that don't really need autonomy, like a dung beetle, you know, it, it has one job to do. It's got to push as big a pile of dung as it possibly can, big roll it into a big ball, and if it gets a big enough ball of poop, then it'll attract a female who wants to lay her eggs into it, you know, a dung beetle. There's no need for autonomy because that's its job in life. But as a human, you can decide to be the best, best hunter. But maybe it's not going so well for you, so you decide to be the best arrow maker. Maybe you're not so good at that either. You just decide to become a medicine man. You know, there's many different things you can do to contribute even to hunter-gatherer groups like our ancestors were. And autonomy is what allows us to make those decisions for ourselves and to pursue the domains where we believe we have the best prospects. So that too would have evolved again, once we left the savannah, um, once we left the rainforest onto the savannah and became group living and started to have to contribute to the group like that, autonomy would have been very important for us.

08:17 Ricardo Lopes: And why would you say that the connection and autonomy, because they are the two needs you focus on in your book, plays such a central role in who we are.

08:30 William von Hippel: So, the, it's, it's not immediately obvious, but, but as you start to think about all the different things that describe us as human beings, you realize that every single one of them is intertwined with connection and autonomy. And so, let's just take cultural differences as for example. Historically, the East, Japan, China, etc. HAVE been very collectivist societies, and the West, United States, Western Europe, etc. HAS been very individualistic societies. Well, even that's tied up in a in, in connection and autonomy, right? Collectivism is a form of connection. You have responsibilities and duties. Um, uh, INDIVIDUALISM is a form of autonomy. My right to do what I want and not worry so much about what others want. And so we have cultural. Differences, we have sex differences. Women tend to be more connection-oriented, men more autonomy-oriented. We have religion interfaces with it, politics interfaces with it. Everything becomes intertwined with the ways that we connect and the ways that we seek autonomy, and suddenly you realize that it's just kind of everywhere. And I had this experience as I was writing the book where I just, it just kept getting bigger and bigger as I realized it was intertwined with so many fundamental aspects of being human.

09:40 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean, how does the tension between connection and autonomy manifest because these two needs seem to at least sometimes pull in different directions.

09:54 William von Hippel: That's right. And so for our ancestors. They, their connection needs were always met because it was just too unsafe to wander off on your own. You know, if, in principle, if you're in a hunter-gatherer group and everybody wants to go south when they break camp, you could decide to go north. That's your prerogative. Nobody can force you to do anything because they're very egalitarian groups. But in reality, if you can't talk somebody else and go in the same direction you want to go, you're gonna go along with the group, so you don't end up being lion chow. And so, our ancestors, although in principle, they had the, they had autonomy in any decision they wanted to make, in reality, their life was a constant set of compromises, as connection was so paramount that they couldn't do anything that would cause them to leave the group behind. Now, we've shifted to a world where I don't need anybody anymore to survive. I could drone in my coffee, I could order my groceries online. I, I, I could be a remote worker and never leave the house. And so, we now live in a world where connection is not only not guaranteed, it's, it's not even necessary for our survival. And the problem is that if you, if you think back our life in the savannah, because real opportunities for autonomy were so rare. We evolved to grab them whenever they're accessible. A little bit like, think of it like fat, salt, and sugar. On the, on the savannah, fat, salt, and sugar are really rare, and so we evolved to, to grab them, to eat them whenever we could, even if we're not hungry. Better to eat them now because you might be starving tomorrow. And now fat, salt, and sugar is everywhere, so we have the opposite problem. It's an obesity crisis. Well, Autonomy is the same thing. It was really rare on the savannah. Now it's everywhere, cities, education, wealth, all these things bring autonomy, and because we've evolved to grab them when we can, we're sacrificing our connections every step of the way in order to pursue something that actually doesn't make us happy. And so I talk about, it's, you find what you, in finding what you want, autonomy, you lose what you need, connection.

11:54 Ricardo Lopes: Right. And, and we're going to come back to the modern industrialized and post-industrial world later on in our conversation, and we're also going to talk about the concept of evolutionary mismatch, for example. But now, uh, let me Ask you, uh, in, is there any way by which sex or gender connect to these needs? I mean, are there, for example, important sex differences when it comes to the need for connection and autonomy?

12:27 William von Hippel: Absolutely. And so, if you think about the evolutionary pressures on our ancestors, females were the primary caregivers for young children for a host of reasons. One of the most obvious ones is that they lactate, and so the 1st 2 years of an infant's life, it, it needs to be with its mother because it's still, it's not weaning in ancestral environments till around year 2. And so, females were much more connection-oriented. They evolved to feel more connection. Uh, PARTICULARLY to their offspring, but even to each other. Females form very tight relationships with small groups of other females, which makes good sense because they engage in what's called allo parenting, which is a little bit like babysitting, looking after each other's kids. And you, you want other women to do that job. You don't want men to do it because they're going to be disappearing and going on long hunts. And so women tend to form these tight bonds with each other that are actually quite similar to what we see in chimpanzees and even many monkeys. And so, the, the, um, there's this tendency for females to be more connection-oriented, although we all care about connection, it's fundamental for all of us. Females tend to care about a little bit more than males, and males tend to care about a ton. Economy a little bit more than females, in part because the male job is to compete and try to attract females, right? If you look at Trevor's parental investment model, we know that the sex that contributes less to reproduction is competing for the other sex. We know when we look at our mitochondrial DNA versus our Y-link DNA that we have more variety, more variability in our female ancestors than our male ancestors, suggesting that Lots of males got left out of the mating game entirely, which means that for them, autonomy is more important, trying to find a way to compete, trying to find a way to attract a partner. And so, males, and because autonomy and connection are at loggerheads with each other, females' high connection orientation makes them less autonomous, males' high autonomy orientation makes them less connected.

