All Episodes

#650 Melanie MacEacheron: The Evolution of Motherhood, Marital Surname Change, and Feminism

Jul 11, 2022

Dr. Melanie MacEacheron is a Lecturer in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University. Her current research focus is women's psychology as potential or actual mothers or allomothers, and sex differences in mateships and romantic relationships. Of particular interest to her, is our ability to creatively label or act on evolved desires in order to serve our evolutionary interests, even or especially where these are not consciously known to us, and to influence others. More»
#649 Bence Nanay: Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, Mental Representations, and Perception

Jul 8, 2022

Dr. Bence Nanay is Professor of Philosophy and BOF Research Professor at the University of Antwerp and has worked as a film critic. He is co-director of the Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. He is a cognitive scientist and philosopher of mind, working on perception, attention, mental imagery and action. He also works on topics in aesthetics. More»
#648 Niamh McLoughlin: Child Social Development, Religion, Mental State Talk, and Group Affiliation

Jul 7, 2022

Dr. Niamh McLoughlin is a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at University of Kent. She studies how social information impacts young children’s cognition, evaluations and behavior. More»
#647 James Fallon: Psychopathy, Personality Disorders, Brain Scans, and the Nature-Nurture Debate

Jul 4, 2022

Dr. James Fallon is professor of psychiatry and human behavior and emeritus professor of anatomy and neurobiology in the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. His research interests include adult stem cells, chemical neuroanatomy and circuitry, higher brain functions, and brain imaging. He is the author of The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. More»
#646 Russ Shafer-Landau: Metaethics, and Moral Realism

Jul 1, 2022

Dr. Russ Shafer-Landau is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His primary interest is in ethics. He is the author of Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford 2003), Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (Oxford 2004), and The Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford 2010). He is the editor of Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and is the founder and organizer of the annual Madison Metaethics Workshop (MadMeta). He is also the director of the Marc Sanders Prize in Metaethics. More»
#645 Steven Churchill: Homo naledi, Australopithecus sediba, and Human Evolution

Jun 30, 2022

Dr. Steven Churchill is a Professor and past Chair of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. He is also an Honorary Reader in the Evolutionary Studies Institute and Centre for Excellence in PalaeoSciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a paleontologist who studies the fossil record of human evolution, especially that of early members of our genus (Homo) that lived between about two million to ten thousand years ago. More»
#644 Mathias Clasen: The Evolutionary Psychology of Horror, Apocalyptic Stories, and Villains

Jun 27, 2022

Dr. Mathias Clasen is associate professor in literature and media at Aarhus University. He is the Director of the Recreational Fear Lab, and Associate Editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. He studies horror fiction, and is the author of Why Horror Seduces, and A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies. More»
#643 Masahiro Morioka - Manga Introduction to Philosophy; Life, Death, Time, and the Meaning of Life

Jun 24, 2022

Dr. Masahiro Morioka is a professor of philosophy and ethics at Waseda University, Japan. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential thinkers in the current Japanese philosophical community, along with Hitoshi Nagai (Nihon University), and Motoyoshi Irifuji (Aoyama Gakuin University). He is the director of Tokyo Philosophy Project, and the editor-in-chief of Journal of Philosophy of Life. He specializes in philosophy of life, life studies, bioethics, gender studies, and criticism of contemporary civilization. He is the author of books like Nihilism and the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with James Tartaglia, and Manga Introduction to Philosophy: An Exploration of Time, Existence, the Self, and the Meaning of Life. More»
#642 Douglas Kenrick & David Lundberg-Kenrick - Solving Modern Problems with a Stone-Age Brain

Jun 23, 2022

Dr. Douglas Kenrick is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. More»
#641 Robert Barton: The Evolution of the Primate Brain, The Visual Brain, and the Color Red

Jun 20, 2022

Dr. Robert Barton is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Member of the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre at Durham University, UK. He is an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist interested in brains, behavior and cognition, using phylogenetic comparative methods to study how these traits evolved. He developed and tested the 'Visual brain hypothesis' for primate brain size evolution. He is currently interested in the underestimated role of the cerebellum in brain evolution and cognition. He also works on the evolutionary and cultural significance of the color red. More»