All Episodes

#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»
#178 Stephen Shennan: Darwinian Archaeology, Culture, and The Origins of Agriculture

May 17, 2019

Dr. Stephen Shennan is Professor of Theoretical Archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. Dr. Shennan focuses on cultural evolution and Darwinian archaeology, applying theories from evolutionary ecology and cladistics to archaeology. In July 2006, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy. He’s the author of several books, including Genes, Memes and Human History: Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution, Mapping Our Ancestors: Phylogenetic Approaches in Anthropology and Prehistory, and The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective. More»
#177 Azim Shariff: The Science of Religion, Morality, And Self-Driving Cars

May 16, 2019

Dr. Azim Shariff is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a social psychologist whose research focuses on where morality intersects with religion, cultural attitudes and economics. Another rapidly expanding part of his research looks at human-technology interactions and the ethics of automation, including self-driving cars. More»
#176 John Brooke: Environmental History, And The Anthropocene

May 13, 2019

Dr. John Brooke is Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Ohio State University Center for Historical Research. He is also the co-chair of the 2011-2012 Program: Disease, Health, and Environment in Global History. In 2007-2008 he served as the president of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. His teaching areas include Early American History and Environmental History. His most recent book, Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey, published in 2014, examines the long material and natural history of the human condition. More»
#175 Nicole Barbaro: Mating, Life History, Attachment, And Mate Guarding

May 10, 2019

Nicole Barbaro is currently a PhD student in evolutionary psychology at Oakland University, studying under the advisement of Todd K. Shackelford. She serves as the Student Representative of the Executive Council for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. She also serves on the Editorial Board as a Review Editor for Frontiers in Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, as well as a Section Editor for the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Her interests are in human sexual psychology and behavior, including application of life history theory and sperm competition theory. More»
#174 Michael Muthukrishna: Human Culture, The Cultural Brain, And Political Corruption

May 9, 2019

Dr. Michael Muthukrishna is an Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics. His other affiliations include Research Associate of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD, and Technical Director of The Database of Religious History. His research focuses on the psychological and evolutionary processes that underlie culture and how culture is transmitted, maintained, and modified. He’s interested in better understanding the dynamic relationship between “cultures” and individuals, where cultures emerge from the interactions of individuals over time, who are in turn shaped by the emergent cultures they constitute. He’s particularly interested in the application of research in cultural evolution to public policy. More»
#173 Belén López-Pérez: Cruel To Be Kind, Empathy, Emotion Regulation, and Happiness

May 6, 2019

Dr. Belén López-Pérez is a Lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool Hope University in the UK, where she also directs the ChildLab. She concluded her PhD in Social psychology at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in 2012, and her Postdoctoral research in Social and Developmental Psychology in the School of Psychology at Plymouth University. Her research interests include empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation across the lifespan, as well as happiness and wellbeing. Her current research projects are focused on interpersonal emotion regulation in childhood and developmental differences in emotion goals (i.e., what people would like to feel in different contexts). More»