#1282 Turi Munthe - Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs

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 Tri Munfe. He's a journalist and policy analyst turned media entrepreneur and writer, and today we're going to talk about his book, Why We Think What We Think, The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs. So Turri, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to

00:25 Turi Munthe: everyone. Ricardo, it's a great pleasure to be here and as a long-term fan. Um, IT'S also a great privilege, so I'm pleased to meet you almost in real life.

00:35 Ricardo Lopes: Well, thank you for the kind words. So, um, I mean, basically what you explore in your book is how people form their opinions and I mean, what's behind it and all of that. So, uh, but first of all, Well, I would like to get, I would like to ask you, what is an opinion? I mean, how do you treat uh an opinion? Do you treat it as a statement of fact or is it different from that?

01:04 Turi Munthe: It's the, it's, it's the exact opposite of exactly that. So, um, uh, the, the, the way that I've, I've, I've explained it to myself is, Um, the fact that Charles Windsor is king of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth and defender of the faith and goodness knows what else is a statement of fact. Whether you think that's a good thing or not, that's a statement of opinion. So, so, uh, it, it's, it's, it's, but, but I use opinion in the most common sense of the word, so something that you feel. Which is a value judgment, which is not based upon a fact. So those can be beliefs, they can be views, they can be perspectives, they can be opinions, they can be values, but they're not tied to demonstrable fact.

01:47 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, IT'S interesting that in your book, uh, and I mean, I, I also tend to have this approach to opinions and people's beliefs more generally that I've basically developed through the course of doing my podcast and talking with the psychologists, anthropologists, and other cognitive scientists and other people like that, but, uh If I understand it correctly, the way you approach how people form opinions in your book is not really that people tend to weigh in evidence that much, but it's more based on socialization, social identity, and other sorts of social and psychological factors,

02:29 Turi Munthe: right? Ricardo, yes, you're, you're, you're bang on, but I want to come back a little bit because. Um, HUMANS are spectacularly good at weighing evidence and running through logic and debating carefully and thinking rationally about things. But that's, that's the self-conception that we love. Yeah, that's the idea we would love to have of ourselves, and it's true, in large part it's true, but there's also an enormous realm of other external influences which have a massive impact on our opinions and beliefs and values which we, which have nothing to do with reason. And so what my book is, it takes for granted that we're good at reasoning and humans are spectacularly good at reasoning. What it tries to do is to look at all the other things which influence our beliefs and opinions. All the non-rational influences on our opinions, which are in many instances, extremely deep and have very, very deep impact on what we think, but also what we do, how we behave, what we think of as valuable.

03:27 Ricardo Lopes: Do you also have the sense that when people use reason or reasoning most of the time their goal is to come up with reasons to give to other people as to explain their behavior or to justify their beliefs and not so much to uncover the truth. I mean, do you also have that sense or

03:53 Turi Munthe: not? So you interviewed an exceptional cognitive scientist on your podcast called Daniel Sperber, who's a Frenchman who I also interviewed, and he did a spectacular book with Hugo Mercier called The Enigma of Reason. And let me just unpack that quickly. Pacheer Dan, I hope he doesn't think I screwed it up too much, but where, what Hugo and Dan sat down to look at was the fact that we have terrible cognitive flaws. We're really bad at reasoning in all sorts of ways. We have confirmation bias, we have halo bias. There's actually on, on Wikipedia, the page on cognitive biases is 100 items long. I mean, we're really not very good at these things, um. And um Hugo and Dan sat down and went, hang on, this doesn't quite make sense because, you know, we've built computers which are now cleverer than we are and we've got a man on the moon and we can fly around the world and you we've cured cancer, cholera and God knows what else. So it looks like actually we are pretty good at reasoning, but maybe the ways in which we understood how reasoning worked are wrong. And so what Dan and Hugo say is that uh and what they've sort of proved is that reason. Our self-conception of reason is, you know, it's like Claude Rodin's thinker, you know, with his head on his fist alone, solitary, thinking big, solitary thoughts, and they turned around and said actually no. Reason itself evolved sort of in opposition. So the way they describe reasoning is just as you said, the business of giving reasons. So Ricardo, you and I are sitting in the savannah 30,000 years ago, and I want to convince you to go to this particular buffalo because I think we can take him down and you're gonna take me to that buffalo. What Mercier and Sperber said was that actually we start with deep intuitions and then we start trying to give reasons to justify those intuitions to someone else. But the genius piece of the, the magic here is that if I tell you we should go and hunt that buffalo because he's got really pretty eyes or because my girlfriend lives quite close, those are terrible reasons for you to come hunt a buffalo with me. So I have to come up with objective reasons which you. Also might agree with like that buffalo's slightly weaker or is a bit slow or has just had a massive lunch. We're more likely to catch him. So it's that that's the way that Sperbert and Mercier think about the evolution of reason as something which is done to give reasons for your maybe your, your predispositions if you want. And I think that's a hugely important way of thinking about reasoning itself. But what I don't wanna completely exclude because I think it would be wrong to is the fact that we're also. Again, we are good at reasoning. We can faced with a problem, walk ourselves through, we're smart, we're smart creatures. But where it came from is probably to get somebody else to come and do what we want. Yeah,

06:42 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, I agree, and I mean, I've also interviewed Hugo Mercier. Dansberger and Hugo Mercier are two great cognitive scientists, psychologists, and Yeah, their argumentative theory of reasoning is really fascinating. So I mean, keeping that in mind, do you think that the reasons people tend to give for their opinions really matter as much as we tend to believe, or do you rather think that perhaps most Of the time what we are actually doing is post hoc rationalization. I mean that we already believe something or already hold a particular opinion, and then only after the fact do we come up with reasons to justify it to other people, for example.

07:36 Turi Munthe: So, um. If we look at the spread of things that we can have opinions about. Um, I think there's a difference there insofar as, you know, your opinions about, uh, how to lay a table or my opinions about how to bring up my kids, etc. THAT, that, that those may be, um, those may be are in a sense slightly more thought through, they're cultural, etc. BUT eventually we can think our way out of them because they're not that important to us. But our very, very deep beliefs, which account are religiosity. Our deep ethical values, our political tendencies, our political leanings, those come from somewhere very, very deep inside us. And my experience has been that since I've been working on this book and thinking about these issues, um, I have a very strong sense that from those, those deep values, that the justifications we give for those deep values are in many ways post hoc. They are giving reasons for things that we deeply feel, for deep intuitions which we're trying to find words for. But, um, but it doesn't stop the fact that that's we we profoundly think that we are reasoning when we are having those arguments. You and I were talking about Brexit just before you launched the podcast because I happened to be in Portugal when the Brexit vote happened 10 years ago. And um and with Brexit, no question that the leavers felt that they were making a fully rational and exclusively rational argument about sovereignty in the UK and the the need to get rid of European red tape and taking back control of their borders. Those were arguments that they felt they were making which were reasonable. And the Remainers were making arguments which they also felt were reasonable about security in the EU being part of a bigger whole which would help us to help defend ourselves against predatory larger powers elsewhere. But, so those, those arguments were all reasonable, but they came from somewhere very, very deep. And therefore we have a self-conception as reasonable animals that actually we may be visceral ones first.

