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1:10

right, it's no um, this is unexplainable, but we're

1:13

gonna do something a little different this week. A

1:15

few months ago, we did an episode of our

1:18

game show with Pablo Torre as the guest. Damn,

1:20

I knew this whole episode was about my mom.

1:23

It always ends up being about my mom.

1:25

Damn it. That's Pablo, and we

1:27

loved having him on the show so much that we

1:29

wanted to share an episode of his show this week.

1:31

The show is called Pablo Torre Finds Out,

1:34

and it's one of my favorite podcasts. Bird's

1:37

also a huge fan too. It's

1:39

ostensibly a sports show, but

1:41

Pablo really just finds out

1:43

about everything. Culture, data fraud,

1:45

international politics, and on

1:47

the episode we're gonna share this week, wolf

1:50

science. It's all about this

1:52

idea you're probably familiar with, the alpha. You

1:54

hear it all the time in politics and

1:56

business and sports, and Pablo says

1:58

it comes from one book

2:00

written by a wolf biologist named L. David

2:02

Meach in 1970. But there's a big problem.

2:07

Here's Pablo Torre finds out. This

2:11

book, okay, the most influential, most

2:13

cited part though, is

2:15

the part that establishes the

2:17

idea of the alpha wolf. This

2:20

is where it comes from. This tome,

2:22

this thing that spread out across America

2:24

and the world to inform what it

2:26

means to be dominant, to be masculine,

2:29

to be the alpha male. And

2:31

the issue with

2:33

this book and its research is

2:36

that that part is

2:39

wrong. It's wrong? It is

2:41

completely wrong according to the

2:44

guy who wrote the book

2:46

himself. Huh. And the problem

2:48

has been for decades

2:50

now that nobody

2:52

will listen to him. Oh, so

2:55

you're gonna listen to him? Well, I'm going

2:57

to listen to the guy we sent to

2:59

listen to him. Who did you send to

3:01

listen to him? The resident alpha in

3:03

our office. So you sent me? That

3:06

doesn't make sense though. I would have known

3:08

about this. As much as your polo shirt

3:10

suggests that you are both an

3:13

alpha and also the manager of the

3:15

worst radio shack in America, there

3:19

is someone- Stop laughing, dude. You didn't move

3:21

your alpha. It's in you. He's waiting on

3:23

the other side of the soundproof glass. Very

3:25

good. Bradley

3:42

Campbell, thank you for taking

3:44

on this assignment and drinking,

3:47

which you just confessed off-microphone,

3:49

to be dandelion to. Thanks,

3:52

Babo. No, I appreciate the embrace. Yeah,

3:54

yes. You're a valued part of the

3:56

Metalarc Media community. You

3:58

are many things. what

4:01

you are not known as by the

4:03

various people on the other side of this glass here is

4:05

an alpha. No.

4:08

No. I keep my past hidden. That's right.

4:11

That's right. I don't know if they appreciate

4:13

what I'm about to show the people

4:15

watching on YouTube and the DraftKings Network

4:17

because you now Bradley Campbell are like

4:20

short-sleeved button-down podcast guy. You're a narrative

4:22

podcast producer. Yeah. I'm the reporter. Yeah.

4:24

Yeah. Yeah. I'm the guy at the

4:27

coffee shop ordering a pour-over. Absolutely. Yeah.

4:29

Before though, you were

4:31

this. And

4:35

I just need to stress that

4:37

your hair is shorter. Your

4:39

quads are Godzilla

4:41

size. There's so

4:44

much alpha in you, Bradley. Like how old

4:46

are you in this photograph? I mean, I'm

4:48

18. Where

4:50

are you because you're wearing a tank top

4:52

and the shortest shorts showing off those quadzillas

4:54

and you look like you're a part of

4:56

the super soldier program. Oh yeah.

4:59

That's like 180 pounds of Trump

5:01

rally. Looking at

5:03

that photo. But now I'm

5:05

at the Dallas high school track. I'm running the anchor

5:07

of the four by 100. Veins pulsating. How does one

5:09

look like that? I mean, well,

5:14

that was, it was hay bucking

5:16

season. So like after I was

5:18

done with tracking the meat, we go over

5:20

to a Mr. Hatfield, late Mr. Hatfield, like

5:22

one of his farms. Because you're from rural

5:25

Oregon. So super rural Oregon, Dallas.

5:27

Yeah. And just like Texas, bigger the buckle,

5:29

the closer to God sort of place. To

5:32

pick up extra money, we'd buck hay. So we

5:34

just roll around in field, buck

5:36

hay, toss it up on the back of

5:38

a trailer and do that, I don't know,

5:40

two, three hours after all of our workouts.

