Episode 9: Harry Harlow & the Twin Moms

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains brief references to psychological abuse, distressing research methods, and discussions of harmful language.
We handle it with care, but if you need to skip sections, we totally get it. ⚠️

(Also known as the Cloth Mom/Wire Mom episode)
In this episode, Red and Del dive into the life and deeply questionable work of Harry Harlow, the man who made attachment theory famous, but at what cost? And for WHY??? We explore his monkey studies (with minimal details), discuss how his research shaped modern psychology, and unpack the messy legacy left behind.

Stick around to the very end of the podcast, Editor Jordan promises to leave you with a laugh after all of this. 

Transcript

00:00:07:10 - 00:00:22:54
Speaker 1
Okay. Here the fuck we are. I think we are back. And I am noticing that I started the script on September 29th, and it is not even, 2024. It is not even 2024 at the time that we're finally recording this.

00:00:23:08 - 00:00:41:28
Speaker 1
But anyway, the mics are hot. I am del. We are doing Distraction Dive for you yet again, and I have to let you all know that I have this problem, which is that I compulsively ask, are they hot? Whenever someone tells a story about any person and it is now a reflex and I can't stop, and I've done it at my day job.

00:00:41:28 - 00:00:53:20
Speaker 1
And my name is Red. And I was hot once. But then I got better. I really. That is true. That is actually a truth. You've said you do that. You do ask. Are they hot all the time?

00:00:53:25 - 00:00:54:48
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:00:54:53 - 00:00:59:16
Speaker 1
I never have an answer ready either. I just like it's not something that I ever think about.

00:00:59:16 - 00:01:01:39
Speaker 1
There's this guy that we both vaguely know,

00:01:01:39 - 00:01:03:03
Speaker 1
that once

00:01:03:03 - 00:01:15:29
Speaker 1
was telling a story about that, and he started to do it. He's been doing that. And somebody told a story about, like, I don't even know. It was like a cousin of theirs was not even born. And he was like, are they hot?

00:01:15:29 - 00:01:15:59
Speaker 1
And

00:01:17:48 - 00:01:20:08
Speaker 1
that, he was speaking was like, dude, they're not even born yet.

00:01:20:09 - 00:01:21:09
Speaker 1
He's like, that's not the

00:01:24:10 - 00:01:24:42
Speaker 2
I.

00:01:24:42 - 00:01:27:16
Speaker 1
are rent free in my head the since then. So there's actually lore to

00:01:27:39 - 00:01:34:41
Speaker 1
That's not what I asked. Is such a it's such a power move. It's such a power move.

00:01:35:37 - 00:01:37:03
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:01:37:03 - 00:01:37:50
Speaker 1
you like to travel?

00:01:38:12 - 00:01:39:52
Speaker 1
You know, I love to travel.

00:01:39:52 - 00:01:41:58
Speaker 1
Are you ready to travel?

00:01:42:10 - 00:01:45:53
Speaker 1
I mean, why, what's going on?

00:01:45:53 - 00:01:47:36
Speaker 1
Oh.

00:01:47:36 - 00:01:48:51
Speaker 1
is because. Okay, so,

00:01:48:51 - 00:02:02:25
Speaker 1
the title of this episode is cloth Mom slash wire. Mom, which might be familiar to of you. I think you've vaguely heard of it at least once. And I know you've looked at my script for this to some degree,

00:02:02:25 - 00:02:08:27
Speaker 1
those of you who are hearing this for the first time may have noticed that this became a brief.

00:02:08:28 - 00:02:11:50
Speaker 1
It was briefly a meme that kind of got Tumblr popular even,

00:02:11:50 - 00:02:14:36
Speaker 1
kind of in 2000, the early 2020s again.

00:02:14:45 - 00:02:16:08
Speaker 1
To. On Tumblr.

00:02:16:58 - 00:02:17:54
Speaker 3
Wow.

00:02:17:54 - 00:02:21:14
Speaker 1
I was researching this, there's a lot of content because I was initially kind of

00:02:21:14 - 00:02:22:18
Speaker 1
people were talking about it,

00:02:22:18 - 00:02:24:24
Speaker 1
at my day job, my previous day job,

00:02:24:24 - 00:02:30:28
Speaker 1
when I was training still, and they were discussing it and I was like, wait, is this that study about the the two moms,

00:02:30:28 - 00:02:35:55
Speaker 1
I learned about it in a psych class that I took once, and they're like, yeah, which one are you, a cloth mom or a wire mom?

00:02:35:55 - 00:02:41:45
Speaker 1
And so it like, became a meme like that. And so anyway, I got kind of interested. So it started out as light material, you might say.

00:02:41:45 - 00:02:44:43
Speaker 1
rather than, like the entree of misery that

00:02:45:06 - 00:02:46:51
Speaker 3
Oh.

00:02:46:51 - 00:02:48:09
Speaker 2
by the way, surprise!

00:02:48:09 - 00:02:49:37
Speaker 1
It's an entree of misery.

00:02:49:37 - 00:03:03:53
Speaker 1
So I just want to go upfront here and let you guys know I have. If anybody is more familiar with this, I'm not going to get into any of the details of this that are like, I'm not going, I'm going to spare us all, basically a bunch of details about animal suffering.

00:03:03:53 - 00:03:04:42
Speaker 1
I think that,

00:03:04:42 - 00:03:09:37
Speaker 1
I should lead with that upfront because I just don't think it really is productive for this conversation.

00:03:09:37 - 00:03:13:02
Speaker 1
It was just going to make us all sad and it doesn't really affect

00:03:13:02 - 00:03:21:05
Speaker 1
the point that I'm going to try to make. And the discussion. I'm just going to let you know upfront, though, that, that is a thing.

00:03:21:05 - 00:03:24:35
Speaker 1
Having said that cloth mom wire. Mom, have you heard of it?

00:03:25:02 - 00:03:35:08
Speaker 1
I mean, we we did discuss this very briefly. I think maybe even in past episodes. I don't remember if it got edited out, even though I was the one that did the editing.

00:03:35:44 - 00:03:39:07
Speaker 1
so I thought it was cloth mom versus wire mom.

00:03:39:07 - 00:03:43:05
Speaker 1
And for whatever reason, that made me go.

00:03:43:10 - 00:03:50:42
Speaker 1
Exactly. And for whatever reason, that made me go, oh, these just sound like two very useless superheroes about to dupe it out.

00:03:52:12 - 00:04:00:29
Speaker 1
you know, I got to be honest, my my grasp on the origin of this is shakier than a cross faded toddler playing Jenga. Which I will not be taking questions about.

00:04:00:29 - 00:04:03:38
Speaker 1
from what I vaguely recall, it has something to do with monkeys.

00:04:03:43 - 00:04:07:04
Speaker 1
It has something to do with maternal instincts. And then

00:04:07:04 - 00:04:17:53
Speaker 1
probably like a ton of judgment about attachment styles and and shit like that, I'm guessing, I don't know, we, like you said, at the top, we've been sitting on this episode for a minute.

00:04:17:53 - 00:04:20:11
Speaker 1
And. Yeah. Everybody's going to soon understand why.

00:04:22:12 - 00:04:23:44
Speaker 1
Yeah. Actually, you're very

00:04:24:34 - 00:04:25:49
Speaker 1
sectioning it quite well.

00:04:25:49 - 00:04:28:42
Speaker 1
I have some familiarity with this topic,

00:04:28:42 - 00:04:32:25
Speaker 1
I mean, I became familiar with it, I would say in undergrad, public school

00:04:32:45 - 00:04:33:56
Speaker 3
Gang.

00:04:34:49 - 00:04:36:33
Speaker 1
psychology class that was taught by this guy.

00:04:36:33 - 00:04:38:12
Speaker 1
Oh, my God, I want to give him credit,

00:04:38:12 - 00:04:40:32
Speaker 1
Joseph, Cicero

00:04:40:32 - 00:04:41:38
Speaker 1
was the,

00:04:42:08 - 00:04:43:00
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:04:43:00 - 00:04:52:17
Speaker 1
outstanding in social psychology, as I cite it. And think about it and operate with it like the things I learned in it in my day to day life. Well beyond the time that I took that class

00:04:52:38 - 00:04:53:22
Speaker 3
Wow.

00:04:53:22 - 00:04:54:53
Speaker 1
not that I think he'll ever hear this, but,

00:04:54:53 - 00:04:56:46
Speaker 1
I am so grateful to him. Always.

00:04:56:46 - 00:04:59:44
Speaker 1
he kind of talked about the study a little bit. I became familiar with it then,

00:04:59:44 - 00:05:06:11
Speaker 1
I wish I had actually sent me on a dive to find my undergrad notes from that class,

00:05:06:11 - 00:05:08:42
Speaker 1
I don't know why I even bother doing that, because

00:05:08:42 - 00:05:10:33
Speaker 1
we all know I'm not the fucking type of person to

00:05:15:41 - 00:05:18:54
Speaker 1
from one place to another within the same city that I live in.

00:05:18:54 - 00:05:24:28
Speaker 1
during that, I found a bunch of places where I'd written notes that were, like, useful, like academic grade notes

00:05:24:28 - 00:05:25:40
Speaker 1
on just like on

00:05:25:40 - 00:05:28:54
Speaker 1
garbage, like, folded up in, like, the pockets of my pants, like,

00:05:30:46 - 00:05:32:02
Speaker 1
all, like, in a drawer,

00:05:32:02 - 00:05:36:11
Speaker 1
And I told myself that one day. And when I go through them and I know that I'm not going to do that, but, you

00:05:37:18 - 00:05:39:10
Speaker 1
Same, same. I get that.

00:05:39:10 - 00:05:47:59
Speaker 1
I worked really hard to, to tell you that I became familiar with this in college, but it's actually because the first time I heard of it was when, a class we both took in high school.

00:05:47:59 - 00:05:58:05
Speaker 1
hearing this class, mom, why am on but as a meme on Twitter is one of those things that was like, oh, so we're reliving the early 2000 and like early 20 teens again in yet another way.

00:05:58:05 - 00:06:05:26
Speaker 1
it also just kind of got me thinking about it because it has now become this thing where we were talking about it in the context of what kind of pet parents we would be.

00:06:06:56 - 00:06:07:55
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:06:08:04 - 00:06:11:46
Speaker 1
So, I was wondering if you had been familiar with the pop culture phenomenon.

00:06:12:13 - 00:06:21:50
Speaker 1
Actually, no. I just know what happens when we get into pop culture, psychology and pop culture. Like science. You know,

00:06:21:50 - 00:06:23:49
Speaker 1
is not that necessarily,

00:06:24:11 - 00:06:25:05
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:06:25:05 - 00:06:25:42
Speaker 1
will say,

00:06:25:42 - 00:06:27:20
Speaker 1
it's just one of those things that's like,

00:06:27:20 - 00:06:30:02
Speaker 1
okay, I finally figured out what this episode is like.

00:06:30:02 - 00:06:32:02
Speaker 1
You've heard the expression rule of thumb.

00:06:32:47 - 00:06:34:44
Speaker 1
All the time, actually, I use it.

00:06:34:44 - 00:06:36:08
Speaker 1
same. Well,

00:06:37:43 - 00:06:39:52
Speaker 1
if this is true, but I read this somewhere,

00:06:39:52 - 00:06:41:49
Speaker 1
on, like, a factoid website or something

00:06:41:49 - 00:06:43:22
Speaker 1
want I had an iPod touch on, like, one of

00:06:43:57 - 00:06:47:47
Speaker 1
Legend. Legendary device.