14:19 Ricardo Lopes: Do you think that in modern industrialized and post-industrial societies, I mean, many people worry about and talk about the so-called loneliness epidemic, and of course, as we're going to get into later in our conversation, this affects both men and women, but it It seems to affect men a little bit more because men seem to be a little bit more prone to just socially isolate themselves and spend their entire time on their computers, for example, social media and so on. Do, do you think that that has anything to do with these evolved sex differences?

15:04 William von Hippel: Uh, I do think it does. And if you look at how much time we spend alone, it's, it's a very modern phenomenon. It's gotten much worse over the course of my lifetime. And part of the reason for that is technology and all the available sources of entertainment now. You know, when I was a, when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s. If, if you want to do something fun, well, you're not gonna watch TV. There's only 3 channels and they don't have, their shows are pretty bad. You're not gonna, um, there's no such thing as videos, you, there's no such thing as the internet, and the games that we have available to us are these pretty simple board games where you roll the dice and go around. And so, the, you can't really entertain yourself back in the 60s and 70s, you need to get together with others. And so socializing was our primary form of entertainment. But now that's gone way down now. And so, if you, if you look at the frequency with which people get together with their neighbors, the frequency with which they physically get together with their friends, etc. TECHNOLOGY has reduced all that. We don't even spend as much time with our spouses anymore because it's so easy to have slightly different forms of exercise, slightly different forms of entertainment. And as a consequence, both men and women are spending a lot more time alone, but you're absolutely right, it's a bigger problem for men than it is for women, in part because women evolved these tight circle of tight small circle of friends. Men have evolved to have a very broad circle of loose friends, and they don't. Call you and you don't call them as much, and so you end up, it's very easy not to get together with them, even if they're out there and in principle available to you, men are more likely to not follow through on that and not get together, whereas small circles of tight friends demand frequent get-togethers in order to maintain that friendship.

16:45 Ricardo Lopes: Right. How about culture, because we've been talking a lot about uh evolution and evolutionary psychology. Does culture also play a role in our needs for connection and autonomy?

17:01 William von Hippel: Absolutely, and, and the, the key thing to keep in mind about culture is that it too is, is affected by evolution, and so you can, cultural rules can be anything that people decide that they want them to be, but, If you create cultural rules that don't make you successful in life, that make it hard to survive and hard to reproduce, your culture will disappear, and we've seen that happen many times. In the United States, there was a religious group in the 1800s, if I remember right, maybe even as late as the 1900s called the Shakers, and they didn't believe in sex. Well, there's none left. All that we have left now is some wonderful furniture that they made that that still survives, and so, You, when cultural, cultures that are successful create rules that work well with our evolved proclivities and that help us contend with the difficult environments that we happen to live in. And so, for example, if we're agriculturalists and we live in areas that have a lot of rainfall, they, they often grow rice, and rice demands lots of cooperation between people. You have irrigation systems that go on other people's, across other people's land, etc. And So rice farmers tend to be very collectivist because they all have to work together to bring in their harvest. Wheat farmers, on the other hand, don't rely on irrigation as much. They don't rely on each other's. There's no high intensity points like there is in rice farming um that require cooperation amongst the whole group. And so areas where people have traditionally farmed wheat in China are more individualistic than areas that have traditionally farmed rice in China. So even though you're in the exact same country. Um, WITH the exact same language and in principle, same cultural rules, the ecological demands where you live have an impact on the culture that, that gets created in part by virtue of the ways that you make a living.

18:46 Ricardo Lopes: It's interesting that you mentioned China because I was actually going to ask you, uh, cultural psychologists and social psychologists many times, uh, refer to the differences, the psychological differences in different kinds of aspects, of course, between Uh, Westerners or people from Western Europe and North America, for example, and East Asians, in particularly when it comes to, uh, us in the West having a more individualistic culture and people in Eastern Asia being more collectivist. So, uh, do you think that those cultural differences also Uh, influence the need that people feel for connection and autonomy.

19:37 William von Hippel: Well, those cultural differences give people more or less connection. So if you live in a collectivist society that's genuinely collectivist, you will see lots of people lots of times, you will feel a bond to those people, you'll have lots of responsibilities and roles that you have to fulfill, and all those fulfill your connection needs. But those things aren't free. The, you know, for example, in collectivist cultures, people tend to be more critical of others because you rely on each other. And so if you're my neighbor, and you're not doing a good job with your irrigation channels, not maintaining them, I have to say something to you because my livelihood depends on it. Whereas if we're wheat farmers, you know, you can let your wheat die, what do I care? It doesn't have any impact on mine. And so they tend to be less critical of each other. When they live in more individualistic societies, and as a consequence of this criticism that we see in collective societies, people also become more self-critical. You want to fix yourself before other people get on your case and require you to fix, and they want to fix you, and so, your, your roles and responsibilities have a big impact. So you You get this wonderful, on the one hand, benefit from all the connections that you that you form and maintain, but they come at an enormous price. And in fact, that price is so large that what we've seen around the world is as societies get richer, they reliably march toward individualism. They start to leave collectivism behind. And so ancestrally we were all collectivists, hunter-gatherers are collectivists. They don't follow the same exact set of collectivist rules that modern ones do, but they, they live in a very collectivist world, and now the whole world is slowly shifting toward individualism and not whole world. There are pockets of collectivism where we've seen no change, but as, as people get richer, individualism is almost a guaranteed consequence.

21:22 Ricardo Lopes: And do you think that individualism might also play a role in the sorts of problems we've we've already talked about earlier when I mentioned, for example, the loneliness epidemic? Do you think that individualistic cultures Or let me put it the other way around, do you think that collectivist cultures perhaps offer people ways of protecting themselves more from these pernicious effects of modern life,

21:57 William von Hippel: or in principle they do. And so. When we look at data from around the world, and there's some wonderful data sets like the World Values Survey and things like that that allow you to look at lots of different countries and even within those countries, big cities versus smaller towns. And when you look at small towns in more agrarian traditional societies, you find people who have very strong connections with their friends. They feel a real strong connection to their hometown, and That tends to be that having the good friends and the connection to their hometown tends to be associated with higher levels of happiness. But even in collectivist societies, once you move into big cities, you often see lots of loneliness because once you're in the city, you, even if your culture is collectivist, you don't feel that responsibility to people who are strangers to you. You have no particular roles to, that you have to enact with them. And so, even though in principle, your culture provides the scaffolding for connection, it no longer necessarily provides it. And so we see the exact same problem in big cities, especially among the educated elite that we see in the West.

