Michelle: Most of us think of violence as a failure of society—a breakdown of order. But what if our most brutal, violent rituals, from ancient duels to modern cage fighting, are actually what’s holding society together? What if they’re not the problem, but a strange, bloody solution? Mark: Whoa, hold on. A solution? That sounds completely backward. Violence is chaos, right? It's what happens when rules disappear. Michelle: That’s the conventional wisdom. But this is the wild, provocative idea at the heart of The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch by Jonathan Gottschall. Mark: The Professor in the Cage. The title alone tells you this isn't your typical academic book. Michelle: Exactly. And Gottschall isn't just an armchair philosopher. He's a literary scholar who, feeling disenchanted with his academic career, decided to test his theories by training for and competing in a real MMA cage fight himself. Mark: An English professor? In a cage fight? That's either the bravest or most insane research method I've ever heard of. Michelle: It’s this blend of a deeply personal, painful journey with rigorous research that makes the book so compelling, and also so controversial among readers and critics. It really forces you to ask: what could possibly drive a man of letters, a professor, to voluntarily step into a world of such raw violence? Mark: I’m genuinely curious. Was it a mid-life crisis? A book deal? Or something deeper? Michelle: It was something deeper. He says he did it for one of the main reasons men have always fought: to discover if he was a coward. And that quest opens the door to this fascinating idea he calls the "monkey dance."

Mark: The monkey dance? What on earth is that? It sounds a little less intimidating than a cage fight. Michelle: It's his term for all forms of ritualized combat. He argues that for millennia, men have used these "dances"—whether it's two deer locking antlers, or two guys posturing in a bar—to settle disputes and establish hierarchies while minimizing actual carnage. It’s a contest with rules, even if they're unwritten. Mark: So it’s a way to prove you’re tough without necessarily having to go all out and cause real damage. Michelle: Precisely. And he argues this is driven by an ancient, powerful currency: honor. To show how high the stakes can be, he tells the story of Alexander Hamilton. We all know he died in a duel with Aaron Burr. But what’s less known is that his eldest son, Philip, had died in a duel three years earlier, defending his father's honor. Mark: Wow. So the family lost two generations to this code of honor. That’s tragic. Michelle: It is. But back then, honor wasn't just about pride. Gottschall writes that it was "precious coin that bought the best things in life." A man's reputation determined his social standing, his career prospects, even his family's future. Losing it was a kind of social death. Mark: Okay, I can see that for the 1800s. But does 'honor' really drive people to violence today? I mean, our duels are fought in comment sections, not with pistols at dawn. Michelle: That's the perfect question, and Gottschall has a chillingly modern answer. He points to the work of Jimmy Lerner, a corporate guy who ended up in a maximum-security prison. Lerner wrote about how, on his first day, a huge inmate named Big Hungry stole a banana from his lunch tray. Mark: A banana. That seems so trivial. Michelle: It does. And Lerner thought so too. He let it go. But his cellmate pulled him aside and told him he’d just made a fatal mistake. In prison, there are no small things. By not fighting for the banana, he had just announced to everyone, "I am a rabbit. I am food." He had given up his honor, and in that world, that meant he was now a target for endless exploitation. Mark: Whoa. Okay, I see it now. The context is different, but the underlying principle—that you have to defend your standing or be seen as weak—is exactly the same. The stakes are just different. Michelle: Exactly. The cage, the dueling ground, the prison yard... they are all just different arenas for the same ancient monkey dance. It’s about demonstrating that you are not to be trifled with.

Mark: So if this 'monkey dance' is so universal, from prisons to the founding fathers, is Gottschall saying it's just baked into men's DNA? That this is a biological thing? Michelle: He goes there, and this is where the book becomes really polarizing. He directly challenges the idea that masculinity is purely a social construct. He argues it's a biological reality, shaped by millions of years of evolution. Mark: That’s a bold claim. How does he back that up? Michelle: With some fascinating, and sometimes startling, data. For instance, genetic studies show that throughout history, about 80% of women reproduced, but only 40% of men did. Mark: Wait, run that by me again. Twice as many women as men passed on their genes? How is that even possible? Michelle: It means that for most of human history, a few successful men reproduced with multiple women, while a huge number of men died childless. Maleness, he argues, has always been a high-stakes, brutal competition. The men who were bigger, stronger, more aggressive, and more willing to take risks—the ones who won the fights—were the ones who passed on their genes. Mark: So, the traits we associate with traditional masculinity—competitiveness, aggression, toughness—are the legacy of that evolutionary filter. Michelle: That's his argument. And he uses a great example from the animal kingdom to show it’s not just about being male, but about reproductive stakes. There's a species of bird called the phalarope where the roles are completely flipped. The females are larger, more colorful, and more aggressive. They fight each other for access to the smaller, drabber males. Mark: And why is that? Michelle: Because the males do all the parenting. They sit on the eggs and raise the chicks. The females just lay the eggs and move on to the next male. Their reproductive investment is low, so they've evolved to be the competitive, "masculine" ones. It shows that these traits follow the competitive pressure, not the sex itself. Mark: This is where some critics and readers get uncomfortable, right? It sounds a lot like biological determinism. Is he just saying 'boys will be boys' with a scientific gloss? It feels like it could be used to excuse bad behavior. Michelle: He's very aware of that criticism. He’s not saying it's destiny, or that it's an excuse. His point is that it's a powerful current we are all swimming in. He argues that ignoring this biological current is why so many social interventions fail. It's like trying to design a safer car without understanding the laws of physics and gravity. You have to acknowledge the forces at play before you can hope to channel them constructively.