00:06:48:16 - 00:06:50:51
Speaker 1
For those of us that weren't allowed to have cell phones, I used those

00:06:50:51 - 00:06:51:50
Speaker 3
He hero.

00:06:51:50 - 00:07:06:02
Speaker 1
I read there. Anyway, the rule of thumb is an expression that originates from I. Supposedly it's a British expression because there used to be a law and then an old American English one. There used to be a law that you could not beat your spouse with anything thicker than your thumb.

00:07:07:14 - 00:07:09:38
Speaker 1
Are you fucking kidding?

00:07:09:38 - 00:07:14:37
Speaker 1
that is what I read for sure. It's what I read. I went back and check to make sure that I wasn't misquoting it. It

00:07:16:26 - 00:07:17:59
Speaker 1
100% factually accurate.

00:07:17:59 - 00:07:21:19
Speaker 1
Which I didn't bother going to correct that because,

00:07:21:19 - 00:07:24:19
Speaker 1
well. First of all, I just realized it right now on on mic. But,

00:07:24:19 - 00:07:28:16
Speaker 1
it also serves the purpose of what this episode is like.

00:07:28:16 - 00:07:29:18
Speaker 1
just

00:07:29:18 - 00:07:30:04
Speaker 1
let's get into it.

00:07:30:15 - 00:07:30:53
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:07:30:53 - 00:07:32:11
Speaker 1
going to describe the study.

00:07:32:11 - 00:07:32:47
Speaker 1
Really?

00:07:32:47 - 00:07:36:28
Speaker 1
Like what cloth, mom where mom refers to for people that haven't heard of it at all?

00:07:36:28 - 00:07:38:11
Speaker 1
this story refers to

00:07:38:11 - 00:07:40:01
Speaker 1
and when I say this story, I'm talking about

00:07:40:01 - 00:07:56:24
Speaker 1
our story that I'm going to tell you now, cloth mom, where mom is referring to a study that was done to assess attachment and love. Love, I would say, between children and their mothers. And this, this was studied by having baby rhesus monkeys exposed to a cloth covered uncanny valley.

00:07:56:24 - 00:07:58:33
Speaker 1
Nightmare monkey mom.

00:07:58:33 - 00:08:00:47
Speaker 1
And an even more uncanny valley

00:08:00:47 - 00:08:03:01
Speaker 1
nightmare wire frame of a monkey mother.

00:08:03:01 - 00:08:05:17
Speaker 1
it's like, shaped vaguely like one.

00:08:05:17 - 00:08:12:47
Speaker 1
And then in one of the conditions of the study, the wire. Mom actually had a bottle with food. And the cloth. Mom had no food.

00:08:12:47 - 00:08:16:32
Speaker 1
In another condition, the cloth mom had the bottle and the wire.

00:08:16:32 - 00:08:17:41
Speaker 1
Mom had nothing.

00:08:19:30 - 00:08:26:11
Speaker 1
less comforting cloth. Mom is more comforting. And in one condition, the less comforting thing had food and another the more comforting thing had food.

00:08:26:11 - 00:08:28:42
Speaker 1
And it was done in a bunch of different ways. But this is

00:08:28:42 - 00:08:30:05
Speaker 1
the the crux of it.

00:08:30:05 - 00:08:32:51
Speaker 1
The observation was made that the monkeys,

00:08:32:51 - 00:08:36:50
Speaker 1
which this is perhaps obvious to literally anybody except for our,

00:08:36:50 - 00:08:38:15
Speaker 1
our guy Harry Harlow.

00:08:38:15 - 00:08:41:36
Speaker 1
I'm getting distracted by this because I just I'm stalling again.

00:08:41:36 - 00:08:46:41
Speaker 1
reason the monkeys chose the cloth. Mom in any situation, even when the only way to get food was the wire Bob.

00:08:46:46 - 00:08:47:45
Speaker 1
In other words,

00:08:47:45 - 00:08:51:34
Speaker 1
he found a way to really, depressingly discover

00:08:51:34 - 00:08:52:05
Speaker 1
that,

00:08:52:05 - 00:08:57:33
Speaker 1
yes, in fact, you can quantify the you can quantify behaviors that people make out of craving affection.

00:08:57:33 - 00:09:04:15
Speaker 1
there are situations in which people will want. And I'm talking to you right wingers and libertarians. There

00:09:05:27 - 00:09:18:00
Speaker 1
which, like random, fruitful emotional things are more important to people in organisms that are like not burdened by frontal lobes in the way that we are supposedly than just money, secondary gain, food.

00:09:18:11 - 00:09:20:27
Speaker 1
Preach. Preach it.

00:09:20:27 - 00:09:33:12
Speaker 1
that was the original prompt. It's now become a meme where people are discussing it on Tumblr and Reddit and everything like that about what kind of weather you had or are a cloth or wire parent, or if they were cloth where you are a cloth or wire parent.

00:09:33:12 - 00:09:38:31
Speaker 1
it's a bit of a deep cut and it has changed a lot from and its usage now from what it was.

00:09:38:31 - 00:09:40:59
Speaker 1
And that's kind of what made me want to talk about this episode.

00:09:40:59 - 00:09:43:16
Speaker 1
So I asked you earlier, are you ready to travel?

00:09:43:16 - 00:09:46:35
Speaker 1
Does it change your answer? If I tell you we're going to Iowa?

00:09:47:03 - 00:09:51:31
Speaker 1
It does quite a bit, in fact. Change my answer. I need to be very real.

00:09:51:31 - 00:09:54:11
Speaker 1
we are going to fucking Iowa.

00:09:56:16 - 00:10:03:06
Speaker 1
understand cloth mom. Wire. Mom, I have to take us to Iowa. Which. True story. I have been to Iowa on purpose in my adult life. But this is not.

00:10:04:06 - 00:10:05:50
Speaker 1
To what end?

00:10:05:50 - 00:10:11:46
Speaker 1
from my previous day job during a training, who is now employed in Texas.

00:10:11:46 - 00:10:17:32
Speaker 1
But, at that time, they were living in Iowa for their training.

00:10:18:29 - 00:10:21:36
Speaker 1
Oh, interesting. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha.

00:10:22:02 - 00:10:23:24
Speaker 1
On purpose.

00:10:23:24 - 00:10:24:40
Speaker 1
on purpose.

00:10:24:40 - 00:10:27:39
Speaker 1
I've actually heard. It's pretty good. Dope. I've heard a lot about that. Stay for.

00:10:27:39 - 00:10:32:23
Speaker 1
It was really fun. I ate fried food and got dehydrated and didn't throw up, so that was really cool.

00:10:35:07 - 00:10:40:31
Speaker 1
plushie of some kind and, like, some squirt gun game. I shamelessly defeated children.

00:10:40:53 - 00:10:54:47
Speaker 1
Dude, no no no no no shit. All over those children at that game. Yeah. What do you mean you can't aim at that horse, child. What do you mean? You're just learning what? This is your first time. Time to grow up.

00:10:56:59 - 00:11:00:37
Speaker 1
we're going to Iowa, and I want to introduce you to yet another nightmarish person,

00:11:00:37 - 00:11:03:03
Speaker 1
who is going to cause me to have nightmares for life. About what?

00:11:03:03 - 00:11:05:06
Speaker 1
Had been done to monkeys in the name of science.

00:11:06:51 - 00:11:10:39
Speaker 1
I want to tell you where I found all of this information, because,

00:11:10:39 - 00:11:11:24
Speaker 2
In the.

00:11:11:24 - 00:11:19:30
Speaker 1
Course of writing for this series, I have really started to understand that the nature of truth and good at quote unquote good, accurate information is so fucking

00:11:20:50 - 00:11:27:18
Speaker 1
we're talking about Harry Harlow. And the best biographical detail I was able to find is this article that was written in the Boston Globe.

00:11:27:18 - 00:11:33:16
Speaker 1
Now, that article is written by Lauren Slater, written by Lauren Slater.

00:11:33:16 - 00:11:49:48
Speaker 1
I've emphasized it that way because the word is referring. It's doing a little bit of heavy lifting because the article itself is an adaptation of a section from Lauren Slater's book, which is entitled Opening Skinner's Box Great Psychological Experiments of the 20th Century and quote,

00:11:51:34 - 00:11:57:20
Speaker 1
that book for much of the information regarding the biographical history of Harry Harlow.

00:11:57:20 - 00:12:08:51
Speaker 1
And just to kind of get a better idea, get in the head a little bit of what people's best guess is that their motivations and personalities were, when I say they, I mean, Harry Harlow, his postgrad students, his mentors,

00:12:08:51 - 00:12:14:27
Speaker 1
that's what the book I think helped me most with, as well as providing the best biographical detail overall.

00:12:14:27 - 00:12:15:32
Speaker 1
It's actually kind of murky,

00:12:15:32 - 00:12:17:09
Speaker 1
because actually,

00:12:17:09 - 00:12:19:25
Speaker 1
was born in 1905. Now,

00:12:19:25 - 00:12:20:24
Speaker 1
this book

00:12:20:24 - 00:12:24:32
Speaker 1
I, I want to be clear, it is the first major attempt that was made. I think,

00:12:24:32 - 00:12:29:27
Speaker 1
and people regardless, professionals in psychology will tell you this too. You know, I just take it from me.

00:12:29:27 - 00:12:33:27
Speaker 1
It's the first major attempt to close the gap between pop psychology, which,

00:12:33:27 - 00:12:35:14
Speaker 1
is mostly nonsense but fun to engage

00:12:36:03 - 00:12:44:24
Speaker 1
academic psychology, which is not without its problems, but it is a lot more cleaned up now than it was.

00:12:44:24 - 00:12:50:45
Speaker 1
The book is still controversial, though, to a small degree, partially because it was written.

00:12:51:19 - 00:12:55:03
Speaker 1
Editorially. It was written kind of telling a story. So,

00:12:55:03 - 00:13:00:06
Speaker 1
it's not like a factual accounting in that way necessarily. You could argue,

00:13:00:06 - 00:13:06:49
Speaker 1
and there is one particularly misleading, open ended claim in her book about Skinner, who did the Skinner Box different story,

00:13:06:49 - 00:13:07:51
Speaker 1
about his daughter,

00:13:07:51 - 00:13:10:49
Speaker 1
which has been healthily covered and debunked by other people.

00:13:10:54 - 00:13:20:50
Speaker 1
I'm not going to get into it now, but basically it was a bad claim about Skinner's daughter, which was unfair and suggested something to the effect of that. Like he raised her in a Skinner box or something, and he didn't. He

00:13:23:27 - 00:13:29:15
Speaker 1
did not like everybody, including the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victim, are like, that's fucking nonsense.

00:13:29:15 - 00:13:36:23
Speaker 1
However, it is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny piece of the book. And the rest, I don't think it necessarily takes away from the rest of the

00:13:36:47 - 00:13:37:36
Speaker 1
Text.

00:13:37:36 - 00:13:46:16
Speaker 1
the text, the info that we've got. So I'm still going to use it, but I think it's worth leveling with everybody and with you up front for that reason.