09:35 Ricardo Lopes: So when it comes to the social aspects of people's lives which play a role in influencing how they form their opinions, which aspects have surprised you the most when doing your research for this book?

09:53 Turi Munthe: Great question. Um, LET, I want to answer it two ways. The first is I want to tell you what the, the negative thing which surprised me, which is that I think certainly I, but I think a lot of us are convinced that psychology plays a very important role in our opinions insofar as all my life I've said, oh, she thinks that because her mother never really loved her, or he thinks that because his father was a bit of a bully. All the data suggests those don't have a huge impact. Insofar as the kind of the psychological background to people's to the people's psychological background doesn't influence their opinions that deeply it looks like. So that was a major surprise to me. A bit like the surprise that I think lots of people, lots of people have found when looking at sort of child rearing, which is that yeah you can really screw up your kids. No question you can screw up your kids, but they come out pretty fully formed. They are not a tabula raza. And so, and so that's, that was super interesting for me and took some of the pressure off me as a father wondering how much I'd screwed up or how much I'd influenced my kids. Turns out probably much less than I think. Um, BUT in terms of things which surprised me positively, I suppose it's, it's a very well known phenomenon which is this, you're talking specifically about the social element here, which is that, um, you know, we're all now very used to the concept of contagion, thank you, COVID. Um, BUT we talk about viral ideas and, um, the spread and extent to which ideas do go viral has, has fascinated me. And so I suppose the book by, by, uh, by Nick Christaris and John Fowler on contagion is fascinating because it shows you that contagion isn't just a question of ideas. Obesity is contagious, smoking is contagious, happiness is contagious. So, um. Yeah, the, the power of contagion when it comes to opinions and values, I think is probably underrated.

11:43 Ricardo Lopes: Um, IN the book, you also go through several different, uh, different aspects of our environment, and by environment, I mean not necessarily in this case, the social environment, but the natural environment around us influences, uh, the development of our ideas or opinions. So, could you give us an example of how a climate can influence our opinions?

12:09 Turi Munthe: I, let me, let me give you 222 striking ones. So. One of the interesting pieces of data suggests that people in very hot and humid climates tend to lean right. And not just right, they tend to lean authoritarian right. So if you look at a band across the equator, you'll see a massive preponderance of uh a right leaning verging on authoritarian regimes. And the, I suppose the great outlier, the one which makes this point most clearly, is Singapore. Singapore, which today, if you look at all its sort of demographic, economic markers, it, it, it, it sounds like a Scandinavian country. Um, IT'S got very, very low child mortality, it's got, it's, I think it's the, the, the best country in the world to fulfill your true potential. Um, IT'S got wonderful restaurants, it's pretty ecological despite being a small island, etc. ETC. Um, AND yet at a political level. The same family has been running Singapore since independence. Lee Kuan Yew for 50 years or so, then his son, and, um, and the interesting thing there is that this is not an authoritarian state in the sense that, you know, this is not Stalin's Russia, Stalin's Soviet Union. This is an authoritarian state with tremendous popular support. And um, and so you, you, which seems weird to Westerners because we always assume that kind of personal freedom. Um, AND economic prosperity comes with the possibility of, you know, sorry, the economic prosperity and economic freedom comes from personal freedom. Turns out at a political level, not the case. The reason that hot and humid climates tend to favor right-wing authoritarian regimes or the people from them tend to is because hot and humid climates are particularly favorable to pathogens, bacteria, fungi, all sorts of nasty things which carry infection. Hot and humid is exactly what.

14:05 Ricardo Lopes: You, you're referring to the parasite stress theory of political values,

14:10 Turi Munthe: right? Exactly, exactly, thank you, Ricardo. Um, AND so the idea there with many of your listeners will know, of course, is that in in in uh highly contagious, infectious environments. Pretty normative social rules become very important because you don't want people to cook things differently or have relationships in ways which are not being looked after because you can, the spread of infection can go very fast. So one, you end up with much more conservative values in those kind of places, and two, you often look for quite authoritarian leaders to enforce very. Difficult rules. So there's a, so there's a, I'm making the connection therefore between hot and humid and right wing authoritarian, which we can see across the board, and that is not, that's nothing to do with um anything other than exactly parasite stress theory, pathogens in the air. So that's one example of how climate influences uh our politics. But uh climate also influences our religion insofar as if you look at the, um, there are, there are two kind of big groups of God in the world historically. There are the um the kind of the Greek and the Greco-Roman version, give me, let me uh shortcut it, where um the gods behave like abominably spoilt and quite violent children for the most part, um, and they have no real interest in the morality of humans as long as you you sacrifice to them from time to time or whatever it is, that they're not bothered, nor are the, nor are they a moral example to humans, right? And then you have, and then you have what's called these moralizing high gods, and the moralizing high gods are things like the Jewish Yahweh or the Christian God or Muslim Allah, um, that are profoundly prescriptive. The Quran is read, is so, is so precise in its rules, it's read like a legal text. And let's not forget the 10 Commandments, those are commandments, they're not suggestions, they're not like. Like nudges, their commandments. And the theory goes that those, these monotheistic, not monotheistic, moralizing religious religions emerge in places where there is considerable ecological stress. Particularly drought, because drought is the great climatic killer. And therefore the theory goes that in areas where broadly everybody's OK, like Greece or Rome or wherever it might be. Everybody's more or less OK, you don't need to pull together that much. You don't need very loud, dangerous, wrathful, angry, prescribing gods, prescriptive gods, but you do in areas where there are real ecological stresses.

16:43 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. But of course that's one factor from our natural environments that plays a role and of course the way we form our opinions tends to be multifactorial and not just unifactorial. So in the book you also talk about, uh, geography. I mean, what do you think are some of the most interesting aspects of how geography can influence our opinions?

