All Episodes

#527 Kim Hill: Human Sociality, Human Universals, and Protecting Isolated Societies

Sep 27, 2021

Dr. Kim Hill is a professor in the Anthropology department at Arizona State University. Dr. Hill's theoretical interests are human evolutionary ecology, including focal areas such as foraging theory, time allocation, food sharing, life history evolution, parental investment, cooperation, culture and cognition, the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens and unique characteristics of our species. His field experience involves hunter-gatherers and natives of the Neotropics. He has nearly 30 years of fieldwork with Ache (Paraguay), Hiwi (Venezuela), Mashco-Piro, Matsiguenga and Yora (Peru) and has conducted extensive travels to indigenous communities in Latin America. He also worked on foraging problems in Coastal South Africa, and most recently has studied cooperation among Sea Nomads of Southern Mindanao (Philippines). More»
#526 Jordan Moss: The Psychology of the Alt-right and the PC Authoritarians and Liberals

Sep 24, 2021

Jordan Moss is a psychology graduate and medical student at the University of Sydney. He has research interests in individual differences, with particular interest in personality theory and moral psychology. More»
#525 Brian Leiter: Moral Psychology with Nietzsche

Sep 23, 2021

Dr. Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and founder and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy and Human Values. His teaching and research interests are in moral, political, and legal philosophy, in both the Anglophone and Continental European traditions, and the law of evidence. He is the author of books like Nietzsche on Morality, Naturalizing Jurisprudence, Why Tolerate Religion? and, more recently, Moral Psychology with Nietzsche. More»
#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»