00:13:47:11 - 00:13:48:28
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:13:48:28 - 00:13:55:14
Speaker 1
to read this and they're like, hey, Lauren Slater is not a girl's girl. And she definitely said something kind of nasty about B.F. Skinner's daughter.

00:13:55:14 - 00:13:58:19
Speaker 1
I then you won't say. But, del.

00:13:58:23 - 00:13:59:37
Speaker 2
I thought you said this was.

00:13:59:37 - 00:14:05:59
Speaker 1
A good book, and like, I'm going to have to, I don't know. What do people do now? Whatever it is, you're going to have to do that. Don't.

00:14:09:15 - 00:14:12:22
Speaker 1
I think that for me, you being up front about

00:14:12:22 - 00:14:13:16
Speaker 1
almost

00:14:13:16 - 00:14:15:05
Speaker 1
an unreliable narrator,

00:14:15:05 - 00:14:26:14
Speaker 1
but there is still reliability within the text because it can probably be verified outside of that. But unfortunately, this person happened to write about some really shitty things that just didn't happen to be true.

00:14:26:19 - 00:14:31:30
Speaker 1
I think. I think that happens. I think a lot of people just want to get a gotcha moment.

00:14:31:30 - 00:14:32:55
Speaker 1
a lot of people look for the,

00:14:33:04 - 00:14:38:50
Speaker 1
they want the bad within the good, right? They want, oh, there's always got to be something dark.

00:14:38:50 - 00:14:44:50
Speaker 1
it's not that that really isn't fair. And I really do appreciate you being upfront with me about that, because that is going to kind of,

00:14:44:50 - 00:14:46:44
Speaker 1
paint how I view this moving forward.

00:14:46:49 - 00:14:47:36
Speaker 3
yeah,

00:14:47:36 - 00:14:48:08
Speaker 1
was my hope.

00:14:48:08 - 00:14:48:50
Speaker 3
okay.

00:14:48:50 - 00:14:49:18
Speaker 1
see,

00:14:49:18 - 00:14:54:04
Speaker 1
it doesn't even matter that she made this claim about B.F. Skinner, because what she says about Harry Harlow

00:14:54:04 - 00:15:01:18
Speaker 1
And what he actually did, what is documented elsewhere is so monumentally significant in a worse way than what she said. And that was

00:15:02:41 - 00:15:04:54
Speaker 1
Like, yes, that was not a great thing that you did. But,

00:15:04:54 - 00:15:13:32
Speaker 1
again, like, it's not the point here. I'm not again, I want to be very clear. Nobody is saying that what Lawrence Slater said about B.F. Skinner's daughter was true.

00:15:13:32 - 00:15:23:05
Speaker 1
That is well documented, dissected. And I just think we should talk about it beforehand so that, you know, because I think everybody, whether consciously or unconsciously, has a bit of a bent when that whole story.

00:15:23:05 - 00:15:23:26
Speaker 1
Right,

00:15:24:37 - 00:15:25:18
Speaker 3
Yep.

00:15:25:29 - 00:15:28:04
Speaker 1
It's hard not to. As a human being, I think we all kind of

00:15:28:04 - 00:15:32:03
Speaker 1
have our opinions on certain people that we read or write about. So.

00:15:32:03 - 00:15:41:34
Speaker 1
And you have like a point that you're subtly trying to make. Right. And Lawrence. Stater. Slater. Slater. Lawrence. Slater. Sorry about that. Lauren.

00:15:41:34 - 00:15:43:44
Speaker 1
She definitely had a point she's trying to

00:15:44:25 - 00:15:45:39
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:15:45:39 - 00:15:52:05
Speaker 1
what I'm going to tell you a bit about the founder, the guy who did the cloth mom wire mom study and get ready because it is a fucking name.

00:15:52:05 - 00:15:54:24
Speaker 1
And then it changes into another fucking name.

00:15:54:24 - 00:16:01:31
Speaker 1
So we're going to Iowa. Fairfield, Iowa, 1905 on one particularly cursed Halloween. Truly.

00:16:01:31 - 00:16:08:09
Speaker 1
When one Harry Frederick Israel, aka Harry Frederick Harlow, was born,

00:16:08:09 - 00:16:11:44
Speaker 1
to Mabel Rock and Alonzo Harlow Israel,

00:16:11:44 - 00:16:22:14
Speaker 1
they had already spawned to presumably less animal abuse inclined sons, and would go on to spawn one more after that, who was also presumably not an animal

00:16:23:40 - 00:16:32:31
Speaker 1
introducing people's kids that way. It's very funny to me.

00:16:32:31 - 00:16:35:07
Speaker 1
it's Fairfield, Iowa. What else are you going to do? You're going

00:16:35:18 - 00:16:37:02
Speaker 1
I just.

00:16:37:02 - 00:16:41:47
Speaker 1
drink dudes to reuse a variety of substances and they fuck like any rural town

00:16:45:28 - 00:16:52:33
Speaker 1
I know I and I'm aware of that. It's just so funny. It's like, this is little Johnny. I presume he's not an animal abuser.

00:16:52:33 - 00:16:57:44
Speaker 1
You know, here you can hold him for the first time. Like, there's something very funny.

00:16:57:44 - 00:16:59:11
Speaker 2
that they're born and they're right away.

00:16:59:11 - 00:17:04:50
Speaker 1
Just like here is. What did you call him? Harry? Presumably he's not an animal abuser. That person was fucking rock.

00:17:05:20 - 00:17:11:28
Speaker 1
Yeah, that. Yeah, that was, very, large misdiagnosis.

00:17:11:28 - 00:17:12:40
Speaker 1
there's some things that,

00:17:12:40 - 00:17:19:54
Speaker 1
Even if it's true, why did you say it? Right now? You're like my name is Dale. And I was not connected to

00:17:19:54 - 00:17:21:36
Speaker 1
the disappearance of the Lindbergh baby.

00:17:22:40 - 00:17:24:55
Speaker 1
you doing? You're like, okay, why did you bring that

00:17:25:06 - 00:17:26:01
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:17:26:55 - 00:17:27:18
Speaker 2
that.

00:17:27:45 - 00:17:30:05
Speaker 1
Lane and I'm obsessed. I love bring up

00:17:31:20 - 00:17:32:25
Speaker 1
Anyway,

00:17:32:25 - 00:17:38:14
Speaker 1
Alonzo Harlow Israel was the father of Harriet Frederick Israel Harlow.

00:17:38:14 - 00:17:43:33
Speaker 1
Harriet's not his name. I'm. But I'm gonna just not use it because site. This is how I cope.

00:17:45:21 - 00:17:48:37
Speaker 1
Harlow Israel was a mostly unsuccessful inventor.

00:17:48:42 - 00:17:54:07
Speaker 1
I couldn't actually find anything about his mom's occupation, which, to be fair, it was 19. Oh five, in Iowa. But,

00:17:54:07 - 00:18:00:17
Speaker 1
I did look into this a little bit just because I wanted to be a little bit more complete about this.

00:18:00:17 - 00:18:02:43
Speaker 1
Just because I'm taking a pretty strong stance here, but

00:18:02:43 - 00:18:10:12
Speaker 1
it appears likely that Mabel did not and could not have reasonably done much by way of occupation because of the political, social climate

00:18:10:12 - 00:18:11:12
Speaker 1
of the time.

00:18:11:31 - 00:18:17:33
Speaker 1
Yeah. Because this is. Is this pre-World War One. Wait. Yeah, yeah, it is pretty, right? Yeah.

00:18:17:33 - 00:18:18:46
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's right.

00:18:18:46 - 00:18:20:19
Speaker 1
Although,

00:18:20:19 - 00:18:22:49
Speaker 1
Wilhelm is hard at work getting ready to,

00:18:22:49 - 00:18:25:15
Speaker 1
fuck all of Europe for the first and the entire world.

00:18:27:01 - 00:18:27:45
Speaker 3
Gross.

00:18:27:45 - 00:18:34:31
Speaker 1
climate is not really well aimed at necessarily, especially in the USA, but like in the world over at

00:18:34:31 - 00:18:37:54
Speaker 1
a woman being kind of independent and having a job like that.

00:18:37:54 - 00:18:40:38
Speaker 1
And again, we're talking about Iowa, Iowa

00:18:44:22 - 00:18:57:17
Speaker 1
the primary elections recently, like for the Dems, that were like somebody revealed after their long ass voting primary process, which is like famously complicated, that Pete Buttigieg is a is a gay man and somebody who had voted for him.

00:18:57:17 - 00:19:00:48
Speaker 1
I watched that woman. She was like.

00:19:00:53 - 00:19:01:20
Speaker 2
Like she's

00:19:02:12 - 00:19:07:58
Speaker 2
No.

00:19:07:58 - 00:19:08:29
Speaker 1
in.

00:19:08:34 - 00:19:11:24
Speaker 2
2024.

00:19:11:47 - 00:19:12:30
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah.

00:19:12:30 - 00:19:13:19
Speaker 1
That would it. Yeah.

00:19:13:19 - 00:19:14:18
Speaker 3
Wow.

00:19:14:18 - 00:19:21:35
Speaker 1
So I really did try, but I don't think that Mabel had anything other than being a parent that she was able to do and that she did. Really.

00:19:21:35 - 00:19:30:00
Speaker 1
And again, it's Iowa, Fairfield, Iowa. And 2020 still, US Census Bureau has only 9416 people in it. And

00:19:30:00 - 00:19:33:41
Speaker 1
not every one of those people was as extraordinary as,

00:19:33:41 - 00:19:34:25
Speaker 1


00:19:34:25 - 00:19:35:59
Speaker 1
isn't that,

00:19:35:59 - 00:19:38:22
Speaker 1
Mayor Edwards, who was also for Fairfield?

00:19:38:29 - 00:19:43:29
Speaker 1
That's a great story. And if we have time, we'll come back for that, because it is a fucking empowering story about a woman. But,

00:19:43:29 - 00:19:47:37
Speaker 1
we're free from the rabbit hole. And now Perry's early childhood,

00:19:47:37 - 00:20:06:44
Speaker 1
it's known to us a little bit more, but almost entirely from an unpublished and unfinished autobiography that he wrote, which he did not say too much about, but did take the time in the unfinished version, even to comment that his mother was not, quote, particularly warm to him and quote, as well as noting that he had many bouts of depression throughout his life.

00:20:06:44 - 00:20:08:34
Speaker 1
Like unprompted, he mentioned both of those things.

00:20:08:34 - 00:20:12:06
Speaker 1
The guy was also an avid artist, and probably from an escapism angle.

00:20:12:06 - 00:20:15:39
Speaker 1
Because he had a hard time fitting in at school, he would say that himself.

00:20:15:49 - 00:20:22:49
Speaker 1
I know another avid artist that did some really heinous shit. But anyway, please continue.

00:20:22:54 - 00:20:31:51
Speaker 1
I mean, I guess it can be. I guess I know several. I'm sorry, I guess I know several, no, the one I'm thinking about, it was an Austrian artist. But you can continue.

00:20:31:58 - 00:20:36:13
Speaker 2
You can, you can.

00:20:36:13 - 00:20:38:47
Speaker 1
did anything heinous, and I really hope he didn't, because I fucking love M.C. Escher.

00:20:40:44 - 00:20:44:37
Speaker 1
this is a very important time for me to ask you a question. Read.

00:20:49:14 - 00:20:58:35
Speaker 1
Well, you know, I, I grew up with like, probably about sophomore year of high schools when the bullying stopped for me. Like beginning somewhere.

