anthropology

#285 Nicholas Christakis: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society

Jan 23, 2020

Dr. Nicholas Christakis is Sterling Professor of Social & Natural Science, and Professor of Internal Medicine and General Medicine at Yale University. He’s a sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of behavior, health, and longevity. Dr. Christakis was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006; of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010; and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. In 2009, he was named to the Time 100, Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and again in 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers. He’s the author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. More»
#279 Daniel Lieberman: The Evolution of Bipedalism, and Modern Evolutionary Mismatch

Jan 9, 2020

Dr. Daniel Lieberman is Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He studies and teaches how and why the human body looks and functions the way it does. He started his career studying the evolution of the human head, but is now more focused on the evolution of human physical activity, and how evolutionary approaches to activities such as walking and running, as well as changes to our body’s environments (such as wearing shoes and being physically inactive) can help better prevent and treat musculoskeletal diseases. He’s the author of the books The Evolution of the Human Head, and The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. More»
#273 David Puts: Sexual Dimorphism, Sexual Orientation, And Female Orgasm

Dec 26, 2019

Dr. David Puts is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Puts studies the neuroendocrine and evolutionary bases of human sexuality and sex differences, with special focus on behavior and psychology. His research topics include the influence of sex hormones on psychology, behavior, and anatomy; hormonal and genetic influences on sexual differentiation; sexual selection and the evolution of sex differences in voices, faces, bodies, brains, and behavior; the development and evolution of variation in sexual orientation; and the evolution of female orgasm. More»
#272 Peter Ungar: The Evolution Of Teeth, And Our Diet

Dec 23, 2019

Dr. Peter S. Ungar is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of Environmental Dynamics at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on paleoecology and teeth. He’s the author of books like Mammal Teeth, Evolution’s Bite, and of textbooks like Human Diet: Its Origin and Evolution. More»
#270 Christopher Stringer: The Past and Future of Human Evolution

Dec 19, 2019

Dr. Christopher Stringer is a British physical anthropologist noted for his work on human evolution. He is a Research Leader in Human Origins at the Natural History Museum. His early research was on the relationship of Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe, but through his work on the Recent African Origin model for modern human origins, he now collaborates with archaeologists, dating specialists, and geneticists in attempting to reconstruct the evolution of modern humans globally. He has excavated at sites in Britain and abroad, and he directed the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project from 2001 until it finished in 2013. Now he’s co-director of the follow-up Pathways to Ancient Britain project, as part of their funding from the Calleva Foundation, which has also contributed to the foundation of their new Centre for Human Evolution Research. As well as many scientific papers, he’s also written a number of books, most recently, Britain: one million years of the human story (2014, with Rob Dinnis) and Our Human Story (2018, with Louise Humphrey). More»
#268 Stephen Sanderson: Gender Roles, Marriage, And Parenthood Across Societies

Dec 13, 2019

Dr. Stephen K. Sanderson is an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Since 2007 he has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California, Riverside. His areas of focus include comparative sociology, historical sociology, sociological theory and sociocultural evolution. He is a specialist in sociological theory and comparative and historical sociology and is one of the leading sociologists to develop a Darwinian understanding of human society. He has written or edited ten books, including “The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective”, “Evolutionism and Its Critics”, “Human Nature and the Evolution of Society”, and “Religious Evolution and the Axial Age”. More»
#266 Lyn Wadley: Archaeology, And The Evolution of Human Cognition

Dec 9, 2019

Dr. Lyn Wadley is jointly Honorary Professor of Archaeology in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, and the Evolutionary Studies Institute, at University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She directs a Wits-recognized programme called ACACIA (Ancient Cognition and Culture in Africa). Her specialty is the African Stone Age: Middle Stone Age (which lasted from approximately 300,000 to 25,000 years ago) and Later Stone Age (the last 25,000 years). She began her career researching social and ecological issues during the past 25,000 years of the Later Stone Age in southern Africa. Data for her interpretations were obtained from sites in Namibia and South Africa. Dr. Wadley’s current research is dedicated to the cognition of people who lived in the Middle Stone Age. More»
#259 Tyler Volk: From Quarks to Culture

Nov 22, 2019

I’M SORRY ABOUT THE MISSING BITS OF AUDIO HERE AND THERE, BUT THE CONNECTION WAS A BIT WEAK. More»
#254 Michael Gurven: Division of Labor, Polygyny, and Personality Across Societies

Nov 11, 2019

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»
#253 Douglas Fry: Is War Part Of Human Nature?

Nov 8, 2019

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»