23:02 Ricardo Lopes: How about the role of religion, and I mean, of course, I myself am an atheist, most people I interview are atheists. Um, BUT, um, I've also talked with, uh, uh, with cognitive scientists of religion, for example, and they've told me about the psychological and social benefits of religion. Uh, DO you think that religion also influences the needs for autonomy and connection?

23:36 William von Hippel: So religion is a really interesting. It really, and this is a really interesting set of changes in the, in this problem. On the one hand, some religions have redefined what autonomy even means. And so for example, when we think about autonomy, we think about my control of my behaviors. I want to decide what I'm going to do. But in some religions, behaviors aren't even the most important thing, like Protestantism regards your thoughts as far more important, and God. May or may not punish or reward you for your thoughts. And so when Jimmy Carter, for example, famously said that he had committed adultery in his heart, that's the kind of thing that you say in many Protestant religions, even though if you're Catholic or Jewish, it doesn't make any sense. Yes, you can covet, you should try not to, but you're not going to get in trouble for thinking the wrong things. You're mostly going to get in trouble for doing the wrong things. And so, In that sense, religion has changed what autonomy even means, and it's also changed what connection means. You know, with the New Testament, we see now that, you know, Jesus talked about, um, he was asked, who is your neighbor, when, when You know, in, I think it's Leviticus where they talk about that love thy neighbor, and, and the person says, well, well, who's your neighbor? And, and Jesus then goes to tell the story of the Good Samaritan. What is it, we don't, that story's lost a lot of its meaning now, but, but Samaritans were a despised outgroup at that time and place, and so he's choosing the most disliked group and saying that person is your neighbor because that person was kind to somebody he didn't know and looked out for him, and so you need to love everybody. Now loving everybody is not easy, and And we mostly fail at it, but, but it's interesting that we aspire to do that, that we've widened our, our moral circles to try to include everybody. So on the one hand, religion has changed what autonomy and connection means, but I think even more importantly, and this comes back to part of your question, religion also, it does make people happy, and if you look at If you look at people who never go to church and, and do they pray or not, you see a benefit for a prayer. People who pray are happier than people who don't. And really, when you're not going to church, if you, if you never pray and never go to church, you're either an atheist or fundamentally one, whether you define yourself that way or not. But if you never go to church, but you pray regularly, you're still a religious person, and we see a benefit for happiness. But more interestingly, if you go to services, we see an enormous benefit for happiness, and that benefit itself is even larger if you're rich than if you're poor. And so, rich people tend to, um, you know, they tend to wall themselves off. They don't need each other as much, so they don't spend as much time together, and they get even more. BANG for the buck out of going for services. So, religion, because God is requiring you to go to services in many religions, it actually gives you, it's like an experiment. It gives you a cause for socializing that you otherwise don't have. And what we see is that that socializing does people a lot of good.

26:30 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, uh, religion can be a very good avenue even in a modern society for people to form communities, right.

26:40 William von Hippel: Yeah, absolutely. And so I like you, I'm an atheist, and I remember when I was a little kid, I, I was raised as an atheist, and I was asking my father, um, he's explaining how the sun works, and he says, it's basically like a hydrogen bombs going off all the time. And I was like, well, isn't it gonna run out? And he said, well, no, no, no, you don't have to worry about it, it won't run out for like 5 billion years. And I was like, but what happens then? And he says, well, then it'll expand probably into Red Giant and everyone on earth will die. And I was like, Well, that means this whole enterprise is entirely pointless. And so, you know, once you get dive too deep into the science, things can lose meaning. Like, why are we here? What's the, if everything we do is ephemeral, does it even matter? You know, all sorts of questions like that come up, that religion does have the advantage if you believe in religion, you don't have those questions. Life is imbued with meaning anyway.

27:30 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. And in the book you also very curiously talk about politics. What does it have to do with the needs of autonomy and connection?

27:43 William von Hippel: So around the world, people who are on the political left tend to be more connection oriented, and so they're worried about the rights of other groups. They're worried about everybody getting opportunities, and so they, and they, and people on the left tend to be more empathic and so they tend to feel pain when somebody else suffers. So, the, the political left tends to be more connection-oriented. The political right tends to be more autonomy-oriented. Um, YOU know, if you look at taxes as a, for example, people on the right are always saying we should have lower taxes. Well, what do taxes do? They take my. Money and they distribute it to somebody who's less fortunate than I am. If I'm an empathic person who's high in connection, I think, well, what a great thing. I'm glad that my money is being shared with these other people. But if I'm a, um, if I'm less empathic and I'm more autonomy-oriented, I think, well, You know, uh, you're now restricting my rights by taking my money and deciding how to spend it. I should have the opportunity. I may choose to give it to charity, but it should be a decision that I make myself. And so we see time and again that autonomy, the, the strength of your uh of your connection and autonomy needs determines whether you're on the political right or left. Interestingly, because connection is so much more important, even people on the political right, even on the far right, tend to we connection. Although they weigh autonomy more than connection, it's a small difference, whereas if you get to the far left, it's an enormous difference in the opposite direction, where connection wildly trumps autonomy for people on the far left, and autonomy barely beats connection for people on the far right, with the exception of libertarians who um autonomy is a Trump value and, and everything else has to be sacrificed for that purpose.

29:25 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. So how do the, uh, we've talked about, uh, for example, sex differences, culture, politics, and religion. How do these four ways of defining ourselves impact where and how people draw the line between autonomy and connection?