5:43

But yeah, you just, you get gagged. Yeah,

5:45

gagged is absolutely what is next

5:47

to this photo in the dictionary, right

5:50

next to another term, which we conscripted

5:52

you to investigate because you

5:54

hay, hay, bucker,

5:57

former high school track.

6:00

quarterback, all of these things. We

6:02

sent you back out into nature,

6:04

into rural America, to investigate

6:08

how it is that we all became

6:10

obsessed with the idea of the Alpha.

6:14

Yeah, you guys sent me out to

6:16

the Great State of Minnesota, out to

6:18

St. Paul campus at the University

6:20

of Minnesota. That's where

6:23

I met, I remain in character

6:25

for the story, Alpha Dave. My

6:28

name is Dave Neach. I'm

6:30

a senior research scientist for

6:32

the US Geological Survey and

6:35

I've been a wolf biologist since

6:37

1958. He's

6:41

amazing. He's 87 years old.

6:43

You wouldn't know it though, super

6:45

sprightly. He walked up to, not walked up,

6:47

he bounded up to the second floor into

6:49

his office, pushing desks and tables around to

6:52

like get our shoot going. How

6:55

is it that this 87 year

6:57

old man became the

7:00

forefather of

7:02

the Alpha wolf? Man,

7:04

he is the preeminent wolf biologist

7:06

and it goes all the way

7:08

back to 1958. He was

7:10

a PhD student at Purdue

7:12

University and he was tasked

7:15

with going to an island called Isle

7:17

Royale. It's an

7:19

island in Lake Superior and he

7:22

was there to track timber wolves

7:24

as part of a research study

7:26

for his PhDs last dissertation. But

7:30

he had the right, you know, kind of resume

7:32

for it because he could guard Carl

7:36

at the new towns. I

7:40

don't know if he, I wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't put

7:42

it past him. But no, no, no.

7:44

I think the biggest reason is because one, he had

7:46

the brain for it. He went to Cornell University, people's

7:48

Ivy. That's right, they have an ag school.

7:51

They do. Is it the only one I think? With

7:53

the ag school? Yeah, yeah, yeah. God bless Cornell. I

7:55

mean we're not, we're not, we're not having an ag

7:57

school over at Harvard University, Bradley. Come

7:59

on. Not fucking hey over there.

8:02

So anyway get the brain

8:04

but even more importantly for this is that he

8:06

had experienced beforehand

8:10

trapping bears Trapping

8:14

bears. Yeah, so he would go out

8:16

into the woods Had a

8:18

whole method for how to stock

8:20

bears in order to tag them

8:22

And this is this is before the era of

8:24

dart pistols and dart rifles. So how is this

8:27

man? Yes,

8:29

wrangling a bear before the advent of all

8:31

the technologies that I would assume one would

8:33

use to trap a bear You've seen Looney

8:35

Tunes, right? Of course, you know like the

8:37

old-school traps we would

8:40

you know bait them and set them out

8:42

in the woods along old forest roads and

8:46

When a bear got caught in one of those Then

8:49

we had to Subdue the

8:51

bear drug it and put your tags on

8:53

it. His team would

8:56

jump out wrestle the bear

8:58

grab the bear's feet Essentially

9:00

to spread Eagle the thing ridiculous and

9:02

then get up close and then knock

9:05

the bear out with drugs by hand

9:07

a bespoke bear

9:11

So I I do want

9:13

to point out that this Dave

9:16

Meach character the scientist who

9:19

is the preeminent wolf researcher and

9:22

apparently an expert bear trapper Himself

9:25

major alpha energy so far Oh

9:27

huge huge back in the day

9:30

Which made him the perfect PhD

9:32

candidate to set loose on an

9:34

island to track down Timber wolves

9:37

which are for people who only know the timber wolves

9:40

through like, I don't know NBA

9:42

no, I've seen three point guards before

9:44

step three They're

9:47

a lot scarier than that. Yeah, Johnny

9:49

Flynn's like jump shot So

9:54

anyway, um, our

9:56

royal is this undisturbed

9:58

place that had a

10:00

pack of timber wolves that one day came

10:02

over on an ice bridge they believe to

10:04

inhabit the island and hunt moose.

10:07

Wow. So he is

10:09

there to research these wolves. This is

10:11

like him in a

10:14

sense finding his calling. Oh my gosh he's

10:16

he's in seventh heaven. He

10:19

would didn't like mound around the island pretending to

10:21

be a wolf. Like

10:24

packing stuff. He would pack food, pack

10:26

around, and then go as far as

10:28

he could, set up camp, try and

10:30

track wolves the whole summer.

