All Episodes

#519 Douglas Fry: The Origins and Causes of War, and Peace Social Systems and How to Maintain Them

Sep 9, 2021

Dr. Douglas P. Fry is Professor and Chair in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in his own books and in journals such as Science and American Anthropologist. His work frequently engages the debate surrounding the origins of war, arguing against claims that war or lethal aggression is rooted in human evolution. He’s the author or editor of books like The Human Potential for Peace; Beyond War; War, Peace, and Human Nature; and Nurturing Our Humanity. More»
#518 Andrew Berry: The History of Evolutionary Biology (Pt. 2) - Genetics, and Speciation

Sep 6, 2021

Dr. Andrew Berry is a lecturer in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He is an evolutionary biologist with a particular interest in Alfred Russel Wallace. His research combined field and laboratory methods to detect positive Darwinian selection (i.e. adaptive evolution) at the molecular level in natural populations. He has published two books: Infinite tropics: an Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology, with a foreword written by Stephen Jay Gould, and DNA: The Secret of Life with James Watson. More»
#517 James Costa: Darwin, Wallace, The Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man (150th anniversary)

Sep 3, 2021

Dr. James Costa is Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Western Carolina University, where he has taught courses in genetics, entomology, evolution, and biogeography since 1996. His many interests include insect behavior and ecology, environmental history and philosophy, conservation biology, and the history of science. His research has focused in recent years on Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and the history of evolutionary thought. He has authored numerous research papers, reviews, magazine articles, and 7 books, including Darwin's Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory (W. W. Norton, 2017) — a finalist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Prize — and the co-edited volume An Alfred Russel Wallace Companion (Chicago, 2019). More»
#516 Nichola Raihani - The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World

Sep 2, 2021

Dr. Nichola Raihani is Professor of Evolution and Behavior at University College London. Her research considers the evolution of cooperation in nature. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2019. Her first book is The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World. More»
#515 Sacha Altay: Social Media, Fake News, Science Communication, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Aug 30, 2021

Sacha Altay is doing his PhD in cognitive science at the Institut Jean Nicod of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Fascinated by apparently irrational beliefs and behaviors, he works with Hugo Mercier on the role of epistemic reputation in communication and the cognitive mechanisms underlying information transmission and evaluation. More»
#513 Benjamin Friedman: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Aug 26, 2021

Dr. Benjamin M. Friedman is the William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy, and formerly Chairman of the Department of Economics, at Harvard University. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1972. Dr Friedman’s newest book is Religion and the Rise of Capitalism – a fundamental reassessment of the foundations of current-day economics, showing how religious thinking has shaped economic thinking ever since the beginnings of modern Western economics and how this influence continues to be relevant today especially in the United States. His two other general interest books have been The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Knopf) and Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After (Random House). More»
#512 Sander van der Linden: Social Media, Fake News, COVID, and Science Communication

Aug 23, 2021

Dr. Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including social norms and networks, attitudes and polarization, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty. More»
#511 Cécile Sarabian: The Evolution of Disgust and Hygiene, and Conservation

Aug 20, 2021

Dr. Cécile Sarabian is a Postdoctoral researcher in Cognitive Ecology at Kyoto University. She investigates parasite avoidance behaviors and their effectiveness in non-human primates and other animals via field and lab experimentation/observations. She is generally interested in the origins of hygiene and disgust in humans and in the potential applications of disgust into the field of Conservation. More»
#510 David Buss - When Men Behave Badly; Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault (Part 2)

Aug 19, 2021

Dr. David Buss is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s one of the founders of the field of evolutionary psychology. His primary research focus is on strategies of human mating. He’s the author of many books, including The Evolution of Desire, and the first textbook in Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. His most recent book is When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault. More»
#509 Christian Hoffmann: Social Media, Fake News, and Political Polarization

Aug 16, 2021

Dr. Christian Pieter Hoffmann is Professor of Communication Management and Political Communication at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. In addition, he is responsible for teaching in the field of political communication in cooperation with the Institute for Political Science. Dr. Hoffmann is a lecturer at the University of St. Gallen, Singapore Management University, Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz and the University of Applied Sciences Zurich. His research interests include strategic communication management, financial communication and political communication – with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities provided by new media. More»