All Episodes

#144 David Zaruk: Environmentalism, The EU, and SlimeGate

Feb 28, 2019

Dr. David Zaruk is the Risk-Monger. He has been an EU risk and science communications specialist since 2000, active in EU policy events from REACH and SCALE to the Pesticides Directive, from Science in Society questions to the use of the Precautionary Principle. He was part of the team that set up GreenFacts to encourage a wider use of evidence-based decision-making in the EU on environmental health matters. Dr. Zaruk is a professor at Odisee University College where he lectures on Communications, Marketing, EU Lobbying and PR. More»
#143 William von Hippel: The Social Leap, Human Sociality, Mating, Agriculture, and Happiness

Feb 25, 2019

Dr. William von Hippel is Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has published more than a hundred articles, chapters, and edited books in social psychology, and his research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, the BBC, Le Monde, El Mundo, Der Spiegel, and The Australian. He also recently published a book, “The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy” (2018). More»
#142 James Tabery: The Nature-Nurture Debate, And Its Ethics

Feb 22, 2019

Dr. James Tabery is Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Adjunct Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. His research focuses largely on the philosophy of science and applied ethics, as well as the intersection between those domains. On the philosophy of science side, he investigates questions of causation and explanation in biology; while on the applied ethics side, he explores how the answers to those questions have ethical, legal, and social implications. He’s also the author of the book Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture. More»
#141 Moshe Hoffman: Game Theory, Norm Enforcement, and Evolutionary Psychology

Feb 21, 2019

Dr. Moshe Hoffman is a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab & Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Economics. He applies game theory, models of learning and evolution, and experimental methods, to try to decipher the (often subconscious and subtle) incentives that shape our social behavior, preferences, and ideologies. Dr. Hoffman obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and his B.S. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He also co-designed and teaches "Game Theory and Social Behavior" which lays out a lot of the evidence and models behind this approach. More»
#140 Paul Zak: Neuroeconomics, Oxytocin, Trust, Companies and Society

Feb 18, 2019

Dr. Paul Zak is an American neuroeconomist, who is known as a proponent of the field. His current work applies neuroscience to build high performance organizations and to understand and guide consumer decisions. Dr. Zak is the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. He’s also the author of books like The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity, and Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies. More»
#139 Peter Richerson: Biology and Culture, Cultural Evolution, Cognition, and Group Selection

Feb 15, 2019

SORRY ABOUT THE AUDIO AND VIDEO ISSUES, THE INTERNET CONNECTION WAS WEAK. HOPE YOU ENJOY IT. More»
#138 Keith Frankish: Consciousness, Illusionism, Free Will, and AI

Feb 14, 2019

Dr. Keith Frankish is a British philosopher and writer, currently living in Crete, Greece. He’s an Honorary Reader at the University of Sheffield, UK, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, UK, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete. He works mainly in philosophy of mind, also with interests in other areas of Philosophy. He’s also the author of books like Mind and Supermind (2004) and Illusionism: As a Theory of Consciousness (2017). More»
#137 Derek Elliott: Beyond Enlightenment, Reason, Free Will, Self-deception, and Modularity

Feb 11, 2019

Dr. Derek Elliott is a newly minted doctor of philosophy from Duquesne University. He specializes in philosophy of psychology as well as action theory with a special interest in irrationality and evolutionary psychology. More»
#136 Patrick Colm Hogan: Evolution, Human Universals, Arts, and Literature

Feb 8, 2019

Dr. Patrick Colm Hogan is Distinguished Professor of the Department of English, and the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, at the University of Connecticut, US. His specialties are: literary theory, cognitive and affective science of literature, and world literature. He’s the author of several books, including The Mind and Its Stories, What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion, and Beauty and Sublimity. More»
#135 Rebecca Sear: Human Behavioral Ecology, Mating, Parenting, Reproduction

Feb 7, 2019

Dr. Rebecca Sear is Reader at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), teaching demography and researching human reproductive behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. She is trained in zoology, biological anthropology, and statistics, and subsequently worked first in a social science institution (London School of Economics) and then in an institution of global and public health (LSHTM). Having been exposed to a variety of disciplines, she is particularly interested in how the natural, social and medical sciences can be integrated as we try to understand our own species, and aims to conduct research somewhere inbetween these disciplines. She is particularly interested in taking a comparative perspective to understanding human reproductive behaviour, and exploring why such behaviour varies between, as well as within, populations. In 2008, she co-founded the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, and she’s currently Honorary Secretary of the British Society for Population Studies and a Board Member of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society. More»