29:46 William von Hippel: So, sometimes what happens is that your culture or your religion push you in a certain direction. And so for example, because Protestants, for example, autonomy is everything for them because it's even what you think is an important determinant of whether you're going to, whether you'll reach salvation. And so Protestants tend to be very oriented toward what individual responsibility. And so that's a consequence, they're more likely to be on the political right, where we tend to say, for example, people on the political right believe in fewer taxes. If, if you want to do well in the world, you just have to work hard and find your own way. Welfare is not necessarily something that should be there to help you, etc. And so, Some religions push people toward the right or push people toward the left, but in reality, I think most of the forces go the other way, whereas if you're male or female, you tend to have Um, different value or different weighting of connection and autonomy, females waiting connection, males waiting autonomy, with the consequence that males, because autonomy is more of a political right, males are more likely to be on the political right, and because connection is more on the political left, females are more likely to be on the political left. And so you're, you're Your inborn tendency to weight, these two traits can also determine things like what your politics are, um, whether you are a good fit for your society, if you're a collectivist, Women are going to be better fits than men on average. If you're an individualist, men are going to be better fits than women on average. So all these things kind of work hand in glove with sometimes your culture and your society pushing you around and sometimes you pushing. Your own personal needs pushing you to become something else, like become on the political right or the political left.

31:33 Ricardo Lopes: So I want to get now more into modern industrialized societies and post-industrial societies to try to understand more about uh what uh brought about the issues like the one I've already mentioned. The loneliness epidemic and uh the imbalance between autonomy and connection but uh just before that, do you think then that in ancestral times and in the types of societies we lived in. Uh, AND in, even nowadays in more traditional societies like hunter-gatherers, I would imagine also horticulturalists, for example, there's a good balance between connection and autonomy and, uh, how.

32:24 William von Hippel: Yeah, so, so it is definitely the case that the more traditional society you live in, the more small town you live in, the more you live in ways that are, that are not modern urban high technology, you have a good balance between autonomy and connection. You're less likely to spend time alone, you're more likely to say you have good friends. When, when we ask Americans, for example, uh, do you know somebody you would trust with your house keys when you went on vacation? You're more likely to say yes if you live in the country than the city, despite the fact that if you live in the city, there's hundreds if not thousands of people right around you who could be your best friends, but none of them are. And if you live in the country, there may only be 6 or 7 people who live within 1 mile of you, but one of them is a good friend of yours, and you do trust that person. And part of the issue, of course, is that in ancestral societies, we saw the same people all the time. And so, even if you and I happen not to like each other, we know that we're going to have to count on each other our whole lives. And so I'm going to be fundamentally good to you and you're going to be fundamentally good with you, to me. And if I give you my house keys, so to speak, when I go on holiday, you're not gonna take my stuff because, you know, someday, I'm gonna your house keys in my hand, and you want me to treat you with respect as well. And so the mere fact that in small communities we tend to see each other regularly gets humans to behave in fundamentally good ways to each other. And once we move to cities and these faceless societies, it's very easy not to behave in those positive ways to each other, which can actually make you lonely despite living in a crowd.

33:53 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so, and in then in modern industrialized and post-industrial societies, I guess that there are several factors we can talk about here. Let's start with uh urbanization and urban life. I mean, what, what is it about the cities and particularly big cities that makes it hard for people to have a good balance between autonomy and connection?

34:22 William von Hippel: So, one of the major factors is a very modern one, and, and that is, even if you look two generations ago, cities didn't have this quality. We've had cities for 5000 years, but up until about 50 years ago, cities, there was not a lot of residential mobility within a city. You'd have neighborhoods where people grew up and spent their whole lives, even in a really big city like New York or Hong Kong. And so the cities had this, this residential stability, which meant that you knew your neighbors, and you were going to see the same people over again, even though you're not in a small town, you're in a huge city, you see the same set of people all the time, and so people form those tight relationships. That's ended though. We have so much residential mobility in most major cities, not all, but in most, that people no longer live around their close friends and family across their whole lives. They might for part of their life, but then people move around. And once you break that with that, that sort of connection that you have to your neighbors around you, then you introduce all these loneliness problems, you introduce these issues where you're not close friends with them, you don't even know them anymore. And then worse, worse yet, you don't. Why bother trying to get to know them? So I live in a big building, you're on my floor. I could introduce myself and say hello, and maybe I will, but next year you may not be on my floor anymore, so why would I invest in getting to know you when I know there's so much residential mobility that I might be gone or you might be gone, and what's the point?

35:47 Ricardo Lopes: I've heard some sociologists talk about the concept of what they call the third space, that is a space that is not your house or your home and your workplace, the house being the first place, the workplace being the second place, and then. The third place where people would have the opportunity to gather and meet and uh some sociologists have been saying that one of the issues in modern industrialized societies is that these third places have been uh. Going down in number and it's been increasingly harder for people to get there. So I, I mean, do you think that also, uh, what do you think about that and do you think that might also play a role here or not? Yeah,

36:43 William von Hippel: I've not heard that term, but I find the idea compelling and the main reason for that is if you look at. At neighborhoods in big cities, particularly where this matters, there's a coffee shop or a or a donut shop or a park. There's someplace where you can go always you can regularly go there. Other people regularly go there and you can see people who can over time become your friends. Even if you don't know them well, if you tend to go to the same place at the same time, same days of the week, you're likely to run into the same cast of characters. But that can start to disappear with A, too much residential mobility, and B, if, if those places don't exist anymore. And so now if there's like 6 Starbucks across your block, you may not be, and that's where you like to go, you may not be going even to the same one every time, and suddenly, You don't have those relationships with these people, even if they weren't deep relationships, they're a feeling of comfort and familiarity that, that you're my favorite barista, I see you every Tuesday when I go buy myself a coffee and, and read the newspaper on a, on a late start to my work, you know, whatever my story is, that I, I feel, we say hello to each other, we feel familiar and comfortable, and that starts to, to disappear if these third spaces disappear. Or if they become too random, too frequented by an unpredictable collection of people.

