All Episodes

#1038 Briana Pobiner: The Evolution of the Human Diet

Dec 27, 2024

Dr. Briana Pobiner is a paleoanthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Her research centers on the evolution of human diet (with a focus on meat-eating), but has included topics as diverse as human cannibalism and chimpanzee carnivory. She has done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Indonesia and has been supported in her research by the Fulbright-Hays program, the Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, Rutgers University, the Society for American Archaeology, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. More»
#1037 John Hibbing: The Left, The Right, and the Biology of Political Differences

Dec 26, 2024

Dr. John Hibbing is the Foundation Regents University professor of political science and psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a NATO Fellow in Science, and a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of Predisposed: The Left, The Right, and the Biology of Political Differences. More»
#1036 Roderick McIntosh: Archaeology, Urbanism, State Formation and Human Evolution in Africa

Dec 23, 2024

Dr. Roderick McIntosh is Clayton Stephenson Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, Curator of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum, New Haven, and Honorary Distinguished Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His interests are in African and Old World comparative prehistory, intellectual history of prehistoric archaeology, ethnicity and specialization and the origin of authority in complex society, urbanism, geomorphology and palaeoclimate, and more topics. Dr. McIntosh has been a Guggenheim Fellow, twice a Fulbright Senior Fellow (Senegal and Mali), and has held a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford). More»
#1035 L. Syd M. Johnson: Controversies About Brain Death

Dec 20, 2024

Dr. L. Syd M. Johnson is a philosopher/bioethicist/neuroethicist, a Clinical Ethics Consultant, and Associate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She is a member of the Neuroethics Working Group of the NIH BRAIN Initiative, Associate Editor for Neuroethics, and the co-founder of the American Society for Bioethics + Humanities Animal Bioethics Affinity Group. Her research focuses on ethical issues related to brain injuries, including sport-related neurotrauma, brain death, and disorders of consciousness. She is the author of Philosophical, Medical, and Legal Controversies About Brain Death. More»
#1034 Elise Zipkin: Population Dynamics, Biodiversity, and Climate Change

Dec 19, 2024

Dr. Elise Zipkin is Red Cedar Distinguished Professor and Director of the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program in the Department of Integrative Biology at Michigan State University. She is a quantitative ecologist who connects the complexities of natural communities with the precision of mathematics to shine light on mysteries in ecology and conservation. Dr. Zipkin and her team develop analytical frameworks to address grand challenges in the study of biodiversity loss and the effects of anthropogenic activities, such as climate change. More»
#1033 Michael Levin: Self, Collective Intelligence, Cognition, Life after Death, & More

Dec 16, 2024

Dr. Michael Levin is Distinguished Professor in the Biology Department and Vannevar Bush Chair, as well as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology at Tufts University. His work is focused on understanding the biophysical mechanisms that implement decision-making during complex pattern regulation, and harnessing endogenous bioelectric dynamics toward rational control of growth and form. More»
#1032 Craig Callender: The Physics of Time

Dec 13, 2024

Dr. Craig Callender is Tata Chancellor's Professor of Philosophy and a Founding Faculty and Co-Director of the Institute for Practical Ethics at the University of California, San Diego. His main area of research and teaching is philosophy of science, ranging from the nature of time to various applied social and ethical issues. More»
#1031 Peter Lindert: How Government Social Spending Works

Dec 12, 2024

Dr. Peter Lindert is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Lindert studies the causes and effects of modern fiscal redistribution; and the history of inequality, political voice and economic growth. He is the author of several books, including Making Social Spending Work. More»
#1030 Joel Marks: Are Moral Values Objective?

Dec 9, 2024

Dr. Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. His main areas of scholarly interest have been theoretical and applied ethics, both having come together in recent years in thinking about animal ethics. Meanwhile a new area of interest is planetary defense (against comets and asteroids). He is the author of several books, including the latest one, The Spread: and other essays on moralism and guilt. More»
#1029 J. Doyne Farmer - Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World

Dec 6, 2024

Dr. J. Doyne Farmer is the Director of the Complexity Economics programme at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, Baillie Gifford Professor of Complex Systems Science at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His current research is in economics, including agent-based modeling, financial instability and technological progress. His past research includes complex systems, dynamical systems theory, time series analysis and theoretical biology. He was an Oppenheimer Fellow and the founder of the Complex Systems Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World. More»