00:20:58:35 - 00:21:01:47
Speaker 1
So you're very, very anti-bullying.

00:21:01:47 - 00:21:09:15
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. Okay.

00:21:10:17 - 00:21:10:45
Speaker 1
Harry's

00:21:12:45 - 00:21:20:35
Speaker 1
debated including the segment and I just want to I, I just wanna get your thoughts on this. So he drew an imaginary land called Yazoo.

00:21:21:06 - 00:21:26:55
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:21:26:55 - 00:21:29:12
Speaker 1
animals, horned beasts.

00:21:29:17 - 00:21:36:21
Speaker 1
And after he finished the drawing, he would draw them with a stake through them, like in a vivisected format. After, after finishing a full drawing.

00:21:36:21 - 00:21:42:42
Speaker 1
What do you think about that? And how does that make you feel about your stance to do with bullying and.

00:21:42:51 - 00:21:46:44
Speaker 2
Not even your stance? What do you think? Why?

00:21:46:49 - 00:21:50:17
Speaker 1
Well, you know, do you have a better understanding as to why he did not fit in in school?

00:21:51:59 - 00:21:58:22
Speaker 1
I have I mean, I love I mean, you know, it wasn't exactly what I was expecting.

00:21:58:22 - 00:22:11:43
Speaker 1
So, so he was really into drawing this imaginary world, and he would draw these characters, and then after drawing them, he would just put a stake through them in a vivisection format.

00:22:11:43 - 00:22:17:31
Speaker 1
after the drawing was done. Like, in other words, like I took it to be like, now that their purpose is done, they're like, not serving the

00:22:19:00 - 00:22:43:13
Speaker 1
Well, that's intense as fuck. That's that's a really, really vivid way to express yourself. This this is a very specific pattern. So he did this a lot. This was a habit. It almost feels borderline serial killer ask, right? I mean, maybe he'd needed a lot of therapy. Be maybe sort of.

00:22:43:13 - 00:22:43:44
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:22:43:44 - 00:22:45:38
Speaker 1
I don't know, like, yes, I agree,

00:22:46:11 - 00:22:47:58
Speaker 1
Okay.

00:22:47:58 - 00:22:54:03
Speaker 1
it's hard I don't want to like, you know, sit and try to assign diagnoses I can't I'm not in the position to do

00:22:57:46 - 00:23:16:14
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:23:16:14 - 00:23:16:38
Speaker 1
tortured

00:23:17:01 - 00:23:20:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's immediately what that made me think of. And,

00:23:20:11 - 00:23:28:07
Speaker 1
to to be very clear, you know, not all sociopaths go down this route either. Some sociopaths get help, some of them. Yeah.

00:23:28:07 - 00:23:30:43
Speaker 1
sociopathy is such an interesting topic to me.

00:23:30:43 - 00:23:35:32
Speaker 1
Because the line between sociopathy and psychopathy is so thin.

00:23:35:32 - 00:23:41:03
Speaker 1
Yeah. I have, like, at some point, this is probably going to wind up getting an episode because I agree with you. And it's so like.

00:23:41:03 - 00:23:49:19
Speaker 1
this is like a different tangent, but yes, I agree with you entirely, but I you totally took from this the same thing that I did and I'm glad you did, which is that like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, okay.

00:23:49:19 - 00:23:56:57
Speaker 1
Like this is very like, why are you doing that? This is like animal torture type thing. And this is for a guy who later wound up making his living doing that.

00:23:56:57 - 00:24:13:13
Speaker 1
part of me wants to say that we we all have our own coping mechanisms. We all have our own way of dealing with stuff. But that's obsessive, that is violent. That is a whole host of things that you said. Early childhood.

00:24:13:13 - 00:24:15:32
Speaker 1
And I don't know if this changes your opinion any, but,

00:24:15:32 - 00:24:18:47
Speaker 1
by all accounts, he spent almost every moment that he could,

00:24:18:47 - 00:24:21:36
Speaker 1
devote to doing so in the process of drawing these things.

00:24:21:36 - 00:24:24:45
Speaker 1
Not everything about Yazoo and vivisection, of course, but he spent a.

00:24:24:45 - 00:24:26:07
Speaker 2
Lot of time doing that.

00:24:26:07 - 00:24:27:54
Speaker 1
into adulthood.

00:24:27:54 - 00:24:30:21
Speaker 1
Oh, just in early childhood. That was like a habit.

00:24:30:21 - 00:24:41:29
Speaker 1
wasn't like observed or commented upon by other people. But there is like a paucity of data. So I don't know if he did in adulthood, but I know that he spent like his childhood being obsessed with drawing like that.

00:24:41:29 - 00:24:56:26
Speaker 1
do we know if you lived in a very stressful environment, like, abusive environment or anything because, like, if it was an outlet, I think he was just I think he was just using this outlet at first, maybe to feel safe. And then he just started spiraling.

00:24:56:26 - 00:24:58:35
Speaker 2
Yeah. I don't know.

00:24:59:06 - 00:25:03:23
Speaker 1
Okay. Well, regardless, he did these drawings, for

00:25:03:23 - 00:25:08:31
Speaker 1
a, it's a very good question and it's part of why I asked you, I wanted to talk about this because I want to be fair to the guy.

00:25:08:31 - 00:25:16:01
Speaker 1
As a possible like fair to him that he was to the monkeys. But I want to be fair to his the posthumous reputation of the guy,

00:25:16:01 - 00:25:22:56
Speaker 1
and to the study and to the data, because just overall, I it rubs me the wrong

00:25:23:36 - 00:25:25:12
Speaker 1
Same, same.

00:25:25:12 - 00:25:29:05
Speaker 1
going to be glib and just say red flag, but actually, I I'm going to say that that's a fucking giant red flag.

00:25:29:05 - 00:25:41:04
Speaker 1
I don't know if he was a victim or whatever, but, we I don't care that much about it. Like being right by Harry Harlow specifically because, again, he didn't.

00:25:41:08 - 00:25:41:43
Speaker 2
And.

00:25:41:48 - 00:25:43:14
Speaker 1
It doesn't seem like he was a great dude,

00:25:43:14 - 00:25:43:56
Speaker 1
to my eye.

00:25:43:56 - 00:25:46:16
Speaker 1
that was a really key thing, I think, to get in the head,

00:25:46:16 - 00:25:49:10
Speaker 1
to get a snapshot of what his life was like when he grew up

00:25:49:10 - 00:25:50:15
Speaker 3
All right.

00:25:50:15 - 00:25:55:10
Speaker 1
to give you another look at Harry Harlow, the man who did the study, we have to talk.

00:25:55:10 - 00:26:02:44
Speaker 1
About what? He went to college. So he did a year in Oregon of college, where he went to Stanford, and he got into a special aptitude

00:26:04:24 - 00:26:13:55
Speaker 1
What does that mean? In this case?

00:26:14:00 - 00:26:22:09
Speaker 1
Okay. That's okay. That's what I thought maybe it was, but you put it in quotes, so I thought it meant something different, but. Okay. Gotcha.

00:26:22:09 - 00:26:31:36
Speaker 1
and not explained too much more. So I couldn't decide if it was like an aptitude, like an entry examination for Stanford or something like that. But, what I gather is that he got in a performance. He was always regarded as

00:26:33:10 - 00:26:36:21
Speaker 1
Okay. All right, fair enough.

00:26:36:21 - 00:26:39:27
Speaker 1
to college in Oregon for one year before he switched.

00:26:39:27 - 00:26:42:06
Speaker 1
And he actually started off, even when he was still at Stanford

00:26:43:38 - 00:27:02:26
Speaker 3
Oh.

00:27:03:21 - 00:27:04:11
Speaker 1
has problems.

00:27:04:11 - 00:27:09:16
Speaker 1
But that's not I. I don't really love IQ as a measurement of much of anything, but he it is

00:27:09:16 - 00:27:19:48
Speaker 1
legacy, you might say. And another piece of legacy from Louis Terman, who again, this was this guy is just like grad student mentor. He was the he's quoted as in known

00:27:23:17 - 00:27:26:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I know the name. I know the name very well, actually. Yeah.

00:27:26:26 - 00:27:28:30
Speaker 3
Oh.

00:27:28:30 - 00:27:40:18
Speaker 1
fathers of Silicon Valley. They say that's what he's called. I don't remember what his name is. Also, by the way, Louis Terman. And this should not surprise anybody who knows anything about Silicon Valley giant eugenicist.

00:27:41:30 - 00:27:44:36
Speaker 3
Yeah. You're.

00:27:44:36 - 00:27:45:18
Speaker 1
also.

00:27:45:31 - 00:27:49:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Terman, actually, in his private writings mentioned, Hair Bear,

00:27:49:11 - 00:27:53:48
Speaker 1
as well as a couple of other dudes, Calvin Perry Stone and Walter Richard Miles. They are also

00:27:53:48 - 00:27:54:40
Speaker 1
renowned,

00:27:54:40 - 00:28:04:38
Speaker 1
professionals and academics in their own way for other things not relevant to the story, but just to give you an idea of what kind of academic corridors of power that Harriet was running through.

00:28:25:22 - 00:28:29:38
Speaker 1
I would assume, based on the time period, that it was probably an anti-Semitic thing.

00:28:29:38 - 00:28:36:59
Speaker 1
It's crazy to change the last name and not the first. I mean, the name Harry. I'm not the biggest fan. Sorry to all the Harry's out there,

00:28:36:59 - 00:28:47:08
Speaker 1
I mean, there's a lot of really big ones. Harry Potter, Harry Osborn. But I, I don't think the biggest concern should have been the last name, but it was that time was a very anti-Semitic time.

00:28:47:08 - 00:28:47:32
Speaker 1
And,

00:28:47:32 - 00:28:49:36
Speaker 1
you know, Harry is not a bad first name,

00:28:49:36 - 00:29:00:43
Speaker 1
because your name, Harry to do the Harry that's listening, your name is not Edgar Dick. And I don't mean dick as in a nickname for Richard. I mean, somebody came out the womb and named your dick.

00:29:00:48 - 00:29:01:58
Speaker 1
That happens.

00:29:01:58 - 00:29:03:11
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:29:03:16 - 00:29:05:05
Speaker 1
You're right, by the way.

00:29:05:05 - 00:29:11:07
Speaker 1
You. Yeah, you got it. You're killing it today. If your answer was, quote. So Harry did not

00:29:12:06 - 00:29:13:33
Speaker 3
Oh.

00:29:13:33 - 00:29:15:46
Speaker 1
Israel. Yep. You got

00:29:15:51 - 00:29:18:33
Speaker 3
Boone, maybe.

00:29:18:33 - 00:29:20:33
Speaker 1
your knowledge of anti-Semitism in the USA?

00:29:20:33 - 00:29:23:38
Speaker 1
This was in the 1930s, by the way. So this is like a

00:29:23:38 - 00:29:30:08
Speaker 1
term. It is always going to be able to could always get away with this in his own mind, I'm sure, by being like, well, I didn't do the Holocaust,

00:29:30:08 - 00:29:31:25
Speaker 1
you're not getting away with this

00:29:34:00 - 00:29:34:18
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:29:34:18 - 00:29:35:55
Speaker 1
No, no. Absolutely not.