Michelle: And this biological current doesn't just explain why men fight. It also explains the second half of the book's title: why we like to watch. Mark: Right, the audience. Because for every fighter in a cage, there are thousands of people paying to see it. I've always wondered about that. What is the appeal? Michelle: Gottschall was obsessed with this question. He describes watching the first-ever UFC event on a grainy VHS tape. It was this no-holds-barred, brutal spectacle. In one of the first fights, a Dutch kickboxer named Gerard Gordeau kicks a 400-pound sumo wrestler, Teila Tuli, in the face. The kick is so hard it knocks out several of Tuli's teeth. One tooth gets lodged in Gordeau's foot. Mark: That is absolutely gruesome. I can't imagine enjoying that. Michelle: And Gottschall says he was both repulsed and completely captivated. He couldn't look away. It led him to question the most common explanation for our fascination with violence: the catharsis theory. Mark: The idea that watching violence gets it out of our system, right? Like a pressure valve. Michelle: Yes, that watching a violent movie or a fight purges our own aggressive impulses. But he says the science on this is clear: it's a myth. Watching violence doesn't make us less aggressive; if anything, it can make us more so. He argues the real reason we watch is much simpler, and maybe more disturbing. Mark: Which is? Michelle: We just like it. A primal part of us is drawn to the spectacle of conflict. Mark: So, when I'm screaming at the TV during a football game, it's not catharsis? It's a form of... what? Tribal warfare? Michelle: In a way, yes. He calls sports "war games" or "sham battles." He argues that team sports, especially violent ones like football or hockey, are the modern equivalent of tribal warfare. They allow groups to compete, establish dominance, and rally around a common identity, all within a set of rules that prevents it from becoming an actual war. The uniforms are tribal colors, the songs are fight songs, the language is military—blitz, bomb, trenches. Mark: It’s a literal simulation of war, not just a metaphor. Michelle: Exactly. And to show the power of this ritual, but also its limits, he tells the incredible story of the Christmas Truce of 1914. In the middle of World War I, on Christmas Day, German and British soldiers spontaneously climbed out of their trenches, not to fight, but to exchange gifts and sing carols. And all along the Western Front, something amazing happened. Mark: What? Michelle: They started playing football. In the frozen mud of no-man's-land, these enemy soldiers engaged in a sham battle. For a brief moment, the ritual of sport replaced the reality of war. It shows the deep human need for these games. But, of course, the truce ended. The generals were furious, and the war resumed, more brutal than ever. The war game couldn't stop the real war.

Mark: So after all this—the personal journey into the cage, the deep dive into biology and history—what's the big takeaway? Are we just violent apes in shoes, doomed to repeat these patterns forever? Michelle: Gottschall's final point is more nuanced and, I think, more hopeful. He argues that violence itself isn't inherently good or bad; it's a fundamental tool, a force of nature like fire. The "monkey dance"—whether it's a duel, a prison showdown, or a Super Bowl—is a ritual we've created to manage that tool. It's a system to establish order and prevent absolute chaos. Mark: So the rules are everything. The structure is what separates a sport from a riot. Michelle: Exactly. The real danger isn't the regulated violence of the fight inside the cage. The real danger is the un-ritualized, chaotic violence that happens when those systems of honor and competition break down entirely. His journey taught him that these rituals, as brutal as they seem, might be a necessary evil that prevents something far worse. Mark: That’s a powerful reframing. It’s not about eliminating violence, which might be impossible, but about channeling it into forms that are, if not safe, at least contained. Michelle: Yes. And it leaves you with a really interesting lens to look at the world. It makes you wonder, what are the 'monkey dances' in our own lives? The non-violent competitions we use to sort out status and honor at work, online, or even among our friends? Mark: The promotion we're all vying for, the debate over who has the better argument at a dinner party, the subtle one-upmanship on social media... it's all there, just without the black eyes. Michelle: Or at least, with metaphorical ones. Mark: A fascinating, and frankly, unsettling book. It definitely makes you see the world a little differently. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.