38:04 Ricardo Lopes: Right. How about education? Do you think that education or higher levels of education as we have now also influence the balance between autonomy and connection?

38:17 William von Hippel: I think they do. And so first of all, if you look at people as a function, if you look at their behavior with their neighbors, for example, as a function of their education level, as they increase in education, they become less likely to get together with their neighbors, and the effect is enormous. People with less than a high school education get together with their neighbors. Like 13% of them are getting together several times a week. By the time you get to people with an advanced degree, it's a very small percentage who get together several times a week. It's far more likely that they never get together with them at all. And so, why is education doing that? Well, there's a host of reasons. One is that education brings wealth and wealth brings, it, it breaks interdependence. I don't need you anymore if I have a lot of money. I can hire out anything I might need. That's one issue. Another issue though is that education literally is an experience and delay of gratification, and the gratification you're delaying. Your entire educational career is socializing. And so your job starting in like year 1 or 2 is to learn some material, which is good, it's self-improvement, but in order to learn that material in today's world, what we do is we do it on our own. You're reading that on your own, you're studying that on your own. You know our ancestors did everything in groups and ironically, really. When we enter today's corporate world, we still do everything in groups, but somehow that educational journey is meant to be done on your own and you can play when you're done, when you finish studying for your exam or whatever the case might be. Now, fortunately, some schools are fixing that problem by trying to have more group activities, group study things, etc. WHICH allow you to combine your Learning with your, with socializing, but, but what, if you don't do that, you develop these habits of thought where you think, well, my job is to work on my own and achieve something on my own, and when I'm done doing that, then and only then can I get together with other people. And so I suspect that what's happening as you get more and more educated, is you keep putting off the getting together side, because, of course, there's always more work to be done, there's always uh getting a raise or a promotion, you know, the kinds of things that people pursue.

40:19 Ricardo Lopes: And do you think then that wealth itself can also affect the balance between connection and autonomy?

40:28 William von Hippel: Absolutely, we know wealth does that. And, and it does it again because you just don't need connection anymore when you're wealthy. And so if you're poor, you live in a neighborhood that's highly interdependent because you all count on each other. You, um, I, I, my lawnmower breaks, I can't just go buy another one or even necessarily get it fixed. I have to borrow yours or maybe you can help me fix mine. We all work together in poor neighborhoods. In rich neighborhoods, like, why would I bother you if my lawnmower breaks? I'll just call. In order, I don't run it anyway. I've got, I've hired a guy who comes and does it. And so the, the thing is that in principle, rich people ought to talk to their own neighbors as well. But if I decide to go get together with you, you know, because I, I want to chit chat, maybe you're going to come over and bother me at a time that I might be busy. And so they, they're friendly, but they tend to avoid their neighbors. They're far less likely to interact with them. And as a consequence, they end up spending a lot more time alone, which, you know, you, you think, well, they're, they're making their own decisions, they're voting with their feet, they know what they want, but like I told you earlier, they don't know what they want. Those rich people who believe they should go to church several times a week are way happier than the rich people who never go to church at all. It's not a small effect, it's, they're like twice as likely to be very happy. It's a huge effect.

41:41 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. So earlier we talked about religion and you mentioned briefly, uh, how, uh, being interested in science might have, if you take it to the extreme, some, uh, let's say negative psychological effects. Apart from that, is there, are there other roles played by science in terms of how it can affect the balance between autonomy and connection?

42:11 William von Hippel: Well, you know, I think it depends on, on where people, what people do with their science, and so, you know, you can. You can interpret science to mean there's no point in any of this, and so, I might as well just sit in my room and, and do my own thing. But you could also start with the same starting point and say, you know, what that really means is if there's no, if there's not necessarily a purpose, if we're the product of random processes, and we're not even a significant product of random processes, we're a trivially small, short-lived um product of random processes, then maybe the The fundamental rule in life is just try to be good to each other because that's all you've got. So the same starting point can lead you in opposite directions, and I suspect it does in large part by virtue of how strong your connection needs are. And so people who have inherently high, really, we all have connection needs, but people whose connection needs are really strong are likely to, to, their understanding of science is going to lead them to, well, the best thing that I can do is spend my time connecting with others because there's no other purpose on this life. And people with low connection needs, and, and by then, it's often, you know, you could even be on the spectrum and have low connection needs. They're, they're likely to do the opposite and say, well, you know, if there's, if there's no purpose to all this, why, why don't I just do the things that I personally enjoy and not bother with others.

43:31 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, uh, SO, I mean, this is something, uh, I can't remember exactly if you also touched on this topic in your book, but then, uh, there's also interindividual variation to consider here, right? Because I would imagine that for example, someone who scores very low on extroversion might not. NEED so much connection or I mean, or I may, or am I saying something wrong here?

44:02 William von Hippel: Well, I would say that introverts need connection just as much as extroverts do, but the difference is that introverts don't like connection with lots of people at one time, and they don't like connection with people they don't know well because it's a little bit intimidating for them, because extroverts like to glad hand say hello to everyone. And so introverts need small groups of tight friends that they, and connection with them is, is terribly important to them. They don't want to be alone either, but not in general, but, but introverts are more inclined to want to have some time alone to themselves every day because they get a little overstimulated by social functioning, whereas extroverts often have no need to ever be alone. Um, I remember when my two children, my two adult children both learned to crawl, my son would crawl, follow us by crawling around room to room wherever we were going, and my daughter often did the opposite, crawl out of the room we were in to have some time to herself. Now both have very strong connection needs, but the more introverted you are, the more you also have a need for a little bit of downtime, which you can execute by being alone, right.

