All Episodes

#437 Allan Horwitz: What's Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture

Mar 1, 2021

Dr. Allan Horwitz is Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Sociology and Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He has also chaired the Mental Health and Medical Sociology Sections of the American Sociological Association, as well as the Psychiatric Sociology Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. His research has focused on the sociology of mental health and illness. In 2006, he received the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health from the American Sociological Association's Section on Sociology of Mental Health. In addition, he has published several books including What’s Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016). More»
#436 Gregg Caruso: Just Deserts, and Rejecting Retributivism

Feb 26, 2021

Dr. Gregg D. Caruso is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University. He is also the Co-Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network (JWRN) at the University of Aberdeen School of Law. His research interests include free will, agency, and responsibility (both moral and legal), as well as philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neuroethics, moral psychology, criminal law, punishment, and public policy. His books include Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice (2021), Just Deserts: Debating Free Will (w/Daniel C. Dennett) (2021), Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will (2012), Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2013), Science and Religion: 5 Questions (2014), Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience (co-edited w/Owen Flanagan); and Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society (co-edited w/Elizabeth Shaw and Derk Pereboom). More»
#435 Christopher Kavanagh: Religion, Rituals, Belief in Japanese Society, and WEIRD Psychology

Feb 25, 2021

Dr. Christopher Kavanagh is an associate professor in the College of Contemporary Psychology at Rikkyo University and a researcher in cognitive anthropology at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA) at the University of Oxford. Currently he is based in Japan where he conducts research in collaboration with Masaki Yuki’s Culture, Social Ecology, and Psychology Lab in Hokkaido University. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behavior, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria. He is co-host of the Decoding the Gurus podcast. More»
#434 Thomas Coleman: The Psychology of Believers and Nonbelievers

Feb 22, 2021

Thomas Coleman III is PhD student at Coventry University, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bialystok as part of the Society and Cognition Unit. He draws on multiple approaches from across the sciences and humanities, to study the origins, development, and maintenance of (non)religious worldviews. His research focuses on three areas: Identifying and measuring components of nonreligious worldviews; computer simulated models of the cognitive and social dynamics leading to (non)belief in supernatural agents; investigating how and why moral motivations are stereotypically attributed to religious, as opposed to nonreligious factors. More»
#433 Timothy Lenton - Revolutions that Made the Earth

Feb 19, 2021

Dr. Timothy Lenton is Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and Director of the Global Systems Institute. He has over 20 years of research experience in studying the Earth as a system, and developing and using models to understand its behavior. He is particularly interested in how life has reshaped the planet in the past, and what lessons we can draw from this as we proceed to reshape the planet now. These topics are covered in his books ‘Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction’ (OUP, 2016) and (with Andrew Watson) ’Revolutions that Made the Earth’ (OUP, 2011). More»
#432 Laith Al-Shawaf: Evolutionary Psychology, Just-so Stories, Anger and Disgust, and Culture

Feb 18, 2021

Dr. Laith Al-Shawaf is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Before, he was an Assistant Professor at Bilkent University in Turkey and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, Germany. Laith has taught and conducted research in several different countries, and is a member of the Arab-German Young Academy (AGYA), as well as an academic adviser at Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB). More»
#431 Menelaos Apostolou: The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction

Feb 15, 2021

Dr. Menelaos Apostolou is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. He was born in Athens, Greece and he completed his post-graduate and graduate studies in the United Kingdom. He has published several peer-reviewed papers, books and chapters in books in the area of evolutionary psychology. He’s the author of a new book, The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction. More»
#430 David Lahti: Philosophy of Biology, Complex Traits, and Evolutionary Ethics

Feb 12, 2021

Dr. David C. Lahti is an Associate Professor of Biology at