All Episodes

#242 Nicholas Humphrey: The Psychology Of Consciousness And Intelligence

Oct 14, 2019

Dr. Nicholas Humphrey is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities, and Senior Member at Darwin College, Cambridge. Dr. Humphrey is a theoretical psychologist, who is known for his work on the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness. His interests are wide ranging. He studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, he was the first to demonstrate the existence of “blindsight” after brain damage in monkeys, he proposed the celebrated theory of the "social function of intellect", and he is the only scientist ever to edit the literary journal Granta. His books include Consciousness Regained, The Inner Eye, A History of the Mind, Leaps of Faith, The Mind Made Flesh, Seeing Red and, most recently, Soul Dust. He has been the recipient of several honors, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the British Psychological Society’s book award, the Pufendorf Medal, and the International Mind and Brain Prize. More»
#241 Marianne Brandon: Sex Robots And Human Sexuality

Oct 11, 2019

Dr. Marianne Brandon is a clinical psychologist and Diplomate in sex therapy. Dr. Brandon is the author of Monogamy: The Untold Story, the ebook Unlocking the Sexy in Surrender: Using the Neuroscience of Power to Recharge Your Sex Life, and co-author of the book Reclaiming Desire: 4 Keys to Finding Your Lost Libido. Dr. Brandon served as a board member for an International Sexual Health Society, and also co-hosted a sex therapy radio show called “In Bed with Dr. B and Ted”. Dr. Brandon is a member of the Massachusetts Psychological Association; Maryland Psychological Association; the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology; The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists; The Society for Sex Therapy and Research; The International society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health; The Sexual Medicine Society of North America; and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Dr Brandon is licensed to practice in Massachusetts, Missouri, Maryland, Washington D.C., and New York. The following are among the issues in which Dr. Brandon has special interest and training: sex therapy, sexual desire disorders, marital/relationship problems, hypersexual behavior, monogamy and fidelity, affair recovery, depression, cultivating passion in long-term relationships, stress, anxiety, alternative sexual relationships, pain during intercourse, and erectile concerns. More»
#240 Paul Katsafanas: Nietzsche and Moral Psychology

Oct 10, 2019

Dr. Paul Katsafanas is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. He works on ethics, moral psychology, and nineteenth-century philosophy. He’s the author of the books Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism, and The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious. More»
#239 Abigail Page: Cooperative Breeding, Social Networks, And Health In The Agta

Oct 7, 2019

Dr. Abigail Page is MRC Research Fellow at the Department of Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research is focused on understanding the relationship between the environment (both social and natural) and behavior, and ultimately how this influences health and wellbeing. Her background is in evolutionary approaches to human behavior (in particular Human Behavioral Ecology), therefore her research seeks to test hypotheses developed from evolutionary theory and ultimately, to understand the function of any given behavior. Dr. Page’s interests are also influenced by Evolutionary Medicine and Applied Evolutionary Anthropology and Demography. More»
#238 Elizabeth Hill: Life History Theory, Development, And Risky Behavior

Oct 4, 2019

Dr. Elizabeth Hill is Professor of Psychology at the University of Detroit Mercy. Dr. Hill received her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Tulane University. She teaches courses in research methods, statistics, biopsychology, and gender differences. Her primary areas of research interest and activity focus on evolutionary and comparative psychology. She has investigated the interaction between biological and environmental factors in risk-taking behavior. In this research, she used evolutionary theory related to parental investment and life history strategies to conceptualize environmental factors, especially the impact of an unpredictable family environment. The areas of impulsivity, risky drinking and risk taking have been of most interest. She joined the University of Detroit Mercy faculty in 1997 and holds the position of Professor of Psychology. Hill also serves as the chair of the Detroit Mercy Institutional Review Board (IRB). More»
#237 Herbert Gintis: Altruism And Self-interest, As Revealed Through Game Theory

Oct 3, 2019

Dr. Herbert Gintis is External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He and Professor Robert Boyd (Anthropology, UCLA) headed a multidisciplinary research project that models such behaviors as empathy, reciprocity, insider/outsider behavior, vengefulness, and other observed human behaviors not well handled by the traditional model of the self-regarding agent. Professor Gintis is also author of several books including Game Theory Evolving, The Bounds of Reason, A Cooperative Species, Game Theory in Action, and Individuality and Entanglement and also coeditor, with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, and Ernst Fehr, of Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies, and with Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr of Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life. More»
#236 Sarah Hill: This Is Your Brain on Birth Control

Sep 30, 2019

SORRY ABOUT THE ISSUES WITH THE VIDEO QUALITY. THE CONNECTION WAS A BIT WEAK. More»
#235 RoundTable 1: What is PsychTable? ft. Daniel Glass & Niruban Balachandran

Sep 27, 2019

Dr. Daniel Glass is a clinician and researcher in the disciplines of evolutionary and clinical psychology. He has published sixteen peer-reviewed scholarly articles in the fields of psychology, medicine, and evolutionary studies, on subjects ranging from human emotions to peer bullying/victimization to Alzheimer’s disease. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Suffolk University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at a private practice in Connecticut. His dissertation is on the emotional processing function of dreaming. More»
#234 Samir Okasha: Natural Selection, From Genes To Groups

Sep 26, 2019

Dr. Samir Okasha is a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. He is a winner of the Lakatos Award for his book Evolution and the Levels of Selection. He was appointed a Fellow of the British Academy in 2018, and he is also the President of the European Philosophy of Science Association. He has broad philosophical interests, though most of his research falls into two main areas: (i) philosophy of biology / evolutionary theory; and (ii) epistemology /philosophy of science. Within philosophy of biology, he is especially interested in foundational and conceptual questions surrounding evolutionary theory. For many years, his research focused on the 'levels of selection' question in evolutionary biology, and the related issue of individual versus group conflicts of interest. More»
#233 Randolph Nesse: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

Sep 23, 2019

Dr. Randolph Nesse is Foundation Professor of Life Sciences and Founding Director in The Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University, Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, and Founding President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. He was the initial organizer and second president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and is currently the president of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). He’s also the author of several books, including Why We Get Sick (coauthored with George C. Williams) and, more recently, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings (2019). More»