45:05 Ricardo Lopes: Does marriage contribute to the balance between autonomy and connection or not, and if so, Uh, do you think that, um, I don't know, marriage rates, uh, nowadays are problematic in that sense, or,

45:22 William von Hippel: so marriage is a very important form of connection. It, it, it hasn't always been that way, you know, for hunter-gatherers, it was hunter-gatherers get married when by and large their families stick their oar in, but they often love plays an important role. And being married and staying married, even if they don't have a celeb a ceremony that necessarily marks that event. Once we became agriculturalists, marriage became kind of an economic process that links families together and so, you know, most families were on the bridge, on the edge of starvation throughout human history, and so marriage became something that mattered more than just the two individuals and wasn't necessarily about love. But once we started moving to cities in the mid 1800s, that broke that relationship between agriculture and marriage, and, and marriage started to become more of a romantic process again. And you can see this in the United States, for example, which is one of the earlier countries to start urbanizing where people really start moving en masse in the 1840s and 195950s into cities. And that's the exact same time that you start to see people talking about romantic love and, and that it shouldn't be that you get married and then you find a way to love each other, you should fall in love and that's what causes you to get married. And so, We've seen that all happen. We know marriage is a good marker of these kinds of forms of connection, but what we've also now seen is that marriage rates are declining across the Western world. The, the rates of, of marriage have gone down dramatically, and you could see. Well, maybe people are just cohabiting, but in fact, cohabiting has even gone way down. So whether you define it technically by did you actually get married, or whether you define it more de facto, we can see that that that's happening. And again, that's a product of wealth. It's also a product of education. You know, when I was born, women were, it was very difficult for them to go, to go to university. And so in the, you know, in the 50s and 60s, and so women, they, they depended on marriage as a way to support themselves because the husband would, would get an education, would get a job, etc. And, and that's obviously now disappeared. Women are highly educated and in fact, they're more likely to go to university than men are. But the unfortunate negative consequences, by virtue of the fact that they're more likely to go to university, women tend to marry men who are as educated or more. There's fewer of those available. And so, you know, on the positive side, they don't have to marry anymore, and so they don't, but on the negative side, there's also fewer options that are probably making it more difficult.

47:48 Ricardo Lopes: What do you make, I, I mean, I'm not sure if you have any formed opinion on this, but what do you make of the fact that Um, because nowadays, and I guess I'm not completely sure, but I guess we see this more occurring with women than men, uh, because women have more economic opportunities. Women tend to be more educated than men, and so that's also why they have better opportunities in general. Um, THERE are an in there is. Or there seems to be an increasing number of women who report uh uh wanting just to dedicate themselves to their career, that they're no longer really that interested in romantic relationships. They don't mind being single. They are also not really that interested in having kids. I mean, what do you make of that? Do you think? Oh, of course, I don't want to be cynic here, but do you think that, uh, they're really telling uh the truth about that? Do you think that they really feel good about themselves in this new sort of cultural context where they have all of those opportunities or that perhaps they might be missing on something?

49:16 William von Hippel: So, on the one hand, I think they're telling the truth that they, they don't want something that they don't regard as a good deal, which is marriage with a partner who's not a good match for them. And we, we can see that when we ask women, tell me what's a deal breaker in a partner, and as women become more educated and wealthier, they, their list of deal breakers gets longer. And so when they're not very well educated, they tend to have a very small list of, of things that would, that would rule somebody out. As they become more educated. GROWS, and that's pretty good evidence that when you're not very well educated and you aren't earning a very good living, you're more willing to compromise, whereas as you get more educated and you can earn a better living, you become less willing to compromise in a partner. So on the one hand, that's obviously good. Why compromise if you don't have to? On the downside though is that, like I said earlier, you know, women are more likely to go to university now than men. They tend to marry as well educated men or more, and so there's just not enough. The, the, the math doesn't work for women as well anymore, with the consequence that many of them, even though they're, they're choosing to do it because they're, they have a lot of deal breakers, they're ending up single, single, and the data show that single people are a lot less happy than married people. And so, it's kind of a complicated problem though, because on the one hand, marriage doesn't make you happier on average. There is a small subset of people who get lucky, and marriage does make them happier and stay happier. But most people who get married, um, get happier for a while and then go back down to about where they were before. We have wonderful longitudinal data that show us that. And so, why then would it be the case that unmarried people are significantly less happy than married people, and what I suspect is, is causing it is not just the marriage itself, but that they're making a variety of decisions in their life that emphasize autonomy over connection, and marriage is just one of those decisions, and by constantly emphasizing autonomy, career, things like that, whether you're male or female, you end up less happy than if you emphasize connection.

51:15 Ricardo Lopes: Do you think that uh rates of uh depression that people and the World Health Organization and other institutions like that are really worried about nowadays uh might also have something to do with people focusing too much on autonomy and not enough on connection.

51:38 William von Hippel: Absolutely. It's, it's both uh, it's too much focus on autonomy and not rewarding ourselves with connection, which is what fundamentally actually makes us happy. And then the downside is that because technology plays such a role in our life, our connections, we start to replace face to face connection with these thin forms of connection that you can get over social media, and, and they're better than nothing, they're way better than nothing, but they're not as good as the real. Thing. And so the end result would be, I believe that we're seeing increases in depression in particular as a consequence of the fact that our connections are getting weaker and less frequent, and so we're not, we're not benefiting from things that we've evolved to need, even if we live in a world where we don't actually need them anymore. You know, if we evolved today, we'd be more like snow leopards. We don't actually need each other anymore, but we didn't evolve today. We evolved a long time ago when we needed each other very much. And so even if you don't feel that need on a day to day level, you actually can go down this road where you end up being quite lonely, and that's when you suddenly realize, oops, I've, I've let my connections lapse. I'm lonely and I'm depressed. I need to recreate them. But sometimes once they get there, people don't even see the problem anymore. They don't know what the origin of their loneliness and depression is.

52:54 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, YOU mentioned social media. Uh, WHAT do you think, uh, about it? I mean, do you think that social media is a cause of some of these issues, or it is more of a symptom, and perhaps people, uh, are more drawn to social media because they are already, uh, or they feel already more lonely.