10:33

So I'm imagining this badass who in order

10:35

to study the wolf

10:37

must become himself the wolf. Oh

10:39

yeah. But the biggest difference between

10:43

trying to wrangle a bear and trying to

10:45

wrangle a timber wolf would be what? You

10:48

can't find timber wolves. So he spent the

10:50

entire first summer there tracking these timber

10:52

wolves but it was kind of like tracking ghosts. But

10:55

ghosts who leave behind. So

10:57

all he did that entire first summer was

11:00

just run around, track wolf scat,

11:02

collect it, and then study it to see kind

11:04

of what they ate, what their diet was to

11:06

guess. But all he wanted to do was

11:09

find a wolf and so

11:11

he got the idea in the wintertime to

11:14

hire a pilot and get up in a Cessna

11:16

and track him in the sky. His

11:18

name was Don Murray and he was an old

11:21

bush pilot that actually

11:23

had been hunting wolves as

11:26

part of what he did. So it

11:28

was handy to have him around and because

11:30

he knew quite a bit about wolves and

11:32

all. So the

11:34

pilot was a wolf

11:36

hunter in a literal sense. Yeah dude.

11:40

So this is so scientist

11:42

plus man who's trying to generally

11:44

kill the thing that he is

11:47

studying. They form this

11:49

duo that travels around looking for

11:51

their targets. Yeah it was almost like

11:53

a bad buddy cop movie. But the pilot was

11:55

really good because if you are hunting wolves from

11:57

the sky, which I learned, you need a pilot

12:00

that can fly really really steady so

12:03

that when you aim your rifle or shotgun

12:05

out the window and shoot them from the

12:07

sky there's a good chance that you can

12:09

hit your target but

12:11

it's it's just funny moment where it flipped from

12:14

you know here's this pilot going out there flying

12:17

trying to track down wolves and all

12:19

of a sudden here's the researcher just

12:21

sitting there and just kind of looking

12:23

out taking notes so yeah you could

12:25

imagine what the pilot was thinking too

12:27

but I think they ended up forming

12:29

a pretty good bond until Dave asked

12:32

him to do something where the pilot was like dude

12:36

no what did Dave

12:38

want him to do well they're up in

12:40

the plane one time and they saw a

12:42

moose kill so pocket wolves had

12:44

just taken down a moose and

12:47

Dave was like oh I really want to get close to everyone want

12:49

to study this thing the pilot was skeptical

12:52

about letting me get down

12:54

on the ground with the wolves you

12:57

know at that time wolves were considered pretty

12:59

dangerous to people in fact

13:01

I had the Park Service made me

13:03

carry us a small revolver just

13:07

in her gun just

13:09

in case I got into some trouble

13:11

with wolves this is a good reminder

13:14

even the guy the badass hunter of

13:16

wolves he's like you need to remember

13:18

what a wolf is yes and

13:20

at that time these were thought of

13:22

as just these pure killing machines right

13:25

I mean I grew up I mean we

13:27

all grew up yeah fairy tales right about

13:29

the big bad wolf and the wolf was

13:31

always a villain and blowing down pigs houses

13:34

and dressing up as a grandma eating kids

13:36

like this is rooted in all of the

13:38

fear all of this fear generally they were

13:40

considered creatures that we shouldn't have around and

13:42

that should be wiped out in fact Isle

13:44

Royale was one of the very few places

13:46

that they survived on at that time most

13:49

places they had been wiped out of the

13:51

country but eventually the pilot

13:53

relented and then landed the

13:55

bush plane and they devised kind of

13:57

a plan to if the wolves

14:00

were to attack him, the pilot would

14:02

dive out of the sky and try

14:04

to scare him. I don't want a

14:07

Monday morning quarterback, someone's wolf survival attack

14:09

strategy, but that seems like a

14:11

terrible idea. Yeah, I don't know if it was the

14:13

best or most thought out plan, but

14:15

it's the plan they went with. And so Dave's out

14:17

there on the ice, walking toward

14:19

this moose kill and he gets

14:21

closer and closer and it is just, it's

14:24

gore everywhere.

14:26

I think like Tarantino setting, like it's that level.

14:28

A lot of blood in a moose. Oh yeah,

14:30

and it's just, it snows everywhere. So

14:33

he's got blood on snow, which even if you've had a bloody

14:35

nose in the snow, it just looks like a massacre. Well,

14:38

I might be a little bit hesitant around blood,

14:41

like these biologists kind of used to it. So

14:43

he just went there and then just started examining

14:45

the kill. Suddenly

14:47

the plane started coming in low and kind

14:50

of diving the trees a little bit. And

14:52

I thought, maybe the wolves are

14:55

coming back. And I looked up and

14:57

here were two wolves charging towards me, maybe

15:01

a hundred, 150 feet away or so. Then

15:05

I realized that maybe I was in a little

15:07

trouble. And I wondered, should I

15:09

film these wolves coming towards me or should

15:12

I grab the pistol? This

15:17

is when I'm yelling at the screen during the horror movie.

