All Episodes

#490 Mark Stoneking: Evolutionary Genetics, The Mitochondrial Eve, and Out of Africa Migrations

Jul 2, 2021

Dr. Mark Stoneking directs the Human Population History Group in the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is also Honorary Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. Dr. Stoneking’s research uses molecular genetic approaches to address questions of anthropological interest concerning the origins, migrations, structure, and relationships of human populations. He, along with his doctoral advisor Allan Wilson and a fellow researcher Rebecca L. Cann, contributed to the Out of Africa Theory in 1987 by introducing the concept of Mitochondrial Eve, a hypothetical common mother of all living humans based on mitochondrial DNA. More»
#489 David Potter - Disruption: Why Things Change

Jul 1, 2021

Dr. David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. His books include The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian, Constantine the Emperor, The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, and Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint. His new book is Disruption: Why Things Change. More»
#488 Erik Kimbrough: Norms, Institutions, Impersonal Exchange, Specialization, and Organ Donation

Jun 28, 2021

Dr. Erik Kimbrough is an associate professor of economics at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy in the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. His research uses experiments to explore the underpinnings of prosociality, cooperation and conflict resolution and to identify the origins of economic institutions such as property rights. He has also worked on finding ways to increase the supply of transplantable organs, measuring the spitefulness of individuals, understanding the sources of asset price bubbles, evaluating individual theory of mind, and capturing the discovery process underlying specialization and trade, among other topics. More»
#487 Suzana Herculano-Houzel: The Evolution of the Human Brain, and Darwin's Descent of Man

Jun 25, 2021

Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel is Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director for Communications at Vanderbilt Brain Institute at Vanderbilt University. She is interested in comparative neuroanatomy, cellular composition of brains, brain morphology, brain evolution, metabolic cost of body and brain, sleep requirement across species, feeding time, and really interested in how all of these are tied together. She writes about neuroscience and science in general for the public. She is the author of The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable (MIT Press, 2016). More»
#486 Kevin Mitchell: Psychological Epigenetics, and Other Fads in Neuroscience

Jun 24, 2021

Dr. Kevin Mitchell is Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He is interested in the development of connectivity in the brain, specifically in how this process is controlled by genes and how mutations in such genes affect the connectivity of neuronal circuits, influence behavior and perception and contribute to disease. His research group uses genetic approaches in the mouse to address these questions, and they are also involved in collaborative research looking at the genetics and phenotypic manifestations of synaesthesia and schizophrenia in humans. He’s the author of Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are. More»
#485 Joshua Glasgow - The Solace: Finding Value in Death through Gratitude for Life

Jun 21, 2021

Dr. Joshua Glasgow is Associate Professor in (and Chair of) the Philosophy Department at Sonoma State University. Dr. Glasgow works on a variety of topics in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His publications have covered a variety of issues concerning ethics, the good life, race and racism, language, law, mind, and more. He’s the author of The Solace: Finding Value in Death Through Gratitude for Life. More»
#484 David Bjorklund - How Children Invented Humanity: The Role of Development in Human Evolution

Jun 18, 2021

Dr. David F. Bjorklund is a Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental and evolutionary psychology. His books include The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (with Anthony Pellegrini), Origins of the Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Child Development (edited with Bruce Ellis), Why Youth is Not Wasted on the Young: Immaturity in Human Development, Child and Adolescent Development: An Integrative Approach (with Carlos Hernández Blasi), and Children's Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences, now in its fifth edition. His new book is How Children Invented Humanity: The Role of Development in Human Evolution. More»
#483 Lauren Brent: The Evolution of Sociality, and Primate Societies

Jun 17, 2021

Dr. Lauren Brent is Associate Professor in the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter. She is a biologist interested in the evolution of sociality. Her research asks why social relationships are formed and how they are maintained. Her work focuses on highly gregarious, group-living animals. She works mostly with data collected from wild or free-ranging groups, and specialize on study systems with uniquely long-term datasets. She uses a diverse set of methods, including techniques from ethology, evolutionary biology, quantitative and functional genetics, life-history evolution, endocrinology, comparative psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. More»
#482 David Pearce: Transhumanism, The Hedonistic Imperative, and Abolishing Suffering

Jun 14, 2021

David Pearce is a prominent figure within the transhumanism movement and one of the co-founders of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+. He approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective. Pearce maintains a series of websites devoted to transhumanist topics and what he calls the "hedonistic imperative", a moral obligation to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His self-published internet manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative (1995), outlines how pharmacology, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and neurosurgery could converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience from human and non-human life, replacing suffering with "gradients of bliss". Pearce calls this the "abolitionist project". More»
#481 Saul Smilansky: 10 Moral Paradoxes

Jun 11, 2021

Dr. Saul Smilansky is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Haifa, Israel. He works primarily on normative and applied ethics, the free will problem, and the meaning of life. He is the author of Free Will and Illusion (Oxford University Press 2000), and 10 Moral Paradoxes (Blackwell 2007). More»