anthropology

#313 Robert Kelly: The Fifth Beginning, And The Lifeways Of Hunter-Gatherers

Mar 27, 2020

Dr. Robert Kelly is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Kelly has shaped and contributed much to our understanding of hunter-gatherer societies. He has a deep interest in Western North American archaeology, especially in the Great Basin area. Current understanding of hunter-gatherer mobility and foraging patterns are also influenced strongly by his research, fieldwork, and ethnology. By examining the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas by examining artifacts and lithic technology, Dr. Kelly reconstructs past life-ways and compares them to current foraging societies, and examines human adaptation to climate change during different periods in the past. He’s the author of books like The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways, and The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us about Our Future. More»
#302 Jonathan Marks: Origin Stories In The Science Of Human Evolution

Mar 2, 2020

Dr. Jonathan Marks is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His primary training is in biological anthropology and genetics. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2012 he was awarded the First Citizen’s Bank Scholar’s Medal from UNC Charlotte. In recent years he has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the ESRC Genomics Forum in Edinburgh, at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and a Templeton Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Notre Dame. He is a significant figure in anthropology, especially on the topic of race. Dr. Marks is skeptical of genetic explanations of human behavior, of "race" as a biological category, and of science as a rationalistic endeavor. He’s the author of books like The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Tales of the Ex-Apes: How We Think about Human Evolution, and Is Science Racist?. More»
#301 Michael Masters: The Anthropology Of Identified Flying Objects

Feb 28, 2020

Dr. Michael Masters is Professor of Anthropology at Montana Tech. His research centers on investigating human ocular, orbital, midfacial, cerebral and neurocranial morphology, and how competition among these features may act to constrain the eye and surrounding ocular tissues during ontogeny, as it relates to the disparate incidence & severity of astigmatism and juvenile-onset myopia. Further research interests center on investigating hominin biocultural evolution, astrobiology, astronomy and the physics of time as they relate to the UFO phenomenon. On that pic, he has written a book, Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon. More»
#300 Kristen Hawkes: The Grandmother Hypothesis

Feb 27, 2020

Dr. Kristen Hawkes is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah. Dr. Hawkes, an expert in human evolution and sociobiology, is the author of several studies on the “grandmother hypothesis,” which asserts that many of the characteristics that distinguish us from our ape ancestors are thanks to the thoughtful care of our grandmothers. Her research is based on ethnographic observation studies of hunter-gatherer communities such as the Aché and Hadza. She has also developed mathematical models to model evolution over time and trace the influence of grandmothers on human lifespan. Combining mathematical modelling and observational studies she also researches the effects of fire on ancient hunter-gatherers. More»
#299 Thom Scott-Phillips: The Biological And Cultural Bases Of Language

Feb 24, 2020

Dr. Thomas Scott-Phillips is a Senior Research Scientist in the Social Mind Center and the Department of Cognitive Science, at Central European University, Budapest. In particular he studies communication, and how it makes us human. His first book, Speaking Our Minds, was reviewed as “The most important and the best book ever written on the evolution of language” and “The best linguistics book I’ve read in 10 years”. He’s written short pieces for outlets such as Aeon, Scientific American, The Conversation; and he has given public talks for TEDx, British Humanist Association, Skeptics In The Pub, Digital Science and others. His academic articles and broader interests span cultural evolution, primate communication, language acquisition, philosophy of language, and others. More»
#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»