15:19

Dave, there's an obvious choice here.

15:22

F*** the science. Pull

15:25

the gun. What are you doing? Yeah, the

15:27

guy was scared. I mean, the wolves, like we said, they were

15:29

thought of as killing machines. And

15:32

he's sitting there with these two options and it's just

15:34

going through his head. Are these killing machines or are

15:36

these something else? I

15:38

decided to grab the pistol. I

15:41

had the camera in one hand and I grabbed

15:43

my pistol. And as I pulled it out, the

15:46

wolves saw me move and that startled

15:49

them and they stopped,

15:52

turned around and ran away. And

15:54

then I felt kind of foolish because

15:56

actually they were afraid of me. And

16:00

that was the last time that he ever packed

16:02

a gun. He actually thought that it would

16:04

be more dangerous just to have a gun on him

16:06

as he was hiking throughout the island than to just

16:09

walk around in the wild with Tim rolls

16:11

around him. So Dave, his eyes are open

16:13

for the first time. Yeah. Actually,

16:16

these nightmare

16:19

creatures. Right. Are more

16:21

complicated than it might actually seem.

16:23

Yeah, definitely. And also in that moment, he realized that

16:25

he made a mistake. He's

16:27

a scientist. Yeah. So

16:30

he regretted the instinct to

16:32

be a hunter. I

16:34

think in that moment, he realized

16:37

that he made a mistake. And Dave's the

16:39

guy that owns up to his mistakes

16:42

and is like, it's okay if you correct him,

16:44

it'll be all right. But later on, he would

16:47

understand that there are some mistakes that no matter

16:49

how hard you try, you can't

16:51

correct. Right. Right. And

16:54

so Dave meets this true believer, this man

16:56

who has his eyes open now for the

16:58

first time really to what wolves might

17:00

really be. He's confronting

17:03

this mistake that brings us

17:06

directly to this book that's been sitting on

17:08

this desk. So this

17:10

book titled again, The Wolf, originally

17:13

published 1970, this Bradley is the text that

17:17

Dave Meach brought down from this mountain top.

17:21

And it was where and how the alpha

17:23

wolf concept took off. Like this is where

17:25

we trace it to. Yeah,

17:27

yeah. Research. Totally. I

17:30

mean, even at the start of the

17:32

recent national championship game between Michigan and

17:34

University of Washington, yeah,

17:37

they were talking about how Jim Harbaugh

17:39

likes to play videos of predators

17:42

hunting to his team to

17:44

get them fired up. And he says the most like

17:46

lethal set of predators are a

17:48

pack of wolves hunting. The perfect fighting unit

17:51

to me is a pack of wolves, wolf

17:54

pack. And you see them,

17:56

see them gathered together. Before

17:59

the fight. You see

18:01

him together going to the fight.

18:04

You see him together in the fight.

18:08

You see him celebrating after

18:11

the fight. Right. It's

18:13

just like, nah. A descendant though

18:15

of this book. Like that is

18:17

the through line, right? Yeah,

18:19

or people that never read the book. So

18:22

what does the book actually say? Well,

18:24

the big thing in the book is

18:26

that Dave wanted to write things that

18:28

were right. What he had

18:31

to do was he had to review all the other literature about wolves

18:33

that was out there. The famous one

18:35

was out by a German behaviorist named

18:37

Rudolf Schoenkel. And this

18:39

guy had studied wolves in captivity. And

18:42

he was really interested in this thing

18:44

called pack dynamics. But

18:47

to make his pack to

18:49

study in captivity then, Schoenkel

18:51

just grabbed a bunch of wolves

18:54

from different zoos and threw them

18:56

all together into an enclosure and

18:58

considered that a wolf pack. The

19:00

idea was that all the wolves were together and

19:03

just thrown together in some random group.

19:05

And then there would be a fight,

19:07

a competition, a battle in order to

19:09

get to that top spot. And once

19:11

they reached that top spot through aggression,

19:13

through dominance, through just pure- Ass

19:16

kicking. Yeah, ass kicking. Hey

19:18

bucking. They

19:21

would be called the Alpha. And so

19:23

Dave looked at this previous research and

19:25

realized that it actually matched up to

19:27

what he witnessed on Isle Royale. There

19:29

was always one dog that was the

19:31

lead dog and subordinates behind it.

19:33

So he was like, oh, okay, it must just

19:35

be the Alpha. This is just kind of how

19:38

things work. The Alpha dominates the others completely. They

19:40

started in captivity in Germany with the study. And

19:42

now Dave is seeing this on Isle Royale. Actually

19:44

the quote, in competitive

19:46

situations dominance takes the form

19:48

of privilege to dominant animals

19:50

showing the initiative and claiming

19:52

whatever is desired. There it

19:54

is. Yeah. I

19:57

can imagine. So this book comes out again 1970. Yeah. way

20:00

that so many finance bros

20:03

must have felt so justified

20:06

in this description of my

20:09

privilege comes from my

20:11

dominance. Oh yeah. And

20:13

you can imagine finance bros love it too because like

20:15

the alpha wolf actually walks with this tail up so

20:17

other wolves can sniff its ass. Oh yeah. Yeah.

