All Episodes

#111 Nick Chater: The Mind Is Flat, and Our Illusions of Mental Depth

Dec 13, 2018

Dr. Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. He has over 200 publications, has won four national awards for psychological research, and has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science. He was elected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in 2010 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2012. Dr. Chater is co-founder of the research consultancy Decision Technology, and is on the advisory board of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insight Team (BIT). He’s also the author of “The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and The Improvised Mind”. More»
#110 Barbara Oakley: Evil Genes, and Pathological Altruism

Dec 10, 2018

SORRY ABOUT THE VIDEO ISSUES. More»
#109 Simon DeDeo: From Atoms to Societies, Emergentism and Reductionism

Dec 7, 2018

THIS TIME, IT’S AUDIO-ONLY. I’VE BEEN HAVING SOME ISSUES WITH THE RECORDING PROGRAM THAT I HOPE TO SOLVE DEFINITELLY IN THE NEAR FUTURE. PLEASE ENJOY! More»
#108 Richard Shweder: Morality, Haidt's Moral Foundations, and Multiculturalism

Dec 6, 2018

Dr. Richard Shweder is a cultural anthropologist and the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development at the University of Chicago, US. He’s the author of Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology and Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology, and editor or co-editor of many books in the areas of cultural psychology, psychological anthropology and comparative human development. Dr. Shweder has been the recipient of many awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1985-86) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological Prize for his essay “Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?”. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. More»
#107 Frederick Crews: Why Freud is a Fraud

Dec 3, 2018

I’M SORRY FOR THE VIDEO BEING A BIT DESYNCHRONIZED. IT MUST HAVE BEEN SOME SORT OF RECORDING ISSUE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. More»
#106 Michelle Sugiyama: The Evolution of Storytelling, and Its Role in Human Societies

Nov 30, 2018

Dr. Michelle Scalise Sugiyama is Senior Instructor at the University of Oregon Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, and an affiliate of the University of Oregon Anthropology Department. She is an evolutionary psychologist/anthropologist who specializes in symbolic and aesthetic behavior, with an emphasis on storytelling, art, and play. Her work investigates the origins of these behaviors—specifically, the selection pressures that led to their emergence, the role they played in ancestral human societies, and the design features of the mind that make them possible. She publishes in both scientific and humanities journals, and blogs for the Huffington Post, where she explores modern issues, trends, and behaviors in light of human evolutionary history. More»
#105 Françoise Baylis: The Ethics of CRISPR-cas9 Gene Editing Technology

Nov 29, 2018

UPDATE: Françoise Baylis “Deliberate Design: The Ethics of Human Genome Editing” (forthcoming, Harvard University Press, 2019). More»
#104 Michael Ruse: Darwinism, Species, Race, Gene Editing, and Religion

Nov 26, 2018

Dr. Michael Ruse is a philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion, the creation–evolution controversy, and the demarcation problem within science. He currently teaches at Florida State University, where he is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor and Director of HPS Program. He’s also a very prolific writer, author of books like The Darwinian Revolution, Darwin and Design, and On Purpose. More»
#102 Valerie Curtis: Disgust and Hygiene Behavior

Nov 22, 2018

Dr. Valerie Curtis is Director of the Environmental Health Group, a multidisciplinary group researching hygiene, sanitation and water (WASH), at the London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is trained in engineering, epidemiology and anthropology and studies human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. She’s also the author of the book Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, Don’t Eat: The Science Behind Revulsion. More»
#101 Todd Shackelford: Evolution and Family Conflict, Sperm Competition, Stepparenting

Nov 19, 2018

Dr. Todd Shackelford is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychology at the University of Oakland, as well as the Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab there. He is the editor in chief of the academic journals Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Psychological Science. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. More»