00:29:35:55 - 00:29:39:28
Speaker 1
Harry Carey is now Harry Harry Harlow. And

00:29:40:57 - 00:29:45:45
Speaker 1
And he actually wound up marrying one of Thurman's research subjects for the Stanford Binet IQ test.

00:29:45:45 - 00:29:51:09
Speaker 1
A, quote, gifted child, end quote, with an IQ of 155. She was called Clara Meres.

00:29:51:09 - 00:29:53:31
Speaker 1
And Terman celebrated that

00:29:53:31 - 00:29:55:47
Speaker 1
in a way that I think is worth commenting on.

00:29:55:47 - 00:29:58:47
Speaker 1
Again, this is all we're going to get into. Cloth mom. Wire mom. But I think these are.

00:29:58:47 - 00:29:59:31
Speaker 2
All.

00:29:59:31 - 00:30:09:35
Speaker 1
It's important to understand who made this and what kind of like how he came up and what his educational background was. This is the guy who Terman is, the guy who probably,

00:30:09:35 - 00:30:16:03
Speaker 1
really provided the framework. If these, you know, grad student process and PhD process is anything like what it

00:30:16:03 - 00:30:17:00
Speaker 1
is now,

00:30:17:00 - 00:30:23:10
Speaker 1
you're made in the image partially, even if you don't want to be in some way of the people that influenced you and mentored you.

00:30:23:17 - 00:30:23:42
Speaker 1
Always

00:30:23:42 - 00:30:32:08
Speaker 1
I think when you are left alone and you don't really have much information to pull from, I don't think you can kind of even come up with what you would like your personality to be.

00:30:32:23 - 00:30:34:30
Speaker 1
don't have anybody who can give you that information.

00:30:34:30 - 00:30:36:56
Speaker 1
You either experience it yourself or you. You move on.

00:30:36:56 - 00:30:37:35


00:30:37:45 - 00:30:40:30
Speaker 1
You guys won't know this, but we're back. We were gone.

00:30:40:30 - 00:30:41:11
Speaker 1
We're not now.

00:30:41:11 - 00:30:42:16
Speaker 1
So we were talking about,

00:30:42:16 - 00:30:45:03
Speaker 1
Turman and talking about,

00:30:45:03 - 00:30:47:41
Speaker 1
his one of his research subjects, Clara myers,

00:30:47:41 - 00:30:52:53
Speaker 1
aka wife and the love of Harriet care bears life.

00:30:55:38 - 00:30:57:50
Speaker 1
and she loved him. He they got a divorce once,

00:30:57:50 - 00:31:00:48
Speaker 1
and married his second wife, who was called Margaret Quinn.

00:31:00:48 - 00:31:06:26
Speaker 1
Q and I don't know how to spell it. I'm so sorry. Or pronounce it. It's spelled k, u, e and e.

00:31:06:26 - 00:31:11:47
Speaker 1
Margaret, passed away from cancer. So Harry became quite

00:31:11:47 - 00:31:15:41
Speaker 1
exceptionally depressed by that actually required, electroconvulsive therapy for it. Which, by

00:31:16:05 - 00:31:17:22
Speaker 3
Whoa!

00:31:17:22 - 00:31:18:29
Speaker 1
in the right fashion.

00:31:18:29 - 00:31:21:00
Speaker 1
That is evidence based and real. It's just got very bad

00:31:21:16 - 00:31:26:16
Speaker 1
I've heard. I've heard, treatment resistant depression is usually the. Yep.

00:31:26:16 - 00:31:40:54
Speaker 1
know that are, like, the most phobic of treatments of any kind, had very different backgrounds and very different situations anywhere from health care to patients to whatever, say, like people have said. And I quote, everybody says about when it works, it's like magic and

00:31:41:15 - 00:31:50:32
Speaker 1
I love that I. I'm really happy to hear that. I have to be genuinely honest, like, I, you know, because it doesn't have a good rap. It doesn't have good marketing. Yeah.

00:31:50:32 - 00:32:04:01
Speaker 1
if you've read anything about Ernest Hemingway, then like, yeah, but, yes, it is true, it does work. But he got ECT. Has he got ECT after, Margaret died, but then eventually he actually wanted to remarry and Clara and they lived until they lived together in Tucson, Arizona, until

00:32:05:23 - 00:32:12:02
Speaker 1
So he he really did feel loved very deeply. Clearly.

00:32:12:02 - 00:32:14:34
Speaker 1
Harry. For everything, his research, everything was about love.

00:32:14:34 - 00:32:16:51
Speaker 1
he would tell you that, like, everything, he was, like, obsessed with,

00:32:16:51 - 00:32:24:27
Speaker 1
coming up with a metric to quantify human love and attachment. Oh, my God, I'm so glad you said that. Like, I was wondering how I was going to, like, where that was going to come up and how I was going to bring it up.

00:32:24:27 - 00:32:25:49
Speaker 1
But yeah, yes,

00:32:25:49 - 00:32:27:23
Speaker 1
I just I know what that

00:32:27:23 - 00:32:32:50
Speaker 1
like a lot of people listening probably know what heartbreak feels like. And it's clearly that when he felt heartbreak,

00:32:32:50 - 00:32:43:06
Speaker 1
it it brought brought him to ECT, you know.

00:32:43:06 - 00:32:45:23
Speaker 1
the emotional version of it. And he's the hardest girly,

00:32:45:48 - 00:32:46:28
Speaker 1
It sucks.

00:32:46:28 - 00:32:48:40
Speaker 1
can respect that I'm a headache really, myself.

00:32:48:40 - 00:32:54:28
Speaker 1
I am going to give you the last, though, bits, tidbits, I would even call it about Harriet Harlow Ball to give you an

00:32:56:04 - 00:32:57:48
Unknown
Terrible.

00:32:57:53 - 00:32:59:01
Speaker 1
That was good. That was very.

00:32:59:01 - 00:33:00:37
Speaker 3
Good.

00:33:00:37 - 00:33:02:11
Speaker 1
vibe checks to, to be completed here.

00:33:02:11 - 00:33:05:26
Speaker 1
when I'm telling you about his vibe, checking his aura, I'm actually defining,

00:33:05:26 - 00:33:07:08
Speaker 1
the consummate lack of Riz.

00:33:07:08 - 00:33:09:20
Speaker 1
It's a black hole where somebody raises. Should be,

00:33:09:20 - 00:33:14:45
Speaker 1
So let me give you it's just going to be a just a series of things that I think that we should know about him to better understand him.

00:33:14:58 - 00:33:15:44
Speaker 1
One

00:33:15:44 - 00:33:16:44
Speaker 1
is a quote.

00:33:16:44 - 00:33:24:35
Speaker 1
This is from him about the monkeys, which provided the basis for his life's work. He did this at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

00:33:27:35 - 00:33:29:32
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:33:29:32 - 00:33:34:40
Speaker 1
care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property that I can publish, he said,

00:33:34:40 - 00:33:35:33
Speaker 1
decline that, he said.

00:33:35:33 - 00:33:44:26
Speaker 1
Then I don't have any love for them, I never have. I don't really like animals, I despise cats, I hate dogs, how could you love monkeys and quote.

00:33:45:10 - 00:33:49:27
Speaker 1
Damn. That quote alone. At first, I was, I. I like to think I'm hoping,

00:33:49:27 - 00:34:01:22
Speaker 1
listeners think I gave him a fair shake up until this point. But now I just want to hit him. That quote alone.

00:34:01:27 - 00:34:11:54
Speaker 1
No. I'm swinging. You know, these hands are rated H for Harry fucking Harlow. Left hand is Harry, right hand is Harlow. Bitch.

00:34:11:54 - 00:34:13:16
Speaker 1
Like, come on,

00:34:13:47 - 00:34:14:32
Speaker 1
Well,

00:34:14:32 - 00:34:15:57
Speaker 1
I'm swinging.

00:34:15:57 - 00:34:21:39
Speaker 1
you should aim one of your. Well, never mind. I want to make a joke about his original name, but I don't know if any,

00:34:22:10 - 00:34:23:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. Let's.

00:34:23:28 - 00:34:27:53
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:34:27:58 - 00:34:30:18
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Absolutely free Palestine.

00:34:30:39 - 00:34:32:03
Speaker 1
So second thing is another quote.

00:34:32:03 - 00:34:39:30
Speaker 1
After he became the president of the, APA, the American Psychological Association in 1958, which, by the way, he was the president of the APA.

00:34:39:30 - 00:34:49:13
Speaker 1
He gave the speech called, quote, the nature of love and the quote. And he talked a lot about love for somebody that definitely didn't quite process it.

00:34:49:13 - 00:34:54:10
Speaker 1
And what is, I would say, like the boilerplate standard way that we are accustomed to,

00:34:54:10 - 00:34:55:21
Speaker 1
Basically,

00:34:55:21 - 00:35:03:07
Speaker 1
how do I put this? I'm actually not going to quote him all the way, because I don't even think it's really worth doing. I think it's more just like we'll paraphrase,

00:35:03:07 - 00:35:08:56
Speaker 1
he said that everything I do is about understanding love and to measure love and to get what it is.

00:35:08:56 - 00:35:17:14
Speaker 1
And what is the effect of such things, because he was a person that actually really believed in the idea that parents and children should be nurtured and loved.

00:35:17:20 - 00:35:18:51
Speaker 3
What the fuck?

00:35:18:51 - 00:35:19:16
Speaker 1
time.

00:35:19:16 - 00:35:20:40
Speaker 1
that was like his whole thing,

00:35:20:40 - 00:35:23:46
Speaker 1
This is like a eugenics thing or eugenics adjacent thing, in my opinion.

00:35:23:46 - 00:35:27:36
Speaker 1
Our way of thinking, he wanted to quantify it into

00:35:27:36 - 00:35:31:37
Speaker 1
what causes it? How can it be affected? He kind of started like this nature nurture thing,

00:35:31:56 - 00:35:32:33
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:35:32:33 - 00:35:35:15
Speaker 1
In many, in many respects. And I think

00:35:37:53 - 00:35:41:11
Speaker 1
he talked about things like the nature of love, and that's what he cared about.

00:35:41:11 - 00:35:43:26
Speaker 1
Just not toward animals. I guess.

00:35:43:26 - 00:35:53:46
Speaker 1
he gave the speech before he went on to develop devices that tested whether a baby would love a mother that had an unpleasant and mean behavior toward the baby, or even outright harmed it. We're not getting into it. And I want to bleach my brain,

00:35:53:46 - 00:35:57:26
Speaker 1
suffice it to say that he wanted to test if a baby would love a mom that abused it.

00:35:57:26 - 00:36:00:26
Speaker 1
And when I say, I mean like, yeah.

00:36:00:33 - 00:36:15:15
Speaker 1
I. I cannot find any where in my heart or mind to justify creating a test around this. Even if it is animals that are being tested. Almost especially,

00:36:15:15 - 00:36:26:30
Speaker 1
creating a test where anybody has to be harmed in order to move forward, is not necessarily the right way to set up a test.

00:36:26:35 - 00:36:29:58
Speaker 1
Okay. All right.

00:36:29:58 - 00:36:34:11
Speaker 1
And now I'm now I'm wondering a little bit of if he,

00:36:34:11 - 00:36:45:24
Speaker 1
how do I put this if maybe he just didn't feel it. And when he received it, he was obsessed with it, you know, which is why he was probably so in love with his wives.