20:21

Yeah. Oh,

20:23

Wall Street loves that. Oh, they

20:25

love that stuff. They love that

20:27

stuff. By the way, so too broadly

20:29

did like America did people in the

20:32

in the marketplace for bucks. Like

20:34

this thing took off. It did. It did.

20:37

I think this one's like the fifth printing. This one I think is from 1987. Yeah.

20:41

Printing number five, which means that it

20:43

gets bought and sold over and over

20:45

and over and over again across the

20:47

world and all sorts of schools everywhere.

20:50

Even in small town, Dallas, Oregon, that

20:52

little rural town that I come from

20:54

fourth grade, we were learning all about

20:56

wolves and a lot of it came

20:58

from that book. No, it's an actual

21:00

sensation that informs and influences scientific

21:02

thinking trickles down all the way to

21:05

little Bradley Campbell. Yeah. Can't

21:07

wait to get those muscles pumping in honor of

21:09

the alpha wolf. Firewood isn't going to split itself.

21:13

And it cements every instinct

21:15

I suppose we have about, oh, this villain

21:17

in all of these fairy tales, the big

21:19

bad wolf. Yeah, it was essentially true squatter

21:21

the whole thing. But within this

21:24

book, while most of

21:26

it is correct, there was one

21:28

major problem, this massive

21:30

error about alphas. And

21:33

it's one that took Dave about 30 years to fix. Apple

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APY can change at any time. years

24:00

for Dave brings us to about 1999. Yeah,

24:03

height of total request life. America

24:05

at its peak. And we have Dave

24:08

Meach, the number one wolf researcher in the

24:10

entire world. The man who

24:12

has at least five printings of his super

24:15

influential tome, the wolf that establishes

24:17

and teaches America that the alpha

24:20

wolf is a real thing that

24:22

these are dominant animals claiming what's

24:24

desired. That's the quote.

24:28

And then he realizes that he has something

24:30

up about this seminal research.

24:33

Yeah, and it just starts eating away

24:35

at him. I

24:37

began to realize that rather

24:40

than strange wolves coming together and fighting

24:42

and be one becomes the alpha and

24:44

all that, it's not the way it

24:46

works. I'm imagining Dave

24:48

Meach like in the shower one day this true believer

24:50

scientist who still is like stressed out about whether he

24:52

should have pulled that gun on that wolf that was

24:54

about to kill him. That guy's like, I

24:58

made a huge tiny

25:00

mistake. A nightmare,

25:02

a nightmare for Dave Meach. So

25:05

there's no fighting or great competition

25:07

to become the top

25:10

member of that group, the

25:12

dominant one, but rather it just

25:14

happens naturally. And therefore

25:16

the term alpha does

25:18

not really apply because the term

25:21

alpha implies that there was a

25:23

fight, a battle, a challenge, a

25:25

competition to get to the top.

25:28

And with wolves, that's not what happens. It's

25:30

just a matter of just like humans, a

25:33

male and female mating and having

25:35

offspring. Oh

25:39

God, it just hits him again and again. And

25:41

he continues to do research and continues to bolster

25:43

this fact. And

25:46

then he just realized it's not just

25:48

a bunch of random wolves coming together, but it's

25:50

just a family. That's

25:52

it. It's a family. And honestly, he said

25:54

it relates a lot to a human family

25:56

where it's like they raise their kids, then

25:58

their kids grow up. Then they go off and

26:01

they find a mate and they make families of their own.

26:04

They come together, a male and female, and

26:07

as they reproduce, they

26:10

automatically become the dominant members of

26:12

the pack. Just like a

26:14

human male and female, a mother and

26:16

father become dominant to their offspring. There's

26:19

no battling. There's no battling.

26:23

The mom and dad, that's an alpha

26:26

parents. This is for

26:28

so many people for whom

26:31

the alpha male was a way

26:33

to either get back

26:35

at or become their dad. This

26:39

is a cruel bit of scientific poetry.

26:41

Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, it is.

26:44

So just to be very clear here for our listeners,

26:46

because we're establishing something that is staggering

26:50

and radical. The

26:52

alpha wolf. Yes. Is

26:54

what? Horse.

