All Episodes

#792 Justin Mogilski: Satisfaction and Maintenance in Monogamous and Non-Monogamous Relationships

Jun 8, 2023

Dr. Justin Mogilski is Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina Salkehatchie. His current program of research examines: 1) conflict resolution within consensually non-monogamous (CNM) romantic relationships (e.g., polyamory, open relationships, swinging), 2) how evolution has shaped moral decision-making, and 3) individual differences in predatory intimate relationship behaviors. He currently leads an international team of sexuality and relationship researchers studying CNM relationship maintenance strategies. More»
#791 Scott Claessens: Human Cooperation, Religiosity, and Cross-National Analyses

Jun 5, 2023

Dr. Scott Claessens is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Auckland. He studies the biological and cultural evolution of human cooperation. He uses methods from experimental economics and evolutionary game theory to shed light on how and why we give to others. More»
#790 Conor Cunningham: Theology, Nihilism, and Evolutionary Theory

Jun 2, 2023

Dr. Conor Cunningham is Associate Professor in Theology and Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham. He is interested in Metaphysics, Epistemology, Science, and Religion. He is the author of books like Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and The Difference of Theology. More»
#789 Kieran Setiya - Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way

Jun 1, 2023

Dr. Kieran Setiya is Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He works mainly in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. He is the author of Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, Knowing Right From Wrong, and, more recently, Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. More»
#788 Alexander Bor: Online Political Hostility; and the Moralization and Political Effects of COVID

May 29, 2023

Dr. Alexander Bor is a postdoc at the CEU Democracy Institute's Research Group on De- and Re-Democratization and a Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. He received an MA in Political Science at the CEU in 2012, and a PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University in 2018, where he also worked as a postdoc until 2022. His research focuses on how the human mind navigates social and political challenges like political polarization, online political hostility, the COVID-19 pandemic, or selecting and evaluating political leaders. His work integrates insights from political behavior, social and evolutionary psychology, and public health. More»
#787 Kennon Sheldon - Freely Determined; The New Psychology of the Self, and How to Live

May 26, 2023

Dr. Kennon Sheldon is Curator's Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. His research is in the areas of well-being, motivation, self-determination theory, personality, and positive psychology. In 2002 he was a recipient of a Templeton Foundation "Positive Psychology" prize, and in 2014 received the Ed and Carol Diener award for mid-career achievement in personality psychology. He is the author of several books, the most recent one being Freely Determined: What the New Psychology of the Self Teaches Us About How to Live. More»
#786 Vassilis Saroglou: The Psychological Traits of Religious People

May 25, 2023

Dr. Vassilis Saroglou is Full Professor of Psychology at the UCL-University of Louvain, with expertise in psychology of religion, personality, social, and cross-cultural psychology, moral psychology, and psychology of positive emotions. He has developed long-term empirical research on theoretically and socially critical issues regarding religion, spirituality, fundamentalism, and atheism, in interaction with social behavior: prosociality, submission, ethnoreligious & ideological prejudice, sexism, homophobia; personality, emotions, and health: personality traits, birth order effects, awe, humor; and more. More»
#785 Agustín Fuentes: The Origins of Patriarchy

May 22, 2023

Dr. Agustín Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Dr. Fuentes was awarded the Inaugural Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of books like Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature, and Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. More»
#784 Paul Russell: Free Will and Moral Responsibility

May 19, 2023

Dr. Paul Russell is Professor of Philosophy at Lund University (half-time appointment since 2018). He also serves as Director of the Lund|Gothenburg Responsibility Project (LGRP). Dr. Russell's interests cover the areas of free will and moral responsibility along with various topics in early modern philosophy. Within the area of free will and moral responsibility he is particularly interested in the challenge of skepticism and theories of responsibility that appeal to reactive attitudes or moral sentiments. On the subject of early modern philosophy, he is especially concerned with the philosophy of David Hume and how his philosophy relates to problems of religion and atheism. More»
#783 Kevin Dorst: Epistemology, Justified Beliefs, and Epistemic Modesty

May 18, 2023

Dr. Kevin Dorst is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. He works on epistemology, logic, language, and their intersections. In epistemology he’s interested in what we should think (the belief-credence connection), why we should think it (foundations), and how we should think about what we should think (higher-order uncertainty). In logic, he’s interested in various models of these things; in language, he’s interested the semantics of various statements about them. More recently, he’s been thinking about the connection between epistemology and cognitive science and psychology—and, in particular, how our idealized models and theories of rationality can help inform our understanding of our non-ideal selves. More»