00:36:45:24 - 00:36:50:35
Speaker 1
Yes. I think that's a very good I. To me, I find that to be compelling.

00:36:50:35 - 00:36:57:14
Speaker 1
for my personal assessments and I'm no expert again, but I just think he had a different way of processing it for sure.

00:36:57:14 - 00:36:57:30
Speaker 2


00:36:57:35 - 00:36:59:44
Speaker 1
And initially I was like, maybe he didn't process it,

00:36:59:44 - 00:37:06:43
Speaker 1
that's why I took that sociopath angle earlier. But as time has gone on, I actually think he really did. I think he's just one of those people that

00:37:06:43 - 00:37:11:28
Speaker 1
two things. One of them is that he process love and affection and connection to other,

00:37:11:28 - 00:37:12:32
Speaker 1
I think to people

00:37:12:32 - 00:37:13:15
Speaker 1
as

00:37:13:15 - 00:37:13:49
Speaker 1
that was

00:37:13:49 - 00:37:15:00
Speaker 1
what he could process.

00:37:15:00 - 00:37:24:53
Speaker 1
when his cup ran empty, he had nothing else really for it. When his cup ran full, he would, I guess, do Vincent van Gogh type gestures is the sense that I

00:37:26:10 - 00:37:26:45
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:37:26:45 - 00:37:27:00


00:37:27:00 - 00:37:29:33
Speaker 1
Hi, editor Jordan here

00:37:29:34 - 00:37:35:48
Speaker 1
we go. On and on and on for a minute.

00:37:35:49 - 00:37:38:23
Speaker 1
And I just wanted to spare you the

00:37:38:24 - 00:37:45:19
Speaker 1
unnecessary jokes. All right. I'm going to cut you back in, nephew.

00:37:45:20 - 00:37:45:35


00:37:45:35 - 00:38:03:56
Speaker 1
Just kidding. It's still me, editor Jordan. Not about the loving you thing. About the being gone. I'm still here. I'm still present. Wait until the end of the episode. There's a joke from that section that I left you. Love you.

00:38:03:57 - 00:38:04:12


00:38:04:12 - 00:38:05:39
Speaker 2
So that was to tidbit to.

00:38:05:39 - 00:38:06:27
Speaker 1
Nature of Love.

00:38:06:27 - 00:38:09:21
Speaker 1
he cares a lot about love. And like, I think his processing of it is on.

00:38:09:21 - 00:38:12:43
Speaker 1
Third is that he took the time to observe this quote

00:38:12:43 - 00:38:31:15
Speaker 1
women are threatening to displace men in the workplace, but there is good news. It is cheering that in the face of this trend, we can observe that the American male is physically endowed with all of the essential equipment to compete with the American female on equal terms in one essential activity, the rearing of infants end quote.

00:38:31:35 - 00:38:34:21
Speaker 1
I have many feelings.

00:38:34:36 - 00:38:47:56
Speaker 1
I disagree on a lot of these points made in this single. I think this is a single sentence. This is a single sentence? Yes, this is a single sentence. Quote. And I have multiple problems with it.

00:38:47:56 - 00:38:54:25
Speaker 1
I in my mind figured that we would have to talk about this. Like I was like we're going to spend a good amount of time unpacking this. This has to make it into the script. So.

00:38:54:39 - 00:39:04:27
Speaker 1
I just, first of all, endowed with all the essential equipment to compete with an American female in terms of rearing infants.

00:39:04:51 - 00:39:11:22
Speaker 1
Not frequently I don't I surprisingly, I think.

00:39:11:22 - 00:39:15:35
Speaker 1
can't breastfeed. I'm just, like, making fun of Harry Harlow. I just to be clear.

00:39:15:35 - 00:39:16:14
Speaker 1
Same.

00:39:16:14 - 00:39:21:43
Speaker 1
to gender ize it. First of all is a mistake. Yep.

00:39:21:43 - 00:39:26:46
Speaker 1
essential equipment. You can learn stuff. There's also nurture. You fucking bellend.

00:39:26:46 - 00:39:31:30
Speaker 1
It sounds like alpha male talk. Before alpha male talk was a thing.

00:39:31:30 - 00:39:34:46
Speaker 1
totally be in that situation. Like. And he's obviously brilliant.

00:39:34:46 - 00:39:43:25
Speaker 1
The quotes you've given are very well spoken. Well written. It's clear that he went through a lot through school. He he passed that aptitude tests.

00:39:43:25 - 00:39:45:33
Speaker 1
There's no doubt that he was brilliant

00:39:45:33 - 00:39:51:09
Speaker 1
we equate brilliance with good sometimes. Oh, if they're intelligent, they must be good. But that's not

00:39:51:09 - 00:39:53:49
Speaker 1
that is not the, the, the tie to make. Yeah.

00:39:53:49 - 00:39:57:18
Speaker 1
Oh, man. I love doing the show with you for the so many reasons. But this is one of them. Yeah,

00:39:57:18 - 00:39:59:32
Speaker 1
you put it into words. Right. Couldn't have. Yes I agree

00:39:59:32 - 00:40:05:38
Speaker 1
we have this connotation between I think being brilliant and being good sometimes maybe morally or ethically.

00:40:06:54 - 00:40:08:19
Speaker 1
But I just think it's gray

00:40:08:19 - 00:40:16:57
Speaker 1
he used some of that brilliance to advance the narrative. And do like, you know, some of the research did wind up having like, things that we can better understand as a result of them. So it's fucked up. Like,

00:40:16:57 - 00:40:20:21
Speaker 1
yes. I don't even know if that's good either. Like in some way, I kind of resent him

00:40:20:21 - 00:40:22:14
Speaker 3
You

00:40:22:14 - 00:40:25:48
Speaker 1
learn his name because he contributed to the body of research.

00:40:25:53 - 00:40:33:38
Speaker 1
But I certainly don't think he's got a good like, I wouldn't say he's good like his overall net impact is good. If you can be so reductive about somebody's life.

00:40:33:44 - 00:40:36:53
Speaker 1
I, I'm going to agree based on the topic alone,

00:40:36:53 - 00:40:53:41
Speaker 1
I still don't really understand where cloth mom where mom is going to come in, fully. But I do see this taking shape in a, in a very dark way. And unfortunately, brilliance is not always bestowed upon the benevolent right. It's not always bestowed upon the good.

00:40:53:41 - 00:41:01:36
Speaker 1
I think a lot of people, even in power in the United States right now, I think there's some brilliance within them. Unfortunately, and I resent them even more for it.

00:41:01:36 - 00:41:06:03
Speaker 1
The way that I. The way that I resent and worry about a worthy, dangerous adversary.

00:41:06:03 - 00:41:07:56
Speaker 1
Correct. Yeah, exactly.

00:41:07:56 - 00:41:15:50
Speaker 1
word. And I would not want out necessarily apply to most of the people or any of the people we just discussed in that context. But an adversary that is going to be formidable.

00:41:16:07 - 00:41:28:07
Speaker 1
Correct. Yeah. I think and it's simply just the amount of power. Right. President of the APA is is significant that is not an insignificant moment in life or anything. This is

00:41:28:07 - 00:41:29:10
Speaker 1
peak.

00:41:29:10 - 00:41:30:33
Speaker 1
that is a huge deal.

00:41:30:33 - 00:41:31:50
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:41:31:50 - 00:41:37:02
Speaker 1
again, like, this is the same guy and then we're going to get into the, cloth mom wire mom bit here.

00:41:37:02 - 00:41:37:25
Speaker 2
And

00:41:37:25 - 00:41:38:50
Speaker 1
Again content warning here.

00:41:38:50 - 00:41:41:53
Speaker 1
I'm just going to talk about some of the ways that he would talk about the.

00:41:41:57 - 00:41:42:14
Speaker 2
The.

00:41:42:14 - 00:41:47:52
Speaker 1
Monkeys that were his research subjects and some of the things that wound up happening with them in very, very vague terms.

00:41:47:52 - 00:41:49:13
Speaker 1
So content warning once again,

00:41:49:13 - 00:41:51:14
Speaker 1
so basically have.

00:41:51:14 - 00:42:05:40
Speaker 1
Harriet horrible would often say about his monkeys in a very deliberately provocative way to people because he knew that like, bothered people. I think he would say killed instead of terminated when they were damaged beyond all repair mentally.

00:42:05:40 - 00:42:07:01
Speaker 1
After his experiment,

00:42:07:01 - 00:42:14:54
Speaker 1
he named his negative stimulus, which is, quote, negative stimulus, unquote, monkey mom effigies. He called them like Iron Maiden's,

00:42:16:21 - 00:42:18:01
Speaker 1
What the fuck?

00:42:18:01 - 00:42:28:53
Speaker 1
facilitate monkey breeding was called the, again, trigger warning, quote, rape rack, end quote. And he insisted on using that name to his gratitude and pain. Multiple people can tell you that.

00:42:28:53 - 00:42:30:59
Speaker 1
that's like documented by a lot of people who worked with him.

00:42:31:38 - 00:42:34:01
Speaker 1
You want to dox his grave site real quick?

00:42:34:01 - 00:42:34:47
Speaker 2
don't worry.

00:42:34:47 - 00:42:36:32
Speaker 1
The data is already available in Tucson.

00:42:37:11 - 00:42:40:44
Speaker 1
Oh my God. Oh my God.

00:42:40:44 - 00:42:47:01
Speaker 1
dude. Like the way he talks. Or at least he's fucking sounds like it. And he rub shoulders with big fucking people that can, like, say, all of this stuff,

00:42:47:01 - 00:42:53:24
Speaker 1
he. One of his grad students was Abraham Maslow, who did the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, which I quote, like once per day.

00:42:53:32 - 00:43:05:29
Speaker 1
I literally have a photo of it on my phone, because my therapist tells me to refer to it every time I start to feel low, to see where I'm at. Yeah, and it works. It's true.

00:43:05:29 - 00:43:09:26
Speaker 1
could learn. That's the Maslow's hierarchy is how I like, learned to credit myself and

00:43:09:26 - 00:43:10:46
Speaker 1
learning to love myself

00:43:10:46 - 00:43:13:26
Speaker 1
Yeah, I got, like, this far up the pyramid to be having these problems.

00:43:13:26 - 00:43:16:33
Speaker 1
Like, it means I've done more than I give myself credit for it kind of thing.

00:43:16:49 - 00:43:27:06
Speaker 1
No, but fucking fucking Harriet got a goddamn. Probably grants to do this research if not funded it himself. Yeah.

00:43:27:06 - 00:43:29:14
Speaker 1
He's a big grant guy. APA is going to get to that to.

00:43:29:14 - 00:43:31:49
Speaker 1
He's saying, oh, yeah, in my in my

00:43:31:49 - 00:43:40:48
Speaker 1
fucking study. I have Iron Maiden's and rape racks. And somebody said, yeah, here's some money. Fuck that. Fuck all of that. First of all.

00:43:40:48 - 00:43:44:49
Speaker 1
of that is. The consequences of those things are indefinitely.

00:43:45:00 - 00:43:54:00
Speaker 1
I oh my God. Oh my god. Yeah. No he's. Yeah. On site in hell because I mean I'm on a fast track to it and he's already there

00:43:54:00 - 00:43:54:14
Speaker 2
there.