26:58

But the next question I have then given the

27:00

way that horse tends to smell, which you know

27:02

how horse smells. That's right. One of the farm

27:04

animals. Yes. In New York. I felt that dogs

27:07

that's cat familiar with. Um, how

27:10

did Dave tolerate this for so

27:13

long? Like this is a huge

27:15

existential concern. Now this guy

27:17

is a true believer. He cares deeply

27:19

about correcting mistakes. And this was not,

27:22

I mean, it was horse, but it was not a lie. No, not at all.

27:26

And so how does this sit with

27:28

him for so long? How does he

27:30

go about fixing this? He went to

27:32

fix it in the most scientific way

27:34

possible by publishing a journal article in

27:36

1999. And

27:39

he challenged the whole idea and like brought to life

27:41

the truth about what he learned. And

27:43

then he's like, okay, settle it with scientific

27:46

community. Let me now change my book. Right.

27:49

And he tries and he's like, Hey, we have

27:51

to fix this. It's completely wrong. But

27:53

the publisher was like, nah,

27:56

we can't do that. And he was like, no, can, didn't

27:58

just stop selling it. Like, you. need to stop

28:00

selling this thing, but it kept on selling

28:02

and it kept on selling. So past 1999, past 2000, past

28:04

2010, past 2018, all the way up to 2022, it finally

28:13

went out of publication. This part

28:15

is incredible. Yeah. The idea that

28:17

Dave is doing the rare thing that

28:20

so few public intellectuals of any kind

28:22

ever do, which is raise their

28:24

hand and say, not only do I want to

28:26

correct the record, I would like to stop profiting

28:28

off of this. And

28:31

the publishing machine, why don't they

28:33

help him make the record

28:35

correct? I reached out to

28:37

the publisher and they said that they

28:39

only comment on books that are being published.

28:43

Right. But anyway, then, then

28:45

I talked to another, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big

28:47

paper, big paper, total big paper

28:49

response. But anyway, then I

28:51

talked to another friend who is in the publishing

28:53

world. Actually involved in Bill

28:56

Simmons book of basketball publishing. Um,

28:58

and he said it's a lot less

29:00

nefarious. They're just a lot of

29:03

pages year or what? It's just a hell

29:05

of an old technology. Oh, books,

29:07

printing, printing, physical copies. Yeah. You can't just

29:09

go in and, you know, quickly get into

29:11

the CMS and edit something, scrub it and

29:13

fix it and boom. Like the

29:16

change never happened. And so this

29:18

is sad also, because Dave is

29:21

losing control of this

29:23

creature. This alpha. Yeah.

29:26

He can't put it back in the

29:28

cage, man. We know this from just

29:30

living from, from, from living in the

29:32

present in sports, in the sports world

29:34

in particular, where this everywhere, dude. Oh,

29:38

it's LeBron James. You can't stop

29:40

referencing alphas. He's, he's talking about

29:42

how Anthony Davis needs to be

29:45

an alpha. To be able to

29:47

get, you know, a young hungry,

29:49

you know, you know, alpha male to

29:51

go out there and just do the things that he

29:53

do. It's Deon Sanders, coach

29:55

prime firing up his, firing up

29:57

his football players. Dominant to be.

30:00

dominant all the time. Let's be dominant.

30:02

Let's prepare to be dominant in the

30:04

weight room, in the classroom, at home,

30:06

in your meeting, and on this field.

30:08

We got that? All right. It

30:11

even goes out to a brain supplement. Oh,

30:13

yeah. In order to get an alpha brain

30:16

called alpha brain. Yeah. That

30:18

is promoted by Joe Rogan, of course. If

30:21

I go to a UFC and I don't have alpha

30:24

brain, I panic. I take it

30:26

before every podcast. I even oftentimes take it on the

30:28

air just to let people know, like, I really take

30:30

this. I

30:34

got to admit here, like Joe Rogan doesn't

30:36

bother me. He does some good interviews, like

30:38

his one with Rick Rubin. Okay. Fine.

30:41

Solid interviewee. I'm not here to put Joe Rogan on

30:43

trial. My old alpha is like, oh, hey, Joe, how

30:45

you doing? We can talk about squat,

30:47

about Joe Colts. I

30:50

do, though, want to speak to

30:52

the person who was actually on

30:55

trial, who also embodies this whole

30:57

alpha scheme. He's

31:00

the one that took it all the way off the rails. This

31:02

dude, Andrew Tate. If

31:05

you guys want to know what it's like to be an alpha male,

31:07

I think Andrew exemplifies this more than just

31:09

about anyone I know, because he just does

31:11

whatever the he wants. He says whatever the

31:13

he wants and he gets whatever the he

31:15

wants. And that, you know, in my definition,

31:17

is when alpha male is. He

31:20

turned this into like a quasi religion. Yes.

31:23

Called Tateism. These are the 41

31:25

tenants I believe in. I believe that men have

31:27

the divine imperative to become as capable, powerful and

31:29

competent as possible in this life.

