All Episodes

#524 Andrew Guess: Political Polarization, Misinformation, Fake News, and Digital Media Literacy

Sep 20, 2021

Dr. Andrew Guess is an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and political behavior. Via a combination of experimental methods, large datasets, machine learning, and innovative measurement, he studies how people choose, process, spread, and respond to information about politics. Recent work investigates the extent to which online Americans' news habits are polarized (the popular "echo chambers" hypothesis), patterns in the consumption and spread of online misinformation, and the effectiveness of efforts to counteract misperceptions encountered on social media. More»
#523 Roman Yampolskiy: AI, Security, Controllability, and the Singularity

Sep 17, 2021

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy is a Tenured Associate Professor in the department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville. He is the founding and current director of the Cyber Security Lab and an author of many books including Artificial Superintelligence: a Futuristic Approach. Dr. Yampolskiy is a Senior member of IEEE and AGI; Member of Kentucky Academy of Science, and Research Advisor for MIRI and Associate of GCRI. Dr. Yampolskiy’s main areas of interest are AI Safety, Artificial Intelligence, Behavioral Biometrics, Cybersecurity, Digital Forensics, Games, Genetic Algorithms, and Pattern Recognition. More»
#522 Jaimie Krems: Female Friendships, Stereotypes, and Religion and Monogamy

Sep 16, 2021

Dr. Jaimie Krems is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Krems is a social psychologist with interdisciplinary training. Her research draws on theoretical perspectives from social psychology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, as well as animal behavior to investigate how people use cues to strategically navigate their social worlds and meet their social goals. More»
#521 Edward Watts - The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea

Sep 13, 2021

Dr. Edward Watts is presently the Vassiliadis Professor of Byzantine Greek History at UC San Diego, where he was formerly Co-Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies. His research interests center on the intellectual and religious history of the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. He is the author of several books on ancient history, including Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny. His new book is The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. More»
#520 Agustín Fuentes: Race, Gender, Monogamy, and Darwin's Descent of Man (150th anniversary)

Sep 10, 2021

Dr. Agustín Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research focuses on the biosocial, delving into the entanglement of biological systems with the social and cultural lives of humans, our ancestors, and a few of the other animals with whom humanity shares close relations. Dr. Fuentes was awarded the Inaugural Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association, and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of books like Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature, and Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. More»
#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»