All Episodes

#336 Melinda Zeder: Domestication, And The Origins and Dispersal of Agriculture

May 21, 2020

Dr. Melinda Zeder is Curator Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Her zooarchaeological research has revolutionized the understanding of animal domestication. She has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the Near East, including in Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Syria. Her research focuses on the origins of plant and animal domestication, and the impacts of agriculture on human prehistory. She has also pioneered approaches that combine archaeological and genetic analyses of plant and animal remains from archaeological sites. More»
#335 Jeroen Hopster: Evolution, Morality, Climate Change, And Animal Rights

May 18, 2020

Dr. Jeroen Hopster was a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, and now he is doing research on climate ethics at the University of Graz. In February 2019 he defended his dissertation 'Moral Objectivity: Origins and Foundations'. More»
#334 Brian Hayden: Cultural Ecology, Feasting, Ritual Sanctuaries, And Funerals

May 15, 2020

Dr. Brian Hayden is Retired Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University, and he also holds a research position at the University of British Columbia. His research topics include Cultural ecology and political ecology; Hunting and gathering societies; transegalitarian societies; Aggrandizer strategies, especially feasting and secret societies; Prehistory of religion & early ritual structures; and lithic technology. More»
#333 Bernard Wood: Paleoanthropology, Human Systematics, And Human Evolution

May 14, 2020

Dr. Bernard Wood is University Professor of Human Origins at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences at George Washington University. He is a medically trained paleoanthropologist. His research interests are all related in one way or another to a long-standing pre-occupation with hominin systematics. How can we improve our ability to recognize species in the fossil record, and how can we do a better job of reconstructing their phylogenetic relationships? His current research interests are phylogeny reconstruction, hominin systematics, dental evolution, evolvability within the hominin clade, and diet reconstruction. He’s the author of several books, including Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction, and Human Evolution: A Guide to Fossil Evidence. More»
#332 Jeffrey Barrett: The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

May 11, 2020

Dr. Jeffrey Barrett is Chancellor’s Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine. His current research involves two general topics. First, he is interested in attempts to resolve the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. Second, he is interested in using decision theory and evolutionary game theory to model basic features of empirical and mathematical inquiry. In particular, he has been modeling the coevolution of descriptive language and predictive theory in the context of Skyrms-Lewis sender-receiver games. More»
#331 Hugo Mercier: Not Born Yesterday; Gullibility, Vigilance, Politics, and Social Media

May 8, 2020

Dr. Hugo Mercier is a research scientist at the CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Institut Jean Nicod), where he works with the Evolution and Social Cognition team. Most of his work so far has focused on the function and workings of reasoning. He’s the author of The Enigma of Reason, and, more recently, Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe. More»
#329 Luciano Floridi: Information, Knowledge, Science, and AI

May 4, 2020

Dr. Luciano Floridi is the OII‘s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he is also the Director of the Digital Ethics Lab of the Oxford Internet Institute, and Professorial Fellow of Exeter College. He is a Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (the UK national institute for data science and artificial intelligence) and Chair of its Data Ethics Group. Still in Oxford, he is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and Senior Member of the Faculty of Philosophy, and Research Associate and Fellow in Information Policy of the Department of Computer Science. He’s also Adjunct Professor (“Distinguished Scholar in Residence”) of the Department of Economics, at the American University, Washington D.C. His research concerns primarily Digital Ethics (aka Information and Computer Ethics), the Philosophy of Information, and the Philosophy of Technology. His other research interests include Epistemology, Philosophy of Logic, and the History and Philosophy of Scepticism. More»
#328 Iris Berent - The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature

May 1, 2020

Dr. Iris Berent is Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, US. Her research examines the nature of linguistic competence, its origins, and its interaction with reading ability. She’s the author of the book The Phonological Mind. She is also the author of a new book, The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature. More»
#327 Sarah Garfinkel: Interoception, Emotion, And Mental Health

Apr 30, 2020

Dr. Sarah Garfinkel is Professor of neuroscience and psychiatry based at the University of Sussex and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Her research is focused on the link between interoception and emotion and memory. In 2018, she was selected as one of 11 researchers on the Nature Index 2018 Rising Stars. Dr. Garfinkel's research focuses on interoception, the ability to sense one’s own body, and the link between interoception and the brain. She specifically focuses on the heartbeat, and has shown that the heartbeat, and perception thereof, influences the way people process fear. Her research has furthermore shown that autistic people experience difficulty judging their heartbeat, causing anxiety and stress. This research has led to the development of a new therapy technique called interoception-directed therapy, which aims to reduce anxiety in autistic individuals. More»
#326 Cristine Legare: Child Development, Culture, and Scientific Reasoning

Apr 27, 2020

Dr. Cristine Legare is a professor of psychology and the director of the Evolution, Variation, and Ontogeny of Learning Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines how the human mind enables us to learn, create, and transmit culture. She conducts comparisons across age, culture, and species to address fundamental questions about cognitive and cultural evolution. More»