31:31

I believe that a man's life is difficult

31:33

and he has a sacred duty to become

31:35

strong, to handle such difficulty. I

31:37

believe that men have the sacred duty to approach

31:40

everything in life from a position

31:42

of strength. So this is where I

31:44

have to point out if you're not familiar, if you

31:46

were in fact blessedly unfamiliar with Andrew Tate and Azuvra.

31:49

This is the dude who got arrested in Romania.

31:52

Researchers in Romania have filed formal

31:54

charges against the controversial influencer Andrew

31:56

Tate, his brother Tristan and two

31:59

Romanian associates. The charges

32:01

include rape, human trafficking, and forming

32:03

an organized crime group. And those

32:05

trials, that whole legal proceeding is still

32:07

unfolding now, but that's the

32:10

guy who took this lineage, the lineage

32:12

of the alpha wolf, and

32:14

built a whole business on

32:16

it, an allegedly criminal business that, let's

32:19

be honest about this, that is more

32:21

popular than any of us would like

32:23

to admit. Like the whole alpha brain,

32:26

alpha male, alpha wolf industrial complex, it's

32:29

clearly speaking to

32:31

something that men at

32:33

least are deeply searching for.

32:36

Yeah, I guess to get real for a

32:38

moment. Please. Well, yeah, it's

32:40

just guys like me die of suicide in the US

32:42

at the highest rate. White guy is

32:44

middle aged. And

32:47

I guess in order to cope with it, you

32:49

want to reach for a philosophy that's easy to

32:51

understand. Right. And I keep

32:53

on looking at animals for our, there's a

32:55

purity toward animals. And if you actually go

32:58

and you see a wolf or you're actually

33:00

any wild animal up close, it's like, oh,

33:03

that that that's pure. How they live

33:05

is just perfect. And it's easy. And

33:07

they seem at ease. And

33:09

they just are full of just innate

33:11

confidence. It like it's that we don't

33:14

have it. We don't have it. It

33:16

is strength. Yeah. And

33:18

also, it is an uncomplicated

33:21

vision of seemingly. But man, when you're

33:23

when you're close to an apex predator,

33:25

it's just, it's,

33:27

it's powerful. And

33:30

so yeah, I think a lot of people that are

33:32

going toward this, I don't

33:35

know, this way of living, I guess,

33:37

they just want something simple

33:39

to be that salve within

33:42

their lives and allow them to

33:44

not think about all the complexities, right,

33:47

to go out and dominate. And

33:50

so I just want to spell all of this out. Yeah.

33:52

The audience here, the thing that has been eating

33:55

away at America, this, this

33:57

psychological desire to be

33:59

strong. to be an alpha, to be

34:01

the wolf, to be this alpha male. That's

34:05

all been premised on

34:08

a scientific misunderstanding. Like none of

34:10

it is actually true. Well,

34:13

kinda. Alpha wolves,

34:17

they don't exist. Right? They're

34:19

parents, but alpha males. They

34:21

do exist. They

34:23

do exist, but domination is a sort of

34:25

narrow view. So that's Franz

34:28

De Waal. He's one of the top

34:30

primate researchers in the world. Now

34:32

we're doing primate researchers. Yeah, I think it's

34:34

important to get into another species in this,

34:36

because it's important about what he says, because

34:39

he studied chimps back in the day. He

34:41

had this book called Chimpanzee Politics, Power and

34:43

Sex Among the Apes. Back in

34:46

the 90s, that book was a thing among

34:48

people in power. Newt Gingrich

34:50

of all people in

34:52

Washington, who recommended it to Republicans

34:57

in the House, I believe. And the

34:59

craziest part is just like Dave's book,

35:01

people immediately went right to the

35:03

alpha, and are like, yeah, love this thing.

35:06

And they just ran with it. But Franz,

35:08

when I talked to him, he was just

35:10

like, could we just pump the brakes? The

35:14

real alpha males that I know in

35:16

chimpanzees, I think one out

35:18

of five is dictatorial.

