Dr. Indre Viskontas is a Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco, and serves on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is also the Creative Director of Pasadena Opera. Dr. Viskontas is a neuroscientist and operatic soprano. She holds a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and a M.M. in opera. She’s the author of How Music Can Make You Better. More»
Dr. Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, political activist, and social critic. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Dr. Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and laureate professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. More»
Dr. Kathleen Stock is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sussex. She has published on aesthetics, fiction, imagination, and sexual objectification. She is currently the vice-president of the British Society of Aesthetics. In her monograph Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination (2017) she examines the nature of fictional content. She has expressed critical views on the UK Gender Recognition Act and trans self-identification. More»
I’M SORRY ABOUT THE MISSING BITS OF AUDIO HERE AND THERE, BUT THE CONNECTION WAS A BIT WEAK. More»
Dr. Tania Reynolds is a Social Psychology postdoctoral researcher at the Kinsey Institute. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Florida State University under Dr. Roy Baumeister and Dr. Jon Maner. Her research examines how pressure to compete for social and romantic partners asymmetrically affects the competitive behaviors and well-being of men and women. Through a joint appointment with the Gender Studies department, Dr. Reynolds offers courses on human sexuality and sex/gender differences. As a collaborative research team with Justin Garcia and Amanda Gesselman, she hopes to examine the dispositional predictors and physiological correlates of individuals’ romantic relationship experiences, as well as how these associations may differ across gender and sexual orientation. More»
Dr. Catherine Salmon is a Full Professor in the psychology department at the University of Redlands. She is the co-author (with Donald Symons) of Warrior Lovers: Erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality. She has written chapters in numerous books including Buss' Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and The Literary Animal. She is also a co-editor of the books Evolutionary Psychology: Public Policy and Personal Decisions (with Charles Crawford) Family Psychology: An Evolutionary Perspective and the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology (both with Todd Shackelford), and co-author with Katrin Schuman of The Secret Power of Middle Children. Her primary research interests include birth order and the family, reproductive suppression and dieting behavior, and female sexuality, particularly with regard to prostitution and pornography. Her interest in pop culture also led to co-authoring a chapter on female wrestling fans and their fantasies in Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling. More»
Dr. Mark Sheskin is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Minerva Schools at KGI, and a Research Affiliate at Yale University, where he is coordinating thechidlab.com. His research interests are at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, with a particular focus on the origins of prosocial behavior and moral judgment. More»
Dr. Michael Gurven is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chair of the Integrative Anthropological Sciences Unit, and also head of the Evolutionary Anthropology and Biodemography Research Group. He is an evolutionary anthropologist aiming to explain behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to competing demands of limited resource allocation. He employs ethnographic field settings as laboratories for testing hypotheses about human variation in behavior, psychology and physiology. Currently his research focuses on two broad, inter-related areas: biodemography of human health, lifespan and aging; and transitions in social and economic behavior. More»
Dr. Douglas P. Fry is Professor and Chair in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in his own books and in journals such as Science and American Anthropologist. His work frequently engages the debate surrounding the origins of war, arguing against claims that war or lethal aggression is rooted in human evolution. He’s the author or editor of books like The Human Potential for Peace; Beyond War; War, Peace, and Human Nature; and Nurturing Our Humanity. More»