17:11 Turi Munthe: Um, The most important element of geography. Is how it allows you to live. So, um, the, the, the most important element of geography is in fact geology. It's the soil beneath your feet. And, um, so let me give you, let me tell you a little story about the Vendee in France. So the Vendee is just below the beautiful chateau of the Loire, which was, you know, where all the kings and dukes of France built their beautiful palaces, and it's just above the very, very wealthy vineyards of Bordeaux where you have the best wine in the world. It's this area of. Historical, not poverty, but, but not, not tremendous wealth, and it's also to a, to a Frenchman, you mentioned the Vendee, and it instantly triggers the thought of the most terrible massacres of the, of the French Revolution. So what happened during the French Revolution was that the northern part of the Vendy stayed with the king and they created an army which was called, I think, Royalet Catholique. I mean they were really, they hammered their colors to their mast and below the south of the Vendy. There was a huge peasant uprising, which in fact, Won, won horribly, um, and was joined by the Revolutionary Guards from the rest of France and destroyed the whole of the north of the Vendee killing potentially up to 200,000 people. I mean, a, a monstrous massacre. But one of the reasons, one of the reasons that's the case, why was there this great split between the north and the south of the Vendet when it came to the revolution? And um. A great political geographer called Andrei Siegfried in the, in the early 20th century thought that he came up with the answer, which was the difference between limestone. And granite The north is granite. The geology of the north is granite, which means you have excellent runoff. Um, AND you're, it, it's propitious to building very large estates. So what ended up happening is one landlord got rich and then bought the field of the next one and got bigger and bigger, so the whole of the North on the basis of the granite beneath it was able to turn into these very large estates and these landlords became gentry and these gentry became aristocrats, um, and completely changed the, the geographical makeup of that area because there were no little towns. All the little towns were essentially just next to the chateau of the Lord. Who paid the priest, who paid the school teacher. And all the peasants were sort of scattered around these large lands, would only come over on the Sunday, would never meet each other. They'd be working wherever they were and come on the Sunday and meet each other, but were fed the propaganda, if you want, of the Lord. In the South, it's limestone, which meant that the, the, it gets, it gets boggy, um, it's, it's not at all favorable to large scale agriculture, so the people that lived there lived in smallish communities, quite communitarian groups. That manage themselves broadly independent from everybody else. So they're the ones who turned into the revolutionary peasants of the uh of the French Revolution and the ones in the north were the ones who were the kind of rear rearguard action. So there's lots of examples of that and another, and one of the something which will be I'm sure very familiar to your readers is the um is the rice thesis of uh of culture. So, um, just to, just to

20:28 Ricardo Lopes: so comparing agricultural societies which were primarily based on. Rice cultivation versus wheat, for example, right,

20:38 Turi Munthe: precisely, and, and, and you can,

20:40 Ricardo Lopes: you can even do that in different regions of China, I think,

20:45 Turi Munthe: and in tiny regions of Turkey. I mean there are, there are, it makes a massive difference and the idea here is that um that, that this kind of fundamental difference that we have across the world, this axis that we place all societies on from individualistic Anglo-Saxon to collectivist, Chinese, um, which all societies sit on. Is dependent on this great difference of agriculture, so to, to, to, to farm wheat, you can do it as a family, as a single family. To farm rice, it doesn't take one village, it takes networks of villages to build the paddies, maintain the irrigation systems, etc. ETC. So one is gonna be able to, is gonna build a culture of self-reliance because they have to. And the other is gonna build a culture based around reciprocity, mutuality. Relationship harmony because it has to.

21:31 Ricardo Lopes: So rice-based cultures would be, would tend to be more collectivistic and wheat-based cultures would tend to be more individualistic or at least go in that, more in that direction,

21:45 Turi Munthe: right? Exactly, exactly, yeah, so our deepest beliefs are often the result of the muck beneath our feet.

21:55 Ricardo Lopes: Sure, yeah, right. So, I mean, another very interesting aspect that you, uh, explore in your book has to do with, uh, our own body anatomy, body composition, uh, different kinds of physical traits. And how they might influence our opinions. So, uh, and I would like to ask you a very specific question here. So, uh, why is it that conventionally attractive people tend to prefer the free market?

22:29 Turi Munthe: It, it's a thank you very much for asking that question. It's a fascinating piece of data. Um, YEAH, conventionally attractive people tend to tend to lean conservative. Now there are obviously lots of very attractive people who all of Hollywood, which leans left, um, and, and of course everything he can do that you and I are speaking. About, about today, um, is, is obviously, I'm talking about averages, I'm talking about generalities, and to your point, all the influences on our opinions and beliefs are layered, so there is no absolute at any point. But, um, but on average, conventionally attractive people tend to lean right for a specific reason, which is, um. Beautiful people, beautiful babies get more eye time from their parents than their less attractive siblings. Teachers spend more time with attractive students. They believe in them more because of this thing called the halo effect where if you have a quality in one thing, people assume you have lots of other qualities as well. They think that because they're attractive, they're also hard workers and more intelligent and have got, have got prospects, so teachers spend more time with them. Bosses give them pay rises. There is a, in the US at least, there's a 10 to 15% plainness penalty on salaries. So there is, so essentially attractive people have lived life on the game of life on level easy. Um, PUSHED by everybody from their parents to their teachers, to their bosses, etc. ETC. Everybody wants a piece of them, um, and they are trusted, believed in, etc. So they've gone through the game of life on level easy, and it figures, they tend to do quite well at it, relatively. And so what that does to them when they see somebody who's not doing so well in life is to say, well, hang on, I did it. I did it, it went pretty easy for me. So if they're not doing it, it's because they're lazy or they're not working hard enough or they're. Stupid or something else, they don't really deserve it, and so what the, the, the very specific piece of conservatism that attractive people lean towards is meritocracy. That old idea that you get what you deserve and you deserve what you get. Because they have never seen, they've never felt the downsides of inequality, they've never experienced it. In fact, it's worked the other way around for them. They've, they've been accelerated through, through life. They, and they of course therefore think that. Merit is, should be the functioning principle on which we do everything, not knowing that most of their merit comes from just having symmetrical faces.

24:55 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so I mean it's basically people who are more conventionally attractive. Other people tend to have certain positive assumptions about them and so they tend to be favored relative to other less conventionally attractive people and so they are put in a basically privileged position and so they tend to favor the status quo,

25:22 Turi Munthe: right. Exactly, and believe in the prospect of improving yourself because they've been able to.

25:28 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah. OK, so I, I want to ask you this, this is sort of funny, but it's also fascinating. What, what does peanut butter have to do with politics?

25:42 Turi Munthe: Um, YES, this is the only important question, you can go. Um,

25:46 Ricardo Lopes: uh, YEAH, this one and the pineapple on pizza one.