00:43:54:14 - 00:43:54:36
Speaker 1
We're throwing

00:43:54:36 - 00:43:55:43
Speaker 1
on site.

00:43:55:43 - 00:43:56:51
Speaker 1
I will say that I.

00:43:56:51 - 00:43:58:58
Speaker 1
He got some of his just desserts in life,

00:43:58:58 - 00:44:08:53
Speaker 1
because I think he learned a great deal about empathy for different people and creatures as a result of his own life suffering,

00:44:08:53 - 00:44:17:41
Speaker 1
especially because he went back, he stopped doing a lot of the research in his later life after the death of his first wife. Second. Well, sorry, his,

00:44:19:09 - 00:44:19:59
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:44:19:59 - 00:44:24:45
Speaker 1
he did alter some of his practices. Still not much still to a very frighteningly abusive degree.

00:44:25:03 - 00:44:27:18
Speaker 1
So now we've kind of gotten the cross section, though, of

00:44:27:18 - 00:44:31:34
Speaker 1
Harry Frederick Harlow, who is the guy who did cloth mom wire mom.

00:44:31:34 - 00:44:49:11
Speaker 1
we kind of talked about the study design. I'm just going to go through it in a short way, but I actually I'm much more interested in talking about his legacy. But the main thing here is that the study was done as I mentioned, there are the one that we cite, the cloth, mom, where moms are the ones where there's a cloth effigy of a monkey's mother and a wire effigy of a monkey's mother.

00:44:49:16 - 00:44:56:38
Speaker 1
And what they were able to what they did was that in one condition, the monkey. That the monkey mom, that was the wire frame,

00:44:56:38 - 00:45:02:56
Speaker 1
was, the one that had the food and the cloth. Mom had nothing except cloth and like, a modicum of comfort.

00:45:03:01 - 00:45:03:58
Speaker 2
It was the wire mom.

00:45:03:58 - 00:45:09:21
Speaker 1
Covered in, like diaper cloth or something like, it's not much, but the monkeys unanimously preferred

00:45:09:21 - 00:45:11:10
Speaker 1
cloth mom every time.

00:45:11:10 - 00:45:17:14
Speaker 1
even if there was no food, they would crawl over to the wire, mom to eat and then come back to the cloth. Mom

00:45:17:14 - 00:45:22:15
Speaker 1
they would also like only get up to the monkeys and only get upset if you took away the cloth from them.

00:45:22:15 - 00:45:25:36
Speaker 1
Anything else they did not care about, but that was the thing. They would get upset,

00:45:25:36 - 00:45:30:34
Speaker 1
because yeah, creatures love their moms and need to be. And parents in need to be

00:45:32:40 - 00:45:34:11
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:45:34:11 - 00:45:38:50
Speaker 1
known that himself. This is why I, like, ultimately opted to write this episode, and why I wanted to talk about it.

00:45:38:53 - 00:45:43:23
Speaker 1
Because this guy knew better than anybody. The one comment he fucking made in his autobiography was that,

00:45:43:23 - 00:45:50:47
Speaker 1
sorry, I'm ranting. Unrelated to the study, but like the one comment he made in his autobiography about his own parenting is that his mother was not warm to him.

00:45:51:53 - 00:45:53:31
Speaker 1
Shocking. Yeah.

00:45:53:31 - 00:45:58:40
Speaker 1
So you didn't know that you needed to do your life's work to fucking figure out, like, yeah, you're good in school or whatever.

00:45:58:40 - 00:46:00:57
Speaker 1
Yeah, I just like, I don't understand anyway,

00:46:00:57 - 00:46:11:56
Speaker 1
these are the conclusions. And then like afterward, they noted that even the monkeys that had the cloth moms like, because they weren't brought up by like actual like it gave insight into like animal captivity behavior and damage and stuff like that to actually,

00:46:11:56 - 00:46:15:33
Speaker 1
all the monkeys that were brought up, even the like relatively adjusted ones or whatever,

00:46:15:33 - 00:46:20:04
Speaker 1
they were like socially lacking compared to other rhesus monkeys in terms of their development.

00:46:20:04 - 00:46:21:48
Speaker 1
They had weird idiosyncrasies.

00:46:21:48 - 00:46:28:28
Speaker 1
I'm not using the word that they use the study authors and everything because they said they behaved artistically, which I think is unfair

00:46:29:48 - 00:46:32:58
Speaker 1
I also think it's just outdated use of that word, too.

00:46:33:03 - 00:46:33:21
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:46:33:33 - 00:46:33:45
Unknown
I'm

00:46:33:45 - 00:46:41:15
Speaker 1
there, but you'll find that in the material. And so I am taking what I think is relevant is that they were they had developmental, changes as a result of

00:46:41:39 - 00:46:43:23
Speaker 3
Okay.

00:46:43:23 - 00:46:44:11
Speaker 1
negative study group

00:46:44:11 - 00:46:47:19
Speaker 1
some of the other later studies, which were even more brutal,

00:46:47:19 - 00:46:49:23
Speaker 1
those could not really be rehabilitated at

00:46:50:00 - 00:46:51:03
Speaker 3
Really?

00:46:51:03 - 00:46:54:28
Speaker 1
And I sorry, I, they could not be rehabilitated at all. Full stop.

00:46:57:44 - 00:46:58:09
Speaker 1
or like,

00:46:58:09 - 00:46:59:27
Speaker 1
or like the monkeys in 28

00:46:59:57 - 00:47:01:03
Speaker 1
I.

00:47:03:47 - 00:47:22:46
Speaker 1
And this is the end of the cloth, mom wire, mom. Like, that's all I wanted to get into about it, because there's not really any point discussing it any further in terms of the the blood on Harriet Harlow's hands, Harriet Ellis, Harrison Harlow's hands is fucking. It's voluminous. It's liters, gallons, gallons upon gallons of monkey blood.

00:47:22:46 - 00:47:37:40
Speaker 1
And I just don't think it's worth getting into it. I think, more importantly, what I want to talk about is your thoughts on this now. And I kind of want to at some point after that, I want to talk to you and get your thoughts on like,

00:47:37:40 - 00:47:40:54
Speaker 1
I mean, we tried to talk about Maslow, but like, we use this

00:47:40:54 - 00:47:42:13
Speaker 1
the conclusions he

00:47:42:13 - 00:47:51:25
Speaker 1
came to and like the data points, it teaches us and has taught us and has informed the way that we see human relationships. And I don't know where to sit with that. So I am very interested in what your thoughts are

00:47:52:45 - 00:48:09:24
Speaker 1
There's a couple things. One. Fuck this guy. I just can eat all of the rotten dicks in the on the planet, and I'd be. I wouldn't even be happy. I. I'd be happy that he was doing it, but it would never be enough.

00:48:09:24 - 00:48:25:44
Speaker 1
Second of all, I think that the only use this man provided was to prove that babies and children do not need to learn hard lessons.

00:48:25:49 - 00:48:27:40
Speaker 1
They don't need to learn

00:48:27:40 - 00:48:48:23
Speaker 1
things abusively. They don't need to fit. They don't need to learn things through trauma, and that they should be cared for until they can start to handle what the real world has to offer. And hopefully we build a world generations from now. Probably that is more welcoming to that, because being born is trauma.

00:48:48:28 - 00:49:03:03
Speaker 1
Being born into this world is traumatic. And I think that all he proved is that everyone, regardless of age, is just seeking some sort of equilibrium and comfort or, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Or

00:49:03:03 - 00:49:08:06
Speaker 1
yeah, I don't see a, I don't see cloth mom versus wire mom like, oh, would you choose the food or would you choose comfort?

00:49:08:06 - 00:49:16:45
Speaker 1
Because I do think that we would all I would rather be comfortable than eating to be honest. To be very honest.

00:49:16:45 - 00:49:22:17
Speaker 1
mean, the way that my. You know, me. My relationship to, like, eating is, like, super. Yeah. Same here.

00:49:22:43 - 00:49:44:36
Speaker 1
I mean, I like eating, I ate just before this, but if I have to choose, if somebody says, these are your two paths, you get food always or you get comfort always. I'm gonna take comfort. I'll take the risk. I'll roll the dice on food. And if I if I starve to death because I chose comfort, then at least I was comfortable while I was dying.

00:49:44:36 - 00:49:53:30
Speaker 1
around the comfort and, like, around people that I feel safe and well around. Yeah, I choose that over food. I have chosen that over food many

00:49:54:29 - 00:50:05:49
Speaker 1
So, in fact, the fucker is actually relatively invaluable to us as a human, as a species, he was a waste of life, and it's a shame that he even existed in the first place to do this.

00:50:05:49 - 00:50:08:13
Speaker 1
them because I wasn't sure how this would go in,

00:50:08:13 - 00:50:10:35
Speaker 1
it was in Lawrence Slater's book, I believe.

00:50:10:57 - 00:50:17:11
Speaker 1
Herbert wound up developing Parkinson's. And much like the monkeys, determined that all of his life he died shaking and unable to,

00:50:17:11 - 00:50:19:01
Speaker 1
verbalize the things that he needed.

00:50:19:08 - 00:50:23:01
Speaker 1
Karma is a motherfucking bitch.

00:50:23:01 - 00:50:29:27
Speaker 1
in some way, which I don't wish that upon anybody. I have a personal family connection to Parkinson's in particular, but, you know, fuck this guy.

00:50:29:27 - 00:50:30:27
Speaker 1
do as well.

00:50:30:27 - 00:50:34:43
Speaker 1
I take it very personally, and I think he deserved worse. Yeah.

00:50:34:43 - 00:50:36:54
Speaker 2
having said that, having said that,

00:50:36:54 - 00:50:37:42
Speaker 1
Yeah,

00:50:37:42 - 00:50:42:07
Speaker 1
yeah. Holy shit. What an evil, evil person. Look

00:50:42:07 - 00:50:47:50
Speaker 1
he, like, woke up wanting to do it. He was evil through negligence and then very much through

00:50:47:50 - 00:50:51:10
Speaker 1
the stuff that manually the things that he was doing, I would say,

00:50:51:10 - 00:50:53:25
Speaker 1
I think that it's important that we know this

00:50:54:27 - 00:50:55:23
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:50:55:23 - 00:50:57:28
Speaker 1
we are not far away.

00:50:57:28 - 00:51:03:58
Speaker 1
I mean, this guy died in 81. Maslow. And all of these people are still many of these people. I mean, yeah, you know, Silicon Valley still fucking alive.

00:51:03:58 - 00:51:05:54
Speaker 1
these are the same fucking dudes who are

00:51:05:54 - 00:51:08:22
Speaker 1
worsening the climate change situation and

00:51:08:22 - 00:51:12:18
Speaker 1
making all of our lives worse in Silicon Valley and sometimes making them better as well.

00:51:12:23 - 00:51:16:49
Speaker 1
These are the same people who are eugenicists that influenced the important,

00:51:16:49 - 00:51:19:02
Speaker 1
psychologists and everything else like that.

00:51:19:02 - 00:51:23:11
Speaker 1
Well, I don't say everything else like that, but many other things, many other professions of that sort,

00:51:23:11 - 00:51:24:21
Speaker 1
because.

00:51:24:25 - 00:51:25:15
Speaker 2
They.

