All Episodes

#433 Timothy Lenton - Revolutions that Made the Earth

Feb 19, 2021

Dr. Timothy Lenton is Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and Director of the Global Systems Institute. He has over 20 years of research experience in studying the Earth as a system, and developing and using models to understand its behavior. He is particularly interested in how life has reshaped the planet in the past, and what lessons we can draw from this as we proceed to reshape the planet now. These topics are covered in his books ‘Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction’ (OUP, 2016) and (with Andrew Watson) ’Revolutions that Made the Earth’ (OUP, 2011). More»
#432 Laith Al-Shawaf: Evolutionary Psychology, Just-so Stories, Anger and Disgust, and Culture

Feb 18, 2021

Dr. Laith Al-Shawaf is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Before, he was an Assistant Professor at Bilkent University in Turkey and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Germany. Laith has taught and conducted research in several different countries, and is a member of the Arab-German Young Academy (AGYA), as well as an academic adviser at Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB). More»
#431 Menelaos Apostolou: The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction

Feb 15, 2021

Dr. Menelaos Apostolou is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. He was born in Athens, Greece and he completed his post-graduate and graduate studies in the United Kingdom. He has published several peer-reviewed papers, books and chapters in books in the area of evolutionary psychology. He’s the author of a new book, The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction. More»
#430 David Lahti: Philosophy of Biology, Complex Traits, and Evolutionary Ethics

Feb 12, 2021

Dr. David C. Lahti is an Associate Professor of Biology at Queens College, City University of New York, where he runs a Behavior & Evolution laboratory. His work focuses on evolutionary and behavioral ecology, especially the evolution of complex and learned traits in birds and humans. More»
#429 Andrew Berry: The History of Evolutionary Biology (Pt. 1)

Feb 11, 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»
#428 Stanley Fish - There's No Such Thing as Free Speech

Feb 8, 2021

Dr. Stanley Fish is Professor of Law at Florida International University and Visiting Professor of Law at Cardoso Law School. In addition to being one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include He has authored over 200 scholarly publications and books. While his research covers a variety of fields, Professor Dr. Fish has written for many of the country’s leading law journals. including Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Texas Law Review. His books include Is there a Text in This Class? Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority (1980); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995); The Trouble with Principle (1999); How Milton Works (2001); and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump (2019). More»
#427 Arthur Glenberg: Embodied Cognition, Simulation, Mirror Neurons, and Education

Feb 5, 2021
#426 Lyle Steadman: Society, Kinship, Tradition, Ancestor Worship, and Religion

Feb 4, 2021

Dr. Lyle Steadman is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. Dr. Steadman focuses on religion and kinship, especially their interrelationship, and the influence of natural selection on human social and cultural behavior. He has done extensive research among the Hewa, a society in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. A short period of fieldwork was also conducted in an Indian village in Baja California, Mexico. More»
#425 Azar Gat - Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism

Feb 1, 2021

Dr. Azar Gat is the Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University, in Israel. He is the founder and head of the University's International Program in Security and Diplomacy Executive Master’s Program in Diplomacy and Security. He’s also the author of books like A History of Military Thought, War in Human Civilization, and Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. More»
#424 Stefaan Blancke: Science, Pseudoscience, Rationality, and Cultural Evolution

Jan 29, 2021

Dr. Stefaan Blancke is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University, Netherlands. He studies the diffusion of (pseudo)scientific beliefs from an epidemiological perspective. His research focuses on the psychological and environmental factors that shape and constrain the development and distribution of these beliefs in the history and philosophy of science, science education and the public understanding of science. He is also interested in the philosophy of cultural evolution and the role of reasons in cultural phenomena such as science, morality and the self. More»