25:50 Turi Munthe: OK, we can come back to that as well, but I think, I think they have the same answer. Um, CAN I give a tiny little bit of background around this insofar as this book emerges out of a, um, a monstrous failure on my part, which is that in 2020, 2021, I tried to build an encyclopedia of all opinions. I tried to build a Wikipedia of all arguments. It was a mad 18th century project which we raised some money for, we built it out, um, and Ricardo, I can't tell you how many people did not come to my website. It was a, it was an abject failure. Um, BUT we started working with it. We started changing it, tweaking it and doing a bunch of things to it, and, and nothing happened. I was trying to build a movement of people who were trying to map all, trying to build the footnotes of the internet really is what I was trying to do. And we tried to build this movement, it didn't work. And at a certain point, there's one of the many experiments that I did, we put a vote button on these opinions. And we asked people a little bit about themselves first, so, you know, male, female, non-binary, uh, where are you from, how much money do you make? Do you have kids? Are you married? Are you gay, straight, fluid? It's, what are your politics, a whole bunch of different things. And so people started voting, and within the 1st 6 months we got a million votes on this thing. So I realized, OK, people don't wanna argue, but they do want to tell you what they think. But I mean I had quite a bunch of interesting data. And um so I would surf around this site with, you know, a couple of 1000 opinions on it and go and see well who'd voted on what and what do they think. Anyway, it, it was a wiki, which means anybody could upload their opinions and then have them vote on them, and one of the opinions was I prefer smooth peanut butter. And I was like, OK, well, I don't know what I was doing that evening, it must have been late. I was like, I'll just go and check how people voted on this. And there's almost no difference between the generations. The generations broadly, most of them slightly prefer smooth peanut butter to, to crunchy. There's no difference between the genders. Um, ALTHOUGH I remember non-binary people have very strong views, it's very radicalizing, so all non-binary people either prefer peanut butter, smooth, or peanut butter, crunchy, but nobody doesn't have a view. Anyway, this is details which are completely irrelevant. But then I went to look at the politics, and the politics of peanut butter are mad insofar as something like, if I remember off the top of my head, 48% of hard left wingers prefer peanut butter crunchy versus 16% of hard conservatives. And I looked at this and I thought. You know, I, it's, I realized I didn't understand anything anymore. It's like none of my world makes sense. I gotta start from scratch. Um, WHERE does it, where does this come from? So I went in, I went in deep dive. I did a massive deep dive on this. And, um. And I also remember looking at all the other foods, food, there are a bunch of foods, food opinions on the site, including one which was like, I prefer hamburgers to curry. Again, right wing, 3 times more than left wing on hamburgers to curry. So I was like, OK, there's a thing here, what is it? Anyway, I went digging in and I'm sure some of, many of your listeners will, will know this, but um I went digging in and it turns out that. You know, maybe some right wingers prefer hamburger to curry because they support the meat industry or because maybe they're a bit jingoistic and they wanna eat home rather than eat for, I mean, hell knows. But it also turns out that on average, conservatives have got a very slightly higher papillary density on their tongue than liberals. They literally have more taste buds. Mhm. Um, AND that blew my mind. It blew my mind, but it turns out that it's part of a much bigger thing, which is that there is in fact what's called the kind of the conservative neurological complex, which is that, um, conservatives, for example, are, have slightly more taste buds on their tongue. They react in a slightly more extreme way to loud noises. So if you, if you hook them up to an electrometer, um, you, you, you see how much they sweat when they're surprised and they sweat slightly more than liberals do. Um, THEY, um. They're much, they're much more disgusted by other people's body odor. I mean, we're all disgusted by other people's body odor, but Conservatives are more disgusted by other people's body odor. And this ties up to um to something which is, which is around disgust. It turns out that Conservatives experience slightly higher levels of disgust than liberals. Their neurology is wired to be more attentive to things which. Cause threat and the disgust response of course is a threat response. So when we're disgusted, we do that funny face, we kind of do, we kind of do that, you know, we, and what we're doing is we're we're kind of closing up our eyes, so that nothing comes in. We're closing up our nose, our nostrils by kind of wrinkling it and we're blocking our palate, so our tongue goes to the back, so literally it's a threat response. And um so anyway, this sent me down the most extraordinary rabbit hole because the conservative neurological complex you can see obviously in the brain and um. And that I think is the mind blower because what it tells you, what you told me is that in fact, Conservative and liberal. This kind of universal axis which really does exist around all all over the world, a kind of a left and a kind of a right, defined in slightly different ways, but broadly left and right exists all over the world. Are slightly slightly differently wired, um, and conservatives tend to be wired with, for example, their amygdala, these sort of part of, part of the, part, part of the uh limbic system, which are these two little almond shaped things at the top of the, behind our eyes, etc. WHICH process emotion and process danger, process fear, tend to be slightly more active and slightly larger than liberals. So they just have, they have brains and bodies which are more attendant to threat. And um Andrebus have obviously the opposite, slightly less attentive than threat, they have their own peculiarities. But um it was an extraordinary way into discovering that in fact um we are, we're not from Mars and from Venus, but we are, we're, we're we're we're different clusters. There are different kind of political phenotypes at either end of the spectrum which you can actually measure.

31:54 Ricardo Lopes: But this sort of neurobiological basis to political ideologies, political beliefs, do we know? Whether they have a genetic basis to them and if so, um, I mean, how, how much of them is influenced by genetics or if it's, uh, I don't know if they are more influenced by environmental factors that people are exposed through, uh, are exposed to through development or, I mean, what do you, do we know about that?

32:31 Turi Munthe: So, so in this specific instance obviously of um of more active amygdala or in the case of liberals, slightly more active anterior cingulate cortex, um, that, that's biological, that's genetic. Um, AND there are all sorts of really interesting theories now as to how we might have evolved these two broad clusters of left of left and right genetically. Um, THE father of biopolitics, which is this discipline, is a man called John Hibbing, who teaches at the University of Nebraska. And, um. And he, he believes that in fact we all start kind of liberal, but that there have been moments, long moments in history which have, um, to which a conservative approach became adaptive. So, um, but anyway, that's a, that's a long and complicated, um, conversation which we don't really have answers yet to. But to come back to your key question, how much of our politics is genetic and how much of it is environmental? Thank God for twins because all the work has been done on twins, identical twins and fraternal twins, and obviously you compare the similarity of one and the other, given that everything else is pretty much alike. You can discount differences if you're comparing fraternal twins and identical twins. Um, WHAT'S fascinating there is that we now think that upwards of upwards of 50% of our core political identity, our core political views are in fact genetic. And, um, these have been studies which have been done from the 1990s onwards. They've been done with massive studies of identical twins and fraternal twins. They've been done with very large studies of identical twins reared apart. So you have, don't have the same environmental influences on, on, on them. And um we've got data which I show in my book across dozens of different categories, so you know, your your, your views on pornography, Ricardo, are they environmental or are they or are they genetic? It turns out they're probably just under 50% genetic. So. Just a little bit more environmental, but your views on pacifism, your views, your views on race, your views on tax. I mean, a whole bunch of different things. So it turns out genetics play a really important role in our political makeup, potentially also in our religiosity. Mhm. Not as large, but there's still some, there's still, there's still data that shows that's the case. Um, SO yeah, when I, when I said at the beginning of this podcast that our parents didn't have much of an influence on our opinions. Environmentally, that's true. They have a massive impact on our opinions biologically.