53:19 William von Hippel: Look, it's both cause and symptom. There's no question, I agree with you in that regard. But I would say that the causal role that it plays is, is not, you know, some of the faults are social media itself. Some aspects of social media bring out the worst in us. And so when I look at your life on Facebook or Instagram, and you've curated these I was like, oh, why does Ricardo have so much better life than I've got? You know, his food looks more delicious, his vacations look like more fun, because you've, you know, done a good job of setting up your photos. And if I went with you, I would realize, oh, you eat at Subway just as often as I do, you know, your food is not always fancy, etc. But the um, I do believe that social media causes a problem in the sense that we get lazy, and, and I talk about what I regard as social media-induced laziness in our social habits, which has this absurd acronym of SMILS, and, and I think that Because I grew up in a world where there was no social media, and if you want to socialize, you have to go in person. I think that my generation, um. We were forced to socialize and that's actually good for us, and we did in person. And young people today, they can say, well, all right, Ricardo's having a party, maybe I'll go, but, you know, it's a long walk across town, it's kind of cold, and when I get there, I may not even know people, like it might not be fun. Now, if, if it was 50 years ago, I would go because that was my only option. But now I think, oh well, you know, I'll just look on Instagram and I'll commute, talk to my friends that way, and that'll be fine. And so we, we replace these, these high risk, not guaranteed social events where it may or may not be fun. We replace them with social media, when some of those events, yeah, they weren't going to be fun. Maybe the party wouldn't have been a good one, but sometimes they're magical. We meet new wonderful people, great things happen, and now we're just not doing it anymore. And so we see, for example, the young people today are actually having sex less often. Young single people are having sex less often than they were 10 years ago. Now, that's, that's kind of weird, but they're actually, they've replaced it with pornography, so they're more likely to be watching porn, they're less likely to be having sex, and both of those are kind of this, what I think is just, it's not caused by social media, but it's the laziness that social media can bring about when you're faced with uncertain rewards and the social media is the easy way, we often choose it.

55:35 Ricardo Lopes: So do you think that media on the internet like pornography might also contribute to people uh putting more of an emphasis on autonomy?

55:48 William von Hippel: I, I think it does to some degree, like you can be, because it's so easy to be autonomous now and entertain yourself, you can say, well, you know, I'm not gonna bother going to that party. I'm not gonna bother getting together with them. I, I have other things that I'd rather do. Whereas when those We our only choices, we just did those things. And so it's just much easier now in a highly technological world. It's much easier to be autonomous. And so, you know, like I said earlier, when I was a kid, there were 3 TV channels and they were all basically bad. Now there's probably 200, and so many of them are excellent. I could literally do nothing but watch TV shows all day and never watch a show I don't like if I get lucky in picking the right ones. There's a bazillion of them out there. And so my sources of entertainment are so common, they're so magnified, they're so good that why not be more autonomous? Why not just do the kinds of things I want to do and not worry about others? And the problem is that every one of those decisions make perfect sense. You wanted to see a show that I didn't really like, and I like my show more, so now I've enjoyed myself more for this hour and a half. But every time I do that, you and I split farther and farther apart until we don't see each other anymore. And so, the, those individual choices add up to become very bad when you look at them writ large.

57:04 Ricardo Lopes: So we talked about urbanization, education, wealth, science, rates of marriage, depression, social media, and entertainment in general. Do you think that we can talk about an evolutionary mismatch here?

57:22 William von Hippel: Yeah, so all of this comes together to create a mismatch, and, and the example is a lot like what I gave earlier, this, this fat, salt, and sugar example. You know, it's an evolutionary mismatch that we have obesity now because we're in an environment where fat, salt, and sugar are so common. It's also an evolutionary mismatch where autonomy is so available, cities provide autonomy, education provides autonomy, wealth provides autonomy, technology provides autonomy. All those things support autonomy. In principle they could sort connection, but we're not using them in a way that really does. And so the end result is that we live in this world where autonomy is everywhere, where it's exciting, it's something that we pursue, and then we forget that in fact the whole evolved purpose for autonomy is to make us Better connection partners. And so we don't turn our attention back, having spent 10 years or 10 number of years pursuing autonomous autonomy relentlessly, we don't then say, oh, now it's time for me to reconnect. I've, I've made enough money. I've learned the skills I need to know, you know, whatever it was we were pursuing. We don't reorient in that kind of way. And the end result is that humans are spending more and more time alone. Uh, WE saw a sharp rise in COVID. After COVID ended, we started spending less time alone, but it's already bouncing back to where it was at COVID levels. And so, It's just the world is too well set up to do well if you're alone. To allow you to survive, to allow you to be happy enough, but it's, it's, by happy enough, it's really not as happy as you should be. And so the end result is that we're doing ourselves a big disservice in pursuing autonomy so relentlessly, and it's because of this evolutionary mismatch. Our ancestors grabbed autonomy whenever they could, just like they grabbed salt, fat, and sugar whenever they could. Well, now, you know, the salt, fat, and sugar are making us fat, and the autonomy is making us unhappy.

59:11 Ricardo Lopes: So do you think it's safe to say that people who live in hunter-gatherer societies are in general happier than us? I, I, I mean, because of course they have their own sets of problems and challenges they have to deal with because they are more exposed to weather events, for example, and they. Even can go through some periods of uh hunger because they don't have enough resources available and so on, and their, their rates of violence seem to be uh at least a little bit higher than what we find in many uh modern industrialized societies. But do you think that at the end of the day they're still happier than us?