00:51:25:21 - 00:51:48:34
Speaker 1
Are just the same few people that land in these positions and start of failing upward. And if we don't talk about that, then we won't be able to do better. Like, yes, we got research and data out of these people in many, many, many respects. And yes, I hear the same libertarian person that I imagined up and right winger that I've imagined of in my head that I frequently address in the show that is saying like, but you would not have iPhone without those people.

00:51:48:34 - 00:51:53:27
Speaker 1
And I'm like, okay, yes. Like you can have again, like we can have both. You don't have to choose either or.

00:51:53:27 - 00:52:07:19
Speaker 1
And I think that we don't get any closer to that future if we don't examine this and understand what goes into research and what goes into making a fact effect, because it's easy to talk about cloth mom and wire mom and funny sometimes do like I.

00:52:07:23 - 00:52:10:31
Speaker 1
I am definitely myself. Like when it comes to being a pet parent,

00:52:10:31 - 00:52:16:16
Speaker 1
I am a cloth mom. Except for 1 or 2 things in which I have a hard wired mom, which is really funny to me.

00:52:16:29 - 00:52:24:29
Speaker 1
Again, like, I think it empowers your are you able ability to use the meme. And at some level, just because you could better understand it. But I just think if we don't

00:52:24:29 - 00:52:27:54
Speaker 1
do a better job to actually

00:52:27:54 - 00:52:34:02
Speaker 1
you know, talk about this and know it a little bit, we will not ever we'll just do the same thing again.

00:52:34:02 - 00:52:44:38
Speaker 1
And as like Le Burns as a result of climate change and other such things that are perpetuated by these same people, I also feel like, you know, fuck these people and they need to be getting some more bad press than they're getting.

00:52:44:38 - 00:52:53:57
Speaker 1
What I will say is, even if you disregard cloth mom versus wire mom, there are better studies that prove the same thing that he was trying to prove, I think. Or he doesn't even sound like he was trying to prove something.

00:52:53:58 - 00:53:05:54
Speaker 1
He even said that he just wanted something publishable. He wanted a property to publish. He was looking for a product out of living beings. And that's. And.

00:53:05:54 - 00:53:07:56
Speaker 1
to kind of bring it around,

00:53:07:56 - 00:53:19:22
Speaker 1
if you don't know history and I mean the history of everything of the sciences, we look at of the pop culture, we look at, of the civilizations before us,

00:53:19:22 - 00:53:20:41
Speaker 2
can't read.

00:53:20:41 - 00:53:28:12
Speaker 1
I mean, well, that I'm sorry, man, I guess, that's it, because you're never going to learn from it, and therefore we are doomed to repeat it.

00:53:28:16 - 00:53:49:01
Speaker 1
And that that's on you now. That's all on you. You put that on you. Hey, man, I'll teach you how to read. I'll teach you how to read. You know, I, I got your back. Excellent. $1,700 is the starter fee.

00:53:49:01 - 00:54:13:04
Speaker 1
It's just another story of a man trying to feed his ego and repair his broken masculinity. Not fragile. It's broken at that point when you have to do this shit to feel successful or human. This is a monster. You've told me a story about a monster, and I don't know how else to put it.

00:54:13:04 - 00:54:16:49
Speaker 1
expecting that to be,

00:54:16:49 - 00:54:17:59
Speaker 1
quite this horrifying.

00:54:18:01 - 00:54:19:17
Speaker 2
And.

00:54:19:22 - 00:54:24:21
Speaker 1
Just to give you guys, listeners, listener background on the subject,

00:54:24:21 - 00:54:25:31
Speaker 1
we almost didn't run this episode

00:54:28:06 - 00:54:30:40
Speaker 1
I kept coming to coming back to be

00:54:30:40 - 00:54:37:56
Speaker 1
to being pretty horrified by it. But I wanted to I think it was important to talk about, because if we are too horrified to talk about it, then nobody will ever know.

00:54:37:56 - 00:54:39:36
Speaker 1
And we all need to know. We all

00:54:40:07 - 00:54:40:48
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:54:40:48 - 00:54:49:20
Speaker 1
I traumatized myself, so you all must learn. And believe me, I did not even get remotely close to getting into all of the nightmarish garbage

00:54:49:20 - 00:54:53:27
Speaker 1
that was done to monkeys as a result of this. Yeah. I wish I could bleach my brain.

00:54:53:27 - 00:55:15:02
Speaker 1
and I, I'm sorry that you did. Because you did not share that stuff with me. I do not want that stuff shared with me. So thank you I appreciate that. So thank you for you know, going through that to bring at least this information to us because even with because I don't think I would have made it to the end of the episode had I heard specific horror stories about what happened to these monkeys, like, I think I would have probably lost it.

00:55:15:02 - 00:55:16:45
Speaker 1
I'm going to be honest.

00:55:16:45 - 00:55:20:11
Speaker 1
like a week and a half to get started doing this, like. And I was, like,

00:55:20:11 - 00:55:24:53
Speaker 1
I was like, man, where am I going to do the bit other than the left basically being like, haha, you died.

00:55:25:10 - 00:55:30:18
Speaker 1
Which is, you know, the, the, the best thing he did in his life, was die.

00:55:30:18 - 00:55:36:46
Speaker 1
Kindest thing he did for any, any living mammal or for the world was just fucking finally kicking the fucking bucket

00:55:37:10 - 00:55:40:57
Speaker 1
you know, what should really, really bring some sort of inspiration to people,

00:55:40:57 - 00:55:46:03
Speaker 1
that are especially part of the, quote, male loneliness epidemic, unquote,

00:55:46:03 - 00:55:51:03
Speaker 1
is that this man found somebody to love him twice,

00:55:51:03 - 00:55:57:18
Speaker 1
God, I don't even know. I don't even know how to even end this episode, bro, I don't even I'm I'm so frazzled.

00:55:57:18 - 00:55:59:54
Speaker 1
Remember I told you earlier about metal? Was

00:56:00:44 - 00:56:01:44
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:56:01:50 - 00:56:03:00
Speaker 2
let's talk about.

00:56:03:00 - 00:56:04:11
Speaker 1
That story, because

00:56:04:26 - 00:56:05:37
Speaker 1
Please.

00:56:05:37 - 00:56:13:52
Speaker 1
positivity. And we can at least. And I don't know if any person from Iowa is even, like, exists because the one person I know who lived there, the two people I knew who lived there, are now not

00:56:14:16 - 00:56:29:09
Speaker 1
I don't think it's real. I think it's a gap in the simulation. But we're not ready for that conversation yet. Don't entertain me. Don't entertain me. Don't you dare.

00:56:29:09 - 00:56:35:21
Speaker 1
actually seen anybody there? In fact, sound off in whatever media that you've got. If you are or can prove

00:56:38:16 - 00:56:39:00
Speaker 1


00:56:39:00 - 00:56:42:33
Speaker 1
can prove that the two Dakotas aren't just more Minnesota.

00:56:42:33 - 00:56:45:49
Speaker 2
If you can do any of those things, if you can.

00:56:45:54 - 00:56:49:47
Speaker 1
Say that, like, yeah, I can confirm that Arkansas exists and that,

00:56:49:47 - 00:57:01:31
Speaker 1
great. Do that. And actually, if you can find the person or explain to me in a way that makes sense why Arkansas is pronounced as that, then like, yeah, I abdicate. You take take what you want.

00:57:01:32 - 00:57:02:46
Speaker 2
Take what you already want out of my

00:57:06:22 - 00:57:21:17
Speaker 1
just in case that that's all on the off chance that Iowa is real, I want to give them a little bit of credit because they were. Fairfield, Iowa was the birthplace of, he was a hero of the American Civil War. Union.

00:57:22:12 - 00:57:23:49
Speaker 3
A.

00:57:24:25 - 00:57:31:42
Speaker 1
One of us, she was something between at the time. Like a physician, a nurse, and, like, a patient care technician and, like, a combat medic.

00:57:31:42 - 00:57:39:14
Speaker 1
So she actually, And for her work, in the for the union, she was actually commissioned as a major by the governor

00:57:39:38 - 00:57:41:04
Speaker 1
Oh.

00:57:41:04 - 00:57:43:18
Speaker 1
She was a straight up fucking badass.

00:57:43:18 - 00:57:47:34
Speaker 1
And before her, her father served on the correct side of the Revolutionary War.

00:57:47:34 - 00:57:56:42
Speaker 1
And also, one of her relatives fought for the United States in the War of 1812, which is, like, complicated. And there's I don't think there's like a particularly good, like, right side there. And it's not worth getting into that right now,

00:57:56:42 - 00:57:59:28
Speaker 1
she was a badass and she took it to another level and like,

00:57:59:28 - 00:58:00:28
Speaker 1
saved lives.

00:58:00:28 - 00:58:03:14
Speaker 1
when she got blood on her hands, it was because she was keeping more from spilling

00:58:03:41 - 00:58:05:34
Speaker 1
So what?

00:58:05:34 - 00:58:06:26
Speaker 1
quite literally.

00:58:06:26 - 00:58:08:48
Speaker 1
thank you, Fairfield, Iowa, for

00:58:08:48 - 00:58:11:23
Speaker 1
Hell, yeah. Yeah. That.

00:58:11:23 - 00:58:13:41
Speaker 1
that's that's all you you can have that one.

00:58:13:41 - 00:58:17:10
Speaker 1
And look, she didn't have to harm animals to get there either.

00:58:17:10 - 00:58:17:52
Speaker 1
fact, she kept

00:58:17:52 - 00:58:19:06
Speaker 1
monkeys and their descendants

00:58:19:06 - 00:58:21:26
Speaker 1
descendant monkeys, depending on what your position is,

00:58:21:26 - 00:58:22:41
Speaker 1
how you do nomenclature.

00:58:22:41 - 00:58:26:08
Speaker 1
she kept more monkeys from bleeding out and having a horrifying impact,

00:58:26:08 - 00:58:29:07
Speaker 1
spent her life peacefully just living after that.

00:58:29:07 - 00:58:32:43
Speaker 1
That is a brilliance of its own kind. Truly.

00:58:32:49 - 00:58:49:57
Speaker 1
So there is, I think, a good place to end it because a genuine I honestly had like an entire subset that I was going to talk about this, but I was like, you know what? I'm not sure we'll see. But I'm glad we got to talk about her more. And it was a genuine like the spirit

00:58:50:29 - 00:58:51:01
Speaker 1
It was.

00:58:51:01 - 00:58:53:10
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:58:53:10 - 00:58:53:18
Speaker 2
was.

00:58:53:18 - 00:58:57:40
Speaker 1
Like I'm like, oh, well, anyway, here's a story about a Civil War hero who's loosely related by being from the

00:58:58:04 - 00:59:00:25
Speaker 1
And honestly, it just felt like fresh air. So,

00:59:00:25 - 00:59:11:19
Speaker 1
thank you guys for being distracted with us. And we will see you when we see you.

00:59:11:24 - 00:59:12:56
Speaker 1
I'm not.

00:59:13:08 - 00:59:23:11
Unknown
¡Oh! ¡Oh!

00:59:23:11 - 00:59:23:35


00:59:23:55 - 00:59:46:56
Speaker 1
It's sounding. No, it's sounding sociopathic. You start abusing animals. You have no conscience. You have no moral standing, in my opinion. Like the second you start abusing them as the second that I. It's the second I start swinging, man. You know? And now it's rated for everyone.

00:59:47:01 - 00:59:53:56
Speaker 1
You should be. I'm mad that I made the joke, but, you know, like.