35:01 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but I, I mean, 50% or up to 50%, it's still not as if the environment doesn't play a big role as well, right? And I mean, even the, that idea that unfortunately some people still hold on to a genetic determinism, I mean, that's pretty much outdated by now.

35:23 Turi Munthe: Yeah, exactly. My favorite, my favorite line, um, is by a guy called uh Schreiber. Darren Shchreiber, whose, whose line was, humans are hardwired not to be hardwired insofar as we live in, we live in a really complicated place and we've been spectacularly successful at thriving and adapting in all elements of it. We live in the Kalahari, we live in the Arctic Circle, we live in tiny little communities, we live in megalopolises, no, I can't even pronounce that word, with millions of inhabitants. Um, WE, the world is too complex a place for us to have predetermined responses to it of that kind. Which is why consciousness, which is why, um, which is why it's some element of intellectual agency and, um, and certainly the environment plays in absolutely to that. But, um, what it does, I, the reason, so I'm, I'm very much not, nor do, nor do I think anybody serious believes in kind of pre predetermined thoughts in that way. That's not true. Some serious people really do believe in predetermined ideas, the lack of intellectual agency, but I'm not there. Where I, where I land is on this idea of, of um predisposition. So we have. Strong predispositions, in some instances, very strong predispositions if our very bodies refuse us to allow, refuse us to see the world like other people see the world because my brain is a different shape to yours. Um, WE literally can't see eye to eye because I will never see through your perspective. So those are very strong predispositions, but they're predispositions. Mhm. They're not predetermined.

36:51 Ricardo Lopes: So why is it that we care so much, or at least to a certain extent, and to, and we tend, of course, at least sometimes to be selective in the way that we do it, but why do we care so much about telling other people about our own opinions? Why is it that we tend to care so much about other people's opinions? I mean, more broadly, what are the social functions of our opinions?

37:21 Turi Munthe: Great question. Um, THERE are many social functions, and I think, um. The, the The way that I shifted this in my mind was to realize that a lot of our opinions are much more important for what they do than for what they say. Insofar as we do an enormous amount of social work. With our views. The, the, the, the easiest way of describing this is that um Ricardo, if you and I are part of the same village a long time ago and everybody in the village believes that God is a very big black rock at the end of your field. And I believe that God is er a man with a beard on a cloud. I'm in deep, deep, deep trouble. I'll be excluded from our village. I'm potentially excluded from the safety of the village, I'm potentially excluded from, from reproduction, from being able to have, have mates, being able to eat, etc. ETC. So, so in that instance, it makes much more sense for me to believe with you in the rock than it is to come up with my own ideas. And um And one of the reasons that I, that I would do that is because whether I believe in the rock or a man with a beard on a cloud really doesn't make any difference at all. So, but in that instance it's, it's kind of, it makes the point quite clearly that that our kind of, uh, we declare beliefs to prove that we're part of something. And, um, if you'll excuse me for getting political for one second, um, it's been fascinating to watch the speed with which pretty much every Republican legislator came to, uh, maybe not accept. But to declare the lie about the stolen election in 2020. The guy that Trump paid to go and investigate the election and tell him that it was faulty told him that it wasn't. I mean, there is no question that Biden won. But over the course of not very long at all, there's kind of this movement to support the Trump narrative um took hold and then spread like wildfire. Almost nobody doesn't declare this. And on some level you could say, well, it's venal and frightened and cowardly and whatever it might be. There's possibly an element of that. But actually, if you're thinking of it rationally, then it's easy to attack, but if you're thinking of it socially. It's much less easy to attack because actually what these people are doing is they are shoring up their political party. They're shoring up their own identity. They're giving themselves a place to be. And actually by declaring, it's almost like by declaring a false belief and saying that it's yours, it's a demonstration of extraordinary loyalty, right? You, it's a, it's a, it's a sacrifice of your intellectual integrity, which is a huge sacrifice. And um and so I think it plays a so all to say I think that that that we we we hold beliefs that do things for us for lots of different reasons. We hold beliefs to compete, right? I wanna be more radical leftist than Yiko, so I'm gonna come up with something. You, when, yeah, I remember this when everybody was canceling everybody and in the UK, um, uh, we were, we, we canceled slave traders, we canceled, I can't remember what else we canceled, and at a certain point, the really cool thing to do was to cancel Churchill. Because Churchill was responsible for a tremendous famine in in India during the Second World War. But that was the, the caste market, like you were a proper radical if you were canceling Churchill in public on Twitter. So we compete via ideas. Um, WE demonstrate that we belong via ideas by accepting the kind of collective truths. But, um, because I think, I think it's the um, it's the old line, you know, people prefer to be wrong together than right alone. And at a, as I said before, at a rational level that's dumb. But at an evolutionary level, it's obviously the right call. And so that instinct is very strong for us.

41:19 Ricardo Lopes: And I mean this has a lot to do with deciding who we should trust because we have to coordinate our behaviors and to, and I mean and to do that we need to know or to know as best we can who we can trust and who we can't trust,

41:41 Turi Munthe: right. Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, SO we're trying to, we're trying to build, we're always in the process of trying to build alliances cos human beings are profoundly social and we cannot exist alone. Um, EVEN the wheat farmers sometimes have to talk to other people. But, um, but yes, so this question of, of, of learning who, who to, who to trust is, is obviously fundamental, and it takes us back nicely to, um, Hugo Mercier and Dan Berber. Because um when they started, when they developed their theory of kind of, of uh argumentative reasoning, which is that we essentially reasoning is the business of giving reasons for some for something, um, what, what their line is, is that if I'm trying to convince you of something. Yeah. Your confirmation bias, this thing which everybody attacks us for, right, you know, ever, ever, ever since Danny Kahneman and, you know, Fast and slow, uh, we've all been sitting there going, oh, I have all these terrible cognitive biases and the worst is confirmation bias cos it means I cannot get myself out of my preconceptions. I refuse to listen to information or data or evidence which will contradict my ideas. And what Spurborough and Mercier say is that that's really helpful, spectacularly helpful, because my confirmation bias, if you're trying to convince me of something you can't do, and I'm pushing back and pushing back and pushing back because I don't want to accept what you're telling me, even if the evidence is great. It forces you to come up with better and better reasons to convince me. And so the way that Mercier and Spurber think of this. Is that they think of my confirmation bias, refusing to believe you as a kind of epistemic um protection, defense mechanism. I'm trying to make, I'm trying to make sure that I can trust you and the only way I can trust you is if you are able to convince me of ideas in such a way that they're as valuable for me as they are for you. And that's called logic, that's reasoning. Mhm

43:36 Ricardo Lopes: But I mean, I know that this is something that happens more often and is more visible or more expressive when we live in conditions of political, social, or economic instability, but why is it that we tend to be So vicious not only toward people who present themselves as part of our political opposition, but also to people that even though they're part of our own political tribe, they manifest ideas we disagree with.

