All Episodes

#804 Deborah Gordon: Ant Colonies, Distributed Intelligence, and Systems Without Central Control

Jul 6, 2023

Dr. Deborah Gordon is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She studies how ant colonies work without central control using networks of simple interactions, and how these networks evolve in relation to changing environments. Her projects include a long-term study of a population of harvester ant colonies in Arizona, studies of the invasive Argentine ant in northern California, arboreal ant trail networks and ant-plant mutualisms in Central America. More»
#803 Lee Dugatkin - Power in the Wild, The Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others

Jul 3, 2023

Dr. Lee Dugatkin is a Professor of Biology and Distinguished Arts and Sciences Scholar in the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville. He is a behavioral ecologist and historian of science and his main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior. He is the author of numerous books, including, Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale’s Museum, How to Tame a Fox and Build a Dog, and textbooks like Principles of Animal Behavior, and Evolution. His latest book is Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others. More»
#802 Jared Rubin - How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth

Jun 30, 2023

Dr. Jared Rubin is Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Society at Chapman University. Dr. Rubin is an economic historian interested in the political and religious economies of the Middle East and Western Europe. His research focuses on historical relationships between political and religious institutions and their role in economic development. He is the author, together with Mark Koyama, of How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth. More»
#801 Jeffrey Lees: Implicit Attitudes, Meta-Perceptions, Morality, and Political Polarization

Jun 29, 2023

Dr. Jeffrey Lees is Associate Research Scholar in the Behavioral Science for Policy Lab at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior & Psychology from Harvard University in 2020. He is a behavioral scientist studying the consequences of inaccurate beliefs for organizations, politics, and society. More»
#800 Daisy Dixon: Art as Speech, Artistic Hate Speech, and Immoral Artists

Jun 26, 2023

Dr. Daisy Dixon is a philosopher of art and an artist, and a Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University. Her research falls at the intersection of philosophy of art, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. She explores how visual art behaves like speech, and how curators and interpreters can affect what an artwork communicates to its audience. Her current project concerns unjust aesthetics and aesthetic injustice, focusing on artistic hate speech, aesthetic ‘counterspeech’, and deceptive art. Her teaching interests span aesthetics, philosophy of language, ethics, and feminist philosophy. She is also a practicing artist in paint and sound. More»
#799 Pasquale Raia: The Impact of Climate Change on Evolution, and the Extinction of Species

Jun 23, 2023

Dr. Pasquale Raia is Professor of Paleontology and Paleoecology at the University of Naples Federico II. His scientific interests concern the evolution and the dynamics of extinction of animal species, and in particular the fossils of hominid species. His most notable scientific contributions regard evolutionary theories about the evolution of insular species, the complexity of organisms, and the dynamics of extinction of hominids. More»
#798 Onurcan Yilmaz: Cognitive Styles, Politics, Morality, and Religion

Jun 22, 2023

Dr. Onurcan Yilmaz is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, and he currently leads the Moral Intuitions Laboratory (MINT Lab). He studies the intersection between morality, religion, politics and decision-making from perspectives derived from cognitive and evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics. His research mainly focuses on dual-process accounts of moral judgment and behavior. More»
#797 Evelina Fedorenko: The Neuroscience of Language

Jun 19, 2023

Dr. Evelina Fedorenko is Middleton CD Associate Professor of Neuroscience in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at MIT. Her research focuses on the language system, including its internal architecture, and its relationship with other cognitive systems. She uses behavioral, fMRI, intracranial recording, computational, and genotyping methods in healthy adults and individuals with brain disorders. More»
#796 Paul Harris - Child Psychology in Twelve Questions

Jun 16, 2023

Dr. Paul Harris is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He is interested in the early development of cognition, emotion, and imagination. He is the author of several books, the most recent one being Child Psychology in Twelve Questions. More»
#795 Owen Flanagan - The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility

Jun 15, 2023

Dr. Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duke University. His work is in philosophy of mind and psychiatry, ethics, moral psychology, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is the author of The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility. More»