All Episodes

#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»
#232 Glenn Geher: Positive Evolutionary Psychology, Darwin's Guide to Living a Richer Life

Sep 20, 2019

Dr. Glenn Geher is Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he has been awarded SUNY Chancellor Awards for Excellence for both Teaching and Research. In addition to teaching various courses and directing the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab, Dr. Geher serves as founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program. He is also credited as the founder of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS). He has also published several books including Evolutionary Psychology 101, Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love, and Straightforward Statistics. In Darwin's Subterranean World: Evolution, Mind, and Mating Intelligence, his Psychology Today blog, Dr. Geher addresses various topics related to the human condition. He has recently released a new book, Positive Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin's Guide to Living a Richer Life. More»
#231 Carlton Patrick: From Disgust To Legal Systems

Sep 19, 2019

Dr. Carlton Patrick is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the College of Community, Innovation and Education at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Patrick studies the psychology of legal decision-making, often from an evolutionary perspective. His research combines doctrinal legal analysis with the methodologies and perspectives of the behavioral sciences to examine the roots of human behavior in legally-relevant contexts. He is the coauthor, together with Debra Lieberman, of the book Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law. More»
#230 Rutger Vos: Natural Selection, Human Behavior, Race, And Adaptations

Sep 16, 2019

Dr. Rutger Vos is an evolutionary biologist from Leiden University and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, both in The Netherlands. He does work in computational biology and contributes to various open source software projects. More»
#229 Steven Hayes: A Liberated Mind; Relational Frame Theory, And Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Sep 13, 2019

Dr. Steven C. Hayes is Nevada Foundation Professor in the Behavior Analysis program at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 44 books and nearly 600 scientific articles, his career has focused on an analysis of the nature of human language and cognition and the application of this to the understanding and alleviation of human suffering. He is the developer of Relational Frame Theory, an account of human higher cognition, and has guided its extension to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods. His most recent books include Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science, and A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters. More»
#228 Alex Mesoudi: Studying Cultural Evolution, Migration, And Transmission

Sep 12, 2019

Dr. Alex Mesoudi is an Associate Professor of Cultural Evolution at the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, UK. He studies cultural evolution, both in the lab and by constructing models and simulations of it. He’s also the author of the book Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences. More»
#227 Miguel Farias: Mindfulness, Religion, And Scientific Faith

Sep 9, 2019

Dr. Miguel Farias is an Associate Professor at Coventry University, UK. His work explores the psychological impact of beliefs and spiritual practices, including meditation and pilgrimage. He is also interested in the biological roots of our beliefs and how we can change them. He’s the author of The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?. More»
#226 Patrick Lee Miller: The Philosophy of Black Mirror

Sep 6, 2019

Dr. Patrick Lee Miller is an associate professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2012), and co-editor of Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy (Hackett, 2015). He also writes for Quillette. More»
#225 Daniel Sznycer: The Evolutionary Psychology of Emotions

Sep 5, 2019

Dr. Daniel Sznycer is Assistant Professor in Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal, Canada. He is an evolutionary social psychologist conducting research on emotion and cooperation. He has multiple lines of cross-cultural evidence on shame, pride, compassion, and envy, and their roles in altruism, cooperation, social exclusion, and conflict. He’s also working to map the system that regulates how much weight one individual places on the welfare of another. He conducts research on how these emotions and motivations regulate political and moral attitudes, and how they shape communication. The methods Dr. Sznycer uses include experimental economic games, decision-making tasks, priming methods, cross-cultural and ethnographic data collection, large-scale representative surveys, and anthropometry. More»