44:16 Turi Munthe: So I'm not going to talk to the psychological element, but let's touch on it super quickly, which is that I think. Our, our opinions feel very much like extensions of ourselves, and we think of them as um representations of ourselves. So when they're attacked, it's like we're being, we're being personally attacked. Um AND. We might say that was silly, but actually it's even more true than we might realize insofar as these ideas that we think are reasoned are also in fact, as we were saying earlier, very, very visceral. They come out of very deep parts of ourselves, so they are deep extensions of who we are. But the fundamental, the fundamental, um, problem I think, and it's in a sense maybe the, the point of my book is, is that. We argue as voraciously and as furiously with people we disagree with. Actually, because we think of them as the same as us. So, um, I, it, I, it still takes, I still have to think twice to accept that people who are pro gun rights in the US, um, have not all been bought off by the NRA. In my, deep in my heart I'm like, no, that, that's not a rational, that's not a rational, um, political position. I just can't believe it. There's gotta be something else behind this. I, I've now, I've, I've educated myself. I really do understand that it's a very deeply held and. Quite honorable position in its own way, um, but you know what I mean, when you meet somebody who you're arguing with on a topic that you know well, and where you've done the work and they disagree with you, you look at them and you go, oh hang on, I've read everything. I've done the work, these are my conclusions. If they disagree with me, it's because. They're either intellectually corrupt or they're lazy, or they're lying, or they're morally corrupt, or they've been bought. But they're they're, we see people who disagree with us as a broken version of ourselves. And. And therefore we, it's impossible for us to engage with the sincerity of the other side. Which is why we end up with these violent fights, cos we're both sides are convinced the other one is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. They're lying, they're hiding something, they've got an interest which they're not declaring. Whereas when you realize that the other side, because they've got whatever, they've come from a very different part of the world, or the front of their brain is more developed than the back of their brain, or their tongues have got more taste buds on them, I mean, these entirely random, accidental, arbitrary things, but which, which genuinely change the fundamental perspective of the other person. When you see them as different from you, you're forced to engage with their sincerity because their difference is as arbitrary as yours is. And I think that's what creates the basis for a real conversation. You stop thinking of the other person as broken, you start thinking of them as different.

47:07 Ricardo Lopes: But, but when it comes to this agreement, is it really all about conflict, or is there more to it than simply conflict?

47:18 Turi Munthe: In terms of argument. Yes. Yeah. So, um One of the things that We all hope for is that um well let me put this a different way. Argument as conflict is fantastic if it's aimed in the right direction. But it needs to be aimed in the right direction. So there's a beautiful book by a guy called Ian Leslie in the UK which came out in the US as well called Conflicted, and, and he's got a nice line, he says conflict is information. And he's right, and he's got lots of interesting data about the fact that, you know, couples that argue, stay together tend to stay together longer. Children who argue with their parents and parents who argue back with their parents tend to have a more open and, and, and healthier relationship. But um, so one conflict broadly, good thing, but conflict has to be managed in a specific way. And um and I think this is the thing which is so tricky, which is that if you and I have a problem in front of us that both of us have identified we need to fix and we come at it from different perspectives, we're nevertheless sort of shoulder to shoulder in the way that we're attacking this thing. And that shoulder to shoulder argument, when we're going in the same direction, we can be screaming at each other as we go, but that, that we have a shared objective. And when you have a shared objective in, in argument, then. And as long as nobody brings sticks and people don't insult each other, then, um, then actually that conflict in argument is almost certainly the most efficient way, the most beautiful way of thinking, the most effective way of thinking. Um, BUT, um, but when you don't have that sense of aiming in the right, in the same direction, then you quite quickly turn into a zero-sum game. And I think one of the things which has been tricky for us over the course of the last what, 1015 years or so across the West has been this sense that the common project of democracy. Um, WHERE, you know, you have this idea in, in the British Parliament of the loyal opposition, right? Um, THE loyal opposition is loyal, not to you. But to the business of parliament, to democracy, to the running of the country, they're loyal to the king or queen. They're loyal to the country. That idea that the opposition is in somehow way loyal to you, I think is super important and it's exactly what's starting to fray now, both particularly in the US but in lots of, lots of countries where we, as we radicalize and polarize. And I think that's a terrible pity because to go back to the argument, the argument idea. There's so much data that suggests that actually we think best when we're arguing. I use the example of uh Francis Crick and James Watson, who discovered the double helix nature of uh DNA in 1953 at Cambridge. Um, YOU know, if you read James Watson's book. You, you expect, you know, a careful unpicking of the various different laboratory discoveries that they made, etc. It, it, it reads like, like a bust up. I mean, it reads like a, like a western movie. They're screaming at each other all the time. It's like this extraordinary chemical reaction of two very different people. You know, Francis Crick was a 35-year-old Brit who um. Who'd studied chemistry and physics before biology, who was a very serious introvert, didn't like people. James Watson was a super ambitious American 23 year old who'd studied ornithology and viruses. I mean, so very different perspectives, very different characters, very different areas of expertise who came together in, in this kind of explosion of thought, um, and were able to. Decode DNA in part, perhaps exclusively because they loved talking so much. So you know, in the, in the, in the, in the conflict of different ideas, great, great things happen, but you need to be facing in the same direction.

50:50 Ricardo Lopes: OK, but let me just say that when it comes to Watson and Crick, of course they have their merit, but we should give a lot more merit to Rosalind Franklin and her students because, I mean, of course, of course, at the end of the day it was Watson and Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, but the pictures that Them to do so were actually originally from Franklin and her students. I mean, for all intents and purposes they were stolen by Watson and Crick. So I mean

51:26 Turi Munthe: just to be fair. You're right, no, no, really important footnote, but there's a detail there which is super important as well. I've forgotten her collaborator, but, but Franklin was working with someone else in London. And um one of the arguments made is that they were not able to come up with that last step of Crick and Watson, in part because there was no conversation. Because she was a woman, she was excluded from the kind of the mess of uh what was it Imperial, I can't remember the Imperial or University College London anyway, so she was kind of, she was really working all by herself. Miracle that she was able to achieve what she did, but actually the, the advantage that Crick and Watson had was that there were two of them talking and she was basically by herself.