1:00:01 William von Hippel: Well, it's a remarkable fact that they seem to be. And so despite the fact that they live those lives that you described, where they're exposed to the elements, they're not, it's not nearly as comfortable, where direct return hunter-gatherers who are nomadic and who move along regularly, don't even own anything more than they can carry. Tomorrow there's no guarantee that they're going to have something to eat. They often don't. They bury almost half their children because of disease and accidents. And so that sounds like a horrible life. And yet when you do the, when you collect the data, um, so recently these Polish investigators asked people, the Hadza. In these Hadza camps, they said, in the last two weeks, have you been happy? Sometimes happy or sometimes sad, or sad. Over 90% said, just happy. When they went back to Warsaw and asked the same question to their fellow Poles, they got um less than 50% were happy. Now, it's so much easier to live in Warsaw with these wonderful cafes and delicious food, and, and medicine and all that. It's remarkable, but it, we, we see that not just in this study, but we see that in other studies as well, that despite the really hard lives they lead, Um, they, they seem to be not just as happy as we are, but actually happier. And for me, there's only one possible cause for that kind of remarkable effect, which is this very different balance that they strike between autonomy and connection, where they have tight connections, they're around others all the time, and we just don't anymore.

1:01:23 Ricardo Lopes: What do you think that tells us about the importance of the social aspect of our lives, because even if, even those people living in those conditions that we living in these more comfortable. Societies would even deem to be extreme conditions still report feeling happy. What does, what does you, uh, what do you think that tells, that tells us about the importance of the social component of our lives?

1:01:57 William von Hippel: It, it, it tells us something that that these other aspects keep telling us again, but we keep ignoring, which is that it matters more than anything else. And so when we see the fact that religious people are twice as likely, are rich people are twice as likely to be very happy. If they attend religious services more than once a week, we, when we see that um hunter-gatherers who have these incredibly difficult lives are, are 90% of them say reports that they're happy, not even happy and sad, just happy. It tells you that despite all the comforts that we've created for ourselves, we've separated ourselves from each other too much, and we pay a price for that with that separation by life is just not what it should be for us. And so, you know, it's, it's a very simple lesson. It's just hard to execute because it's almost unbelievable. Each time I sit down, I say, well, what do I want to do? The autonomy choice is a little bit more attractive than the connection choice. And what I don't realize is that every time I make that choice, I'm doing this, I'm severing my connections and making myself less happy. And so, it, it's, it's better that I should get together with my neighbors a couple of times a week, even if I'm busy, even if they're not my closest friends, because then I rebuild the connections that our ancestors had just as a matter of course.

1:03:13 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so I have one last question and, and, and I would imagine this is, this is a very complex problem to try to tackle because of the myriad of problems like the ones we mentioned here, the many factors that play a role in it, and Even probably others we haven't talked about, but how do you think we in modern industrialized and post-industrial societies could counter the imbalance between autonomy and connection?

1:03:46 William von Hippel: Well, the, the problem is that we're busy and with so many distractions by great forms of entertainment and so much work to do, you know, we work a lot, um, with, with so many demands on our time and attention, we end up being very busy. And so what we have to ask ourselves is, how can we repair our connections and restore them without making ourselves even busier? I remember reading this article in The New York Times about this guy who decided to reconnect with all of his high school friends. And he really enjoyed tracking them all down and getting together with them, but then he ends up by saying, am I gonna keep it up? Probably not. I just took too much time. I just don't have the time for this. And so, I think what you need to do is ask yourself, what's a realistic way that I can do this? And when I asked myself that, the answer was, well, let me look at every single thing I do alone, and let me see if there's a way that I could do that with others. And so, for example, I really enjoyed doing the New York Times. Crossword puzzle. And on Monday, it's relatively easy and as the week progresses, it gets harder. By Thursday, it's hard for me to do. My little sister also really enjoys doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, and also struggles by the time it gets to Thursday. Not as much as I do, but it's hard to. And so what we started doing during COVID, she lives in London, so, and I live in Australia, when she wakes up in the morning, it's now my late afternoon, evening, she makes herself a cup of coffee. And if it's Thursday through Sunday, she calls me on WhatsApp or whatever, it's free, and we just do the puzzle together. Now, we're doing a puzzle, which we were going to do anyway. It's actually kind of better now because we're cheating by working together, right? So the puzzle's more manageable. But also, of course, as a, as part of the process, we chit chat about this, that. Did you see what happened and what did so and so say and what political events are happening? And so we reconnect with each other in a way that we just weren't doing regularly before, because previously we might talk once a fortnight, you know, because we're both very busy people on very different time zones. But now we're talking 4 times a week, and we maybe spend, you know, 2030, 40 minutes doing the puzzle each day, which we're spending anyway, but we're spending some percentage of that time reconnecting and enjoying each other's company. And it's been, I, I really I like doing that. It's, it, it's, it doesn't take any extra time at all. And so what I've decided to do is just look at all the activities that I do alone and then find ways to do them, connect with others. It could be carpooling with people physically or just chatting with them on the phone. It could be um exercising, you know, if I go for a run and I don't know anyone who likes to run, join a running club. I mean, there's a million ways to do that without actually making yourself any busier, and it makes you a lot happier. I find it, it's very effective.

1:06:19 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So the book is again The Social Paradox, Autonomy, Connection, and why we need both uh to find happiness. I'm of course leaving a link to it in the description of the interview. Uh, AND Doctor von Hippel, would you like to tell people where they can find you now on the internet?

1:06:39 William von Hippel: Sure, so, um, because I've left academics, the usual places for finding me aren't as, aren't there anymore, but if you're interested in the academic side of my world, cause of course I still do academic research, Google Scholar has everything that I've ever written on it. Um, IF you're interested in the books, they're easy to find. Anywhere books are sold, and I now have my publicist that the publisher asked me to set up an Instagram account, and so I do that and I actually quite enjoy it, um, you know, just chatting about the events that I'm doing professionally and things about my life, and so you can always, um, follow me and see me on Instagram as well.

1:07:12 Ricardo Lopes: OK, I will be leaving links to that in the description as well, and thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a fascinating

1:07:21 William von Hippel: conversation. Thanks for having me back on, Ricardo. It's great to chat with you again.

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