35:21

And so it's tyrannical. And

35:23

they often end badly, because the group, at some

35:25

point, is going to revolt. But

35:29

four out of five, I would say, are keeping

35:32

the peace and protecting the underdog

35:35

and keeping

35:37

the group together. One out

35:39

of five alpha males in chimps is

35:41

dictatorial, one in five. The

35:44

other four out of five, he's saying, keep the bees, protect

35:46

the underdog, keep the group together, which

35:48

is not alpha s***, as I have

35:50

come to appreciate the alpha male as a

35:52

concept. No, no. And sometimes

35:54

they're just really friendly. Sometimes they

35:57

do a lot of favors for

35:59

their fellow. chimps. And

36:01

he added another important point in that

36:03

it's more often than not, the people

36:05

who decide who is the alpha of

36:07

the group within chimpanzees, it's

36:10

the women. The alpha

36:12

female of the zoo group where I

36:14

worked, whose name is Mama, because

36:17

she was very motherly to everyone, but

36:19

she had an enormous power. And

36:21

you basically could not become alpha

36:24

male without her support. So

36:26

I'm listening to this and I'm thinking back

36:29

like near the end here, back to my time

36:31

in high school debate when I

36:33

felt most alpha. I love that you

36:36

were doing something productive and I was

36:38

just like stacking plates on the squat

36:40

rack. I was lifting intellectual weight. And

36:46

what I learned back then is that the

36:48

key to any good debate, any good discussion

36:50

of anything is you got to define your

36:52

terms. Yeah. We don't agree on what the

36:54

we're arguing about. We're just like ships passing

36:56

in the night. And so here, here I

36:58

finally settle upon it seems this definition of

37:00

alpha, which is just more

37:02

complicated. Yeah. Right. Like the

37:04

alpha wolf in the wild is just a

37:06

parent. That's what Dave Meach, our 87 year

37:08

old friend in Minnesota taught us. God bless

37:10

him. It's not the

37:12

domineering Andrew Tate kind

37:15

of alpha image, but

37:17

there are in fact, Andrew

37:19

Tate alpha. Yeah. Chimps.

37:21

Definitely. In this case, they're

37:24

just losers. I know. I

37:26

know. And I think the important part is to

37:28

ground this all this whole desire to be the

37:31

alpha is success is to get whatever you want.

37:33

Right. And so whenever I hear that people using

37:35

the term alpha, I'm like, why do you want

37:37

to choose a mode that

37:39

has you finish one and eight in the pack 12?

37:41

But what they're

37:44

saying is diplomacy, an

37:50

underrated part of leadership,

37:53

parenting, the idea to care

37:55

and to be emotionally sensitive

37:58

to those who are in your care. care. That's

38:01

what leadership is in the

38:03

animal world. They're quite

38:05

responsible characters and

38:09

they can become extremely popular as a

38:11

result. So because the whole group looks

38:13

at them for security. But

38:15

now I'm putting on my hat as a political strategist

38:18

because I am realizing that a

38:21

complicated definition is

38:23

a dangerous one. And

38:25

so what do we do about

38:27

the word alpha? Like where does

38:29

it go? Can we actually do what Dave tried

38:31

to do with his own book and like undo

38:35

some of this? How do we approach that? Well,

38:37

I think it's here to stay. I don't think

38:39

we can do anything. And even Dave agrees with

38:41

me on that. An alpha does,

38:44

says, whatever they

38:46

want. With humans, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

38:48

Well, we're not going to stop that. I mean, that's

38:50

just the way it is. But I think

38:53

to bring it back to wolves, you

38:56

know, in order to be a good parent, they have to be lethal

38:58

because pups got to

39:01

eat and moose are huge. So

39:03

you do have to, you'd have to kill

39:05

at times. But the more important thing to

39:07

be a great alpha, to be a great

39:10

parent, you got to be affectionate. You got

39:12

to be really great to your, your pups,

39:14

your kids. And

39:16

that leads to possibly the coolest

39:18

thing that I learned on this

39:20

whole wolf tail, if

39:23

you will, I L or L E.

39:25

That is the

39:28

wolves hug. Wait.

39:32

So you mean they physically,

39:35

literally hug each

39:37

other? Yep. Actually

39:41

putting their arms around each other's neck.

39:43

I published a whole paper on wolves hugging

39:46

each other. Sometimes

39:49

why side by side where

39:52

one will put its, its

39:55

front paws along around the neck of the

39:57

other. And I seen them doing it. way

40:00

as well where they actually hug.

40:03

I don't see that a lot or haven't seen

40:06

a lot but seen it enough to know that

40:08

it does exist. I

40:10

love this so much. It's great, right? I

40:13

feel like the only thing when

40:15

I found out today, okay, that

40:17

there's only one more thing left

40:19

for clearly two alphas as properly

40:21

defined to do. Yeah.

40:24

Here, wait. I mean. Bud

40:30

light on the table. Oh,

40:34

that's some good. Oh,

40:38

yeah. And bring it in, man. And

40:40

yeah, let's do this. Oh,

40:42

keep the hands on. Oh,

40:47

you're so... How are you still so strong? Pilates.

40:54

Oh, yeah. For

40:57

more of those quads and

40:59

more reporting overseen by

41:01

Bradley Campbell, check out Sports Explains the

41:03

World from Metalarc Media, wherever

41:06

you get your podcasts. This

41:14

has been Pablo Torre finds out

41:17

a Metalarc Media production. And

41:20

I'll talk to you next time.