52:09 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, um, let me ask you another thing now, and I mean, I, I know that this question is going to probably bother some people out there, particularly the philosophers, but all of the things that we've been talking about here today, I mean, the social aspects, the psychological aspects, the aspects of our psychology that might more genetic in basis in their base or might be more permeable to environmental influences, all of that. I mean, do you think that that also plays a role in how philosophers themselves come up with their ideas? I mean, because we have to be honest, they're humans as all of us are,

53:00 Turi Munthe: right? Yeah, it can, I mean, I, the idea that philosophers somehow are made of a different material to the rest of us is, I mean. Um, SOME of them feel like that when you talk to them, but, um, but no, they're all, we're all human. We're all human, and so, um, while I'm not sure a lot of philosophers have had their brains scanned, um, or their psychological histories played out, um, they're obviously human and therefore they are subject to exactly the same inferences as the rest of us, and they will have profound influence on the ways in which they think and thought and the ways in which they articulated their views of the world, no question. So one. The answer to your question is absolutely, philosophers are humans too. Maybe that's a hashtag we need. Um, BUT the, the, the, the extension of that of course is, you know, grist to my mill insofar as where professional thinkers are able to take reason, are able to take their minds is also such spectacular demonstrable proof that humans are not predetermined in their ideas. That we have very deep predispositions to things. But actually the, the places that we can take ourselves by, by force of reason is, is extraordinary. It's the great, one of the great pleasures in life. Um, AND of course philosophers are the great exemplars of that. So yeah, they, they, they, they're, they're, they're actually a, a, a very nice little model for us to remind ourselves of both, you know, the deep biological, genetic, cultural, geological influences on our star, on our, on our, on our, on our perspectives. Entirely arbitrary, entirely random, over which we have no control whatsoever. And the fact that there is intellectual agency which does very beautiful things.

54:35 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, the way I look at things, and please let me know if you agree with this, is that I mean many times people, academics, philosophers, and also scientists get very bothered whenever someone suggests that perhaps some of their ideas might not really stem from the fact that they are really pursuing objective truth or that they are completely impartial and it's Just about reason and empirical data and all of that. It's also many times about where their some of their strong intuitions stem from and perhaps sometimes there's even a little bit of post hoc rationalization and then, uh, I mean, because they are working within the collective, of course they argue with each other and I guess that at least to some extent we could apply Mercyer. And perverse theory here and then I mean little by little they get closer and closer to the truth. So I mean it's not really that bad that people are operating with all of these imperfect cognition and biases. I mean that's actually how humans work, but at the end of the day, philosophy, science, and other disciplines. Still work because we are er er people are imbued within collectives,

56:07 Turi Munthe: right, precisely, um, and you know one, we've gotta love it cos we can't escape it. Um, AND 2, it talks again to something very important to me, which is that if we have these very deep predispositions. They are in a sense a kind of a cage, right? We are bounded by our strange minds and our strange histories and the fact that we happen to be born where we were born and to the people that we were born to, etc. We are bound. We do not have God's mind. And therefore, what's the key out of this cage? The only key out of this cage is, is conversation. The only key out of this cage is to go off and smash yourself against people who disagree with you. Um, IT'S to go and sort of seek out intellectual discomfort, it's to go and get stuck into the arguments where perspectives which are not your own, somebody is gonna try their best to force them upon you and your confirmation bias will reject them. And in that kind of dance of, you know, it's like a tango, two steps forward, one step back, as both of you try and do it to each other, this magical sort of alchemical reaction occurs, which I, I, I think is what's called reasoning. And it's not just, it's not just beautiful insofar as it creates the possibility for of, of, of reason, but it also on some profound human level, um, I hope, gives us the opportunity to. Sort of escape ourselves, it to kind of take independence from our own minds on some level, which is why the pleasure of reading, the pleasure of talking, and I don't know, I don't know whether you have this, but I mean you cos you. You do conversations professionally to capital, but we've, we all have this experience, you know, in conversation. There are certain great conversations where when you catch your mind at work in conversation with someone else, it almost does feel independent, it, there are certain conversations which take you way beyond where you could have started yourself. And it's not just because you're talking to somebody who's cleverer than you, because you're doing the same thing to them. So there is this, there is this kind of magic that happens in conversation where you, where you kind of leave yourself. And um and are able to see the world in ways that you would never have been able to do all alone, and that I think is. You know, there's the upside of reasoning itself, which is good for society, and then there's the upside of reasoning at a personal level, which is that it expands who you are.

58:25 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, uh, I mean, uh, I have one last question. Uh, EARLIER we talked a little bit about, uh, I mean, throughout our conversation, actually, we mentioned, um, when, for example, we talked about climate, how climate influences people's opinions and how people who live in, uh, hotter and more humid climates tend to, uh, have more, tend to lean more right. And authoritarian than people who live in colder and less humid environments, for example, and we talked about, um, I mean, basically how we tend to have a tribal approach to disagreement and to other people's opinions. I mean, do you, uh, when it comes to politics, do you think that, uh, and particularly in More unstable conditions like for example, we find ourselves in nowadays across many countries out there unfortunately and where there's apparently increased radicalization and polarization in politics, uh, in what ways do you think we should try to approach potential solutions to those kinds of issues?

59:45 Turi Munthe: Tiny question to finish. Thank you, Ricardo. I mean, maybe, maybe let me start with, with um, with a proviso which is that I really love radicalization. I, I want as many weird ideas out there as possible and, and there's a very strong argument that the reason that we find ourselves at a moment of political radicalization now is because the systems that we've set up for the last few decades. Didn't work or did work but worked for very few people or worked for a bit and now no longer works, so we, it does feel like we are certainly in Western Europe and and and in the US but more broadly too, we're in a moment when we're like, we're asking, we're asking questions of our political thinkers and we're asking questions of our leaders in a way which is much more radical than was the case when everybody was essentially Tony Blair or Gerhard Schroeder or Bill Clinton. That those those those their time is gone and so we we do want radical ideas because it's not all working for everybody now. So, um, the, the clash of ideas is, as we were just saying, is fantastic. That's exactly how we progress and that's how we come up with new and exciting things to build and. Social institutions to invent and new different social settlements to try, etc. The problem is, is the feeling. The problem is, well, let me give you this data point, which is that um in the 1950s and 19690s, if you asked an American family whether they were OK with their son or daughter bringing back a member of the other political party, like you're a Democrat family, your daughter's bringing back a Republican boyfriend, you ask the family if that was OK, they were like 3% said they would bother them. They didn't, they, they had problems with race and they had problems with religion. So it wasn't all joyful then, but they didn't have problems with politics. Now you ask a Republican or a Republican or a Democrat whether they'd be OK with, you know, their darling daughter or darling son bringing back somebody from the other team, and it's like 50% would say they would be really outraged. So there's been an what's called an affective polarization. Not a polarization of ideas, but a polarization of feeling about the other side. And that's terrible. That's terrible because at a certain point when you think the other side is not your loyal opposition, but your enemy. Then you end up in, we were talking about it, a zero-sum game where if they win, you lose, and, and, and you're so frightened by what they're gonna do to democracy or they're gonna do to the state that it's better for you to break democracy. Than it is for you to let them take over. So you end up with a, in a, in a, in a horrible, quite urgent situation which it sort of feels like we're, we're dancing around. I don't have an answer here, but the one answer that feels emotionally right to me is precisely this thing of realizing that we are in a, we're in a, uh, dance with the other side. That we are, we evolved. This difference amongst us is evolved. Because it was adaptive at certain periods, and we've got to assume that it's still adaptive, there are no societies in which there are no right wingers or no left wingers. We need the other side because they are helpful to us because sometimes their responses are more adaptive to the current, the circumstances that we find ourselves in. But we also need them because we need all instincts across society. We need the kind of the caring, um, progressive, innovative instincts of the left, and we need the, um, the proud, protecting, strong influences of the right at, at the same time, you know. And, and so I think once we realize that we've got this kind of this great spread. Um, THAT society couldn't function without male and female and turns out society couldn't function without right and left, then we're able to build a larger, a larger self-conception. It's no longer about me and my version of the US or the UK or Portugal and everybody else being evil. It's, um, this is what Portugal or the UK or the US is. Um, IT takes all of us to run it together and therefore we're facing in the same direction when we argue. But that's what's missing.

