biology

#652 Steven Frank - Microbial Life History: The Fundamental Forces of Biological Design

Jul 15, 2022

Dr. Steven Frank is Donald Bren Professor & UCI Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. His areas of expertise are evolutionary genetics, host-parasite interactions and social evolution. He is the author of books like Foundations of Social Evolution, Immunology and Evolution of Infectious Disease, and more recently, Microbial Life History: The Fundamental Forces of Biological Design. More»
#641 Robert Barton: The Evolution of the Primate Brain, The Visual Brain, and the Color Red

Jun 20, 2022

Dr. Robert Barton is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Member of the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre at Durham University, UK. He is an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist interested in brains, behavior and cognition, using phylogenetic comparative methods to study how these traits evolved. He developed and tested the 'Visual brain hypothesis' for primate brain size evolution. He is currently interested in the underestimated role of the cerebellum in brain evolution and cognition. He also works on the evolutionary and cultural significance of the color red. More»
#634 Simon Garnier: Swarm Intelligence, Collective Decision-Making, and Human Societies

Jun 3, 2022

Dr. Simon Garnier is an Associate Professor of Biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is the head of the Swarm Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab that studies the mechanisms underlying Collective Behaviors and Swarm Intelligence in natural and artificial systems (http://www.theswarmlab.com). His research aims to reveal the detailed functioning of collective intelligence in systems as diverse as ant colonies, human crowds or robotic swarms. More»
#632 Dario Maestripieri: Human Nature, Individual Differences, Knowledge, and Consilience

May 30, 2022

Dr. Dario Maestripieri is a Professor in Comparative Human Development and is also affiliated with the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago. His current main interests are, a) evolution of human behavior and its biological regulation, b) 20th century European literature. More»
#616 John Baird Callicott: Environmental Philosophy, Ethics, and Climate Change

Apr 22, 2022

Dr. John Baird Callicott is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. He is a philosopher whose work has been at the forefront of the new field of environmental philosophy and ethics. He is the author of books like In Defense of the Land Ethic, Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, and Greek Natural Philosophy: The Presocratics and Their Importance for Environmental Philosophy. More»
#615 Mark Moffett - The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall

Apr 21, 2022

Dr. Mark W. Moffett is a tropical biologist and research associate at the Smithsonian and used to be a visiting scholar in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, which he used to write his book, The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall. More»
#607 Nicole Prause: Sex, Porn, and Addiction

Apr 1, 2022

Dr. Nicole Prause is a neuroscientist researching human sexual behavior, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response. She is also the founder of Liberos LLC, an independent research institute. More»
#606 Peter Sterling - What is health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design (Pt. 1)

Mar 31, 2022

Dr. Peter Sterling is Professor of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His broad goal has been to learn how the brain is designed – to understand its functional architecture. His research has spanned the full range of scales, from nanoscopic (synaptic vesicles), to microscopic (neural circuits), to macroscopic (regional neuroanatomy and behavior). His laboratory focused on retinal structure and function, but his theoretical interests extended to basic issues of physiological regulation and behavior, leading to the concept of allostasis. He is the author of books like Principles of Neural Design, and What is health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design. More»
#602 Sean Carroll - A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You

Mar 21, 2022

Dr. Sean Carroll is Balo-Simon Professor and Endowed Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland. He is also Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Carroll was an HHMI investigator from 1990 to 2010. In September 2010, he became vice president for science education at HHMI. He is the author of several books, including A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You. More»
#601 Henrik Høgh-Olesen - The Aesthetic Animal

Mar 18, 2022

Dr. Henrik Høgh-Olesen is Professor of Psychology at Aarhus University. His research interests include Evolutionary psychology, Comparative psychology/Ethology, Primatology, Aesthetics, Psychology of religion, and History of psychology. He is the author of 13 scientific books, including The Aesthetic Animal. More»