All Episodes

#189 Viviana Weekes-Shackelford: Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, And Modern Society

Jun 13, 2019

Dr. Viviana Weekes-Shackelford received her Ph.D. in evolutionary developmental psychology in 2011 from Florida Atlantic University. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminal Justice at Oakland University and Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab. Her research over the years has been evolutionarily inspired and has had the broader goal of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of violence and conflict in families and romantic relationships. Her research interests and record cut across the psychological domains of forensics, development, social, personality, clinical, and criminology. More»
#187 Robert Trivers: Parental Investment, Reciprocal Altruism, Self-Deception

Jun 7, 2019

Dr. Robert Trivers is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. He proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict. Steven Pinker considers Dr. Trivers to be "one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought". He’s also the author of books like Social Evolution (1985), Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements (2006), Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011), and Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist (2015). More»
#186 Felix Warneken: Cooperation And Altruism In Apes And Children

Jun 6, 2019

Dr. Felix Warneken is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He’s interested in Developmental Psychology; Culture; Cognition; and Comparative Animal Behavior. His research group addresses questions like how and why human social life involves complex interactions between individuals working together, and what cognitive skills allow them to do so. They do so by examining the earliest forms of cooperation in young children, untangling the processes shaping cooperation across development in different sociocultural contexts, and comparing human cooperation with that of our closest evolutionary relatives, the great Apes. More»
#185 Helen Fisher: The Anthropology Of Romantic Love, Attraction, And Attachment

Jun 3, 2019

Dr. Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist, and a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships-- what she calls: slow love. She’s the author of books like Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love, and Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. More»
#184 Hector Garcia: Sex, Power, And Partisanship

May 31, 2019

Dr. Hector A. Garcia is a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He’s Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He has published extensively on the treatment of PTSD in combat veterans, masculine psychology in the aftermath of war, the evolutionary roots of political partisanship, and the interplay between religious practice and psychopathology. He’s also the author of Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression, and Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide. More»
#183 Charles Lineweaver: Astrobiology, And What Is Life

May 30, 2019

Dr. Charles H. Lineweaver is the convener of the Australian National University's Planetary Science Institute and holds a joint appointment as an associate professor in the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Research School of Earth Sciences. He was a member of the COBE satellite team that discovered the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Before his appointment at ANU, he held post-doctoral positions at Strasbourg Observatory and the University of New South Wales where he taught one of the most popular general studies courses "Are We Alone?". His research areas include cosmology, exoplanetology, and astrobiology and evolutionary biology. More»
#182 David Bjorklund: Evolution, Child Development, And Modern Environments

May 27, 2019

Dr. David F. Bjorklund is a Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental and evolutionary psychology. He served as Associate Editor of Child Development (1997-2001) and is currently serving as Editor of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. His books include The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (with Anthony Pellegrini), Origins of the Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Child Development (edited with Bruce Ellis), Why Youth is Not Wasted on the Young: Immaturity in Human Development, Child and Adolescent Development: An Integrative Approach (with Carlos Hernández Blasi), and Children's Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences, now in its fifth edition. His current research interests include children's cognitive development and evolutionary developmental psychology. More»
#181 Cory Clark: The Psychology of Moral Judgment And Political Bias

May 24, 2019

Dr. Cory Clark is an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Psychology at Durham University, UK. Dr. Clark does research in Moral Psychology, Political Psychology, Experimental Philosophy, and Motivated Cognition. She’s also the cohost of Psyphilopod. More»
#180 Joseph Bulbulia: Religion, Cognition, Ritual, Morality, And Meaning

May 23, 2019

Dr. Joseph A. Bulbulia is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, where he was appointed the Maclaurin Goodfellow Chair in Theological and Religious Studies in 2018. Dr. Bulbulia is regarded as one of the founders of the contemporary evolutionary religious studies. He is a past President of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion and is currently co-editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior. Dr. Bulbulia is one of four on the Senior Management Team of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a 20-year longitudinal study tracking over 15,000 New Zealanders each year. He is an associate investigator for Pulotu, a database of 116 Pacific cultures purpose-built to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of religion. In 2016, Dr. Bulbulia won a Research Excellence Award at Victoria University. More»
#179 Justin Barrett: Cognition And Development In Religion

May 20, 2019

Dr. Justin L. Barrett is Professor of Psychology at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology and Chief Project Developer for the Office for Science, Theology and Religion Iniciatives at Fuller Theological Seminary. Professor Barrett is regarded as one of the founders of the cognitive science of religion field. He’s also the author of books like Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds, and Born Believers: The Science of Children's Religious Belief. More»