1:03:44 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so look, I, I just want to tell you that, uh, I mean, all, many of the things we have explored there and we even talked about peanut butter and all of that, and there are other funny examples that you bring up in your book. Uh, I mean, framing it as a matter of opinion, that's all fine and dandy, but there's one very specific uh debate that you framed as A matter of opinion in your book that I think it's just absolutely preposterous that you framed it as such, that is the debate as to who is the better football player, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, and I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm saying this as a Portuguese person. Lionel Messi is clearly. Without a shadow of a doubt, better than Cristiano Ronaldo. I mean, if you want, I can bring you a goal, goal contributions per match, uh, goals per match. I can bring you free kicks, I can bring you dribbling abilities, I can bring you, uh, uh, progressive movements, key, key passes, goals and assists for finals, and. Anything you want.

1:05:00 Turi Munthe: I mean,

1:05:01 Ricardo Lopes: Lionel Lionel Messi is clearly a better football player.

1:05:06 Turi Munthe: OK, well, so, so Ricardo, I, I mean, one, I have to take what you're saying very seriously because as a Portuguese person you're obviously going against your cultural conditioning here. But if you, um, but I'm also gonna, you're reinforcing my point because it turns out that one of the great political dividers. One of the great scissor questions when you wanna know people's politics is who do you prefer? There is a people who tend liberal. All prefer Lionel Messi. People who tend conservative, all favor Cristiano Ronaldo, so you're just telling me about your deepest predispositions, you're coming to me with goals per match, advances, layups, whatever all the other things are, but actually it's your heart talking, or maybe your brain. OK, OK,

1:05:51 Ricardo Lopes: no, that, that, that's fair. That's fair. And actually in terms of the peanut butter thing, I also, it also tells away the fact that I'm a left wing, so. Uh, SO, uh, OK, so great. The book, the book is again Why We Think What We Think, The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs. Yeah, there's the cover, really nice. So, uh, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm of course leaving a link with in the description of the interview and Tri, uh, would you like to just let people know where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:06:28 Turi Munthe: With, with great pleasure, yeah, they'll find me at at Tri Munti on Instagram. They'll find me at at Turri on, on X, although I spend much less time there, and they'll find me at at Tri Munti on sub stack.

1:06:40 Ricardo Lopes: Great, so Luke, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been really nice and fun to talk with you about.

1:06:47 Turi Munthe: I've really enjoyed talking with you Ricardo, and I'm very, very honored to be finally on a podcast that I've been listening to for almost a decade. So great to meet you finally.

1:06:57 Ricardo Lopes: Hi guys, thank you for watching this interview until the end. If you liked it, please share it, leave a like and hit the subscription button. The show is brought to you by Enlights, Learning and Development done differently. Check their website at lights.com and also please consider supporting the show on Patreon or PayPal. I would also like to give a huge thank you to my main patrons and PayPal supporters, Perergo Larsson, Jerry Mulleran, Frederick Sundo, Bernard Seaz Olaf, Alex, Adam Cassel, Matthew Whittingberrd, Arnaud Wolf, Tim Hollis, Eric Elena, John Connors, Philip Forrest Connolly. Then Dmitri Robert Windegerru Inai Zu Mark Nevs, Colin Holbrookfield, Governor, Michel Stormir, Samuel Andre, Francis Forti Agnun, Svergoo, and Hal Herzognon, Michel Jonathan Labrarinth, John Yardston, and Samuel Cerri, Hines, Mark Smith, John Ware, Tom Hammel, Sardusran, David Sloan Wilson, Yasilla Dezara Romain Roach, Diego Londono Correa. Yannik Punter DaRosmani, Charlotte Blis Nicole Barbaro, Adam Hunt, Pavlostazevski, Alec Baka Madison, Gary G. Alman, Semov, Zal Adrian Yei Poltontin, John Barboza, Julian Price, Edward Hall, Edin Bronner, Douglas Fry, Franco Bartolotti, Gabriel P Scortez or Suliliski, Scott Zachary Fish, Tim Duffyani Smith, and Wisman. Daniel Friedman, William Buckner, Paul Georg Jarno, Luke Lovai, Georgios Theophannus, Chris Williamson, Peter Wolozin, David Williams, Dio Costa, Anton Ericsson, Charles Murray, Alex Shaw, Marie Martinez, Coralli Chevalier, Bangalore atheists, Larry D. Lee Junior. Old Eringbon. Esterri, Michael Bailey, then Spurber, Robert Grassy, Zigoren, Jeff McMahon, Jake Zul, Barnabas Raddix, Mark Kempel, Thomas Dovner, Luke Neeson, Chris Story, Kimberly Johnson, Benjamin Galbert, Jessica Nowicki, Linda Brendan, Nicholas Carlson, Ismael Bensleyman. George Ekoriati, Valentine Steinmann, Per Crawley, Kate Van Goler, Alexander Obert, Liam Dunaway, BR, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, Perpendicular, Jannes Hetner, Ursula Guinov, Gregory Hastings, David Pinsov, Sean Nelson, Mike Levin, and Jos Necht. A special thanks to my producers Iar Webb, Jim Frank Lucas Stink, Tom Vanneden, Bernardine Curtis Dixon, Benedict Mueller, Thomas Trumbull, Catherine and Patrick Tobin, John Carlomon Negro, Al Nick Cortiz, and Nick Golden, and to my executive producers, Matthew Lavender, Sergio Quadrian, Bogdan Kanis, and Rosie. Thank you for all.