All Episodes

#379 Paul Eastwick: Close Relationships and Evolutionary Psychology

Oct 16, 2020

Dr. Paul Eastwick is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Eastwick’s research investigates how people initiate romantic relationships and the psychological mechanisms that help romantic partners to remain committed and attached. One of his research programs examines how the qualities that people say are critically important to them in a romantic partner—their ideal partner preferences—direct romantic partner selection and retention. He is also interested in exploring how close relationships research can inform evolutionary psychological approaches (and vice versa), especially with respect to the way that relationships grow and develop over time. More»
#378 Brian Hare: Survival of the Friendliest

Oct 15, 2020

Dr. Brian Hare is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. He researches the evolution of cognition by studying both humans, our close relatives the primates (especially bonobos and chimpanzees), and species whose cognition converged with our own (primarily domestic dogs). He founded and co-directs the Duke Canine Cognition Center. He’s the author of several books, including the most recent one, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. More»
#377 Michael Taborsky: The Evolution of Altruism and Sexual Reproduction

Oct 12, 2020

Dr. Michael Taborsky is the Director of the Behavioural Ecology Department and Co-director of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His major research focus is the adaptive function of behavior, with emphasis on cooperation and conflict, sociality and sexual reproduction. More»
#376 Russell Warne: Standardized Tests, Critical Thinking and Creativity

Oct 9, 2020

Dr. Russell T. Warne is Associate Professor of Psychology at Utah Valley University. Dr. Warne is the associate editor for the Journal for the Education of the Gifted and serves on the editorial boards for Intelligence, the Journal of School Psychology, Gifted Child Quarterly, and the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. Dr. Warne has published over 55 scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals and is the author of the acclaimed undergraduate statistics textbook Statistics for the Social Sciences: A General Linear Model Approach. His next book is In the Know: Debunking 35 Myths About Human Intelligence. More»
#375 Karenleigh Overmann: Cognitive Archaeology, Numeracy, and Language

Oct 8, 2020

Dr. Karenleigh A. Overmann is an associate professor of anthropology (adjunct) at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) Center for Cognitive Archaeology. She recently completed two years of postdoctoral research at the University of Bergen (MSCA individual fellowship, EU project 785793). She earned her doctorate in archaeology from the University of Oxford as a Clarendon scholar. She also has a master's degree (psychology) and bachelor's (anthropology, philosophy, English) from UCCS. She’s the editor of Squeezing Minds From Stones: Cognitive Archaeology and the Evolution of the Human Mind. More»
#374 Moshe Hoffman: Incentives, Preferences, and Reason

Oct 5, 2020

Dr. Moshe Hoffman is a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab & Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Economics. He applies game theory, models of learning and evolution, and experimental methods, to try to decipher the (often subconscious and subtle) incentives that shape our social behavior, preferences, and ideologies. Dr. Hoffman obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and his B.S. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He also co-designed and teaches "Game Theory and Social Behavior" which lays out a lot of the evidence and models behind this approach. More»
#373 Melanie Mitchell: AI, Complex Systems, Human Cognition, and Algorithms

Oct 2, 2020

Dr. Melanie Mitchell is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, and Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction, analogy-making, and visual recognition in artificial intelligence systems. Dr. Mitchell is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the ten best science books of 2009. Her latest book is Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). More»
#372 Thibaud Gruber: Primates, Tool Use, and Communication

Oct 1, 2020

Dr. Thibaud Gruber is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva, and he is also part of the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences. A primatologist halfway between Switzerland and the UK. Working with chimps, orangutans and bonobos, he is interested in the evolutionary origins of culture and language. More»
#371 Marc Bekoff: Ethology and Animal Conservation

Sep 28, 2020

Dr. Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has won many awards for his scientific research including the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, Dr. Bekoff was presented with The Bank One Faculty Community Service Award for the work he has done with children, senior citizens, and prisoners and in 2009 he was presented with the St. Francis of Assisi Award by the New Zealand SPCA. In 1986 He became the first American to win his age-class at the Tour du Haut Var bicycle race (also called the Master's/age-graded Tour de France). Dr. Bekoff has published numerous essays (popular, scientific, and book chapters), 31 books, and has edited three encyclopedias. More»
#370 Martie Haselton - Hormonal: The Hidden Intelligence of Hormones

Sep 25, 2020

Dr. Martie Haselton is Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Communication as well as the ISG (Institute for Society and Genetics) at UCLA. Her research focuses on evolution and human behavior, social psychology, interpersonal communication, and social endocrinology. Her empirical work explores intimate relationships, sexuality, olfactory communication, psychological sex differences, social inference, evolution and health, and the effects of reproductive hormones on human behavior. She’s the author of the book Hormonal: The Hidden Intelligence of Hormones -- How They Drive Desire, Shape Relationships, Influence Our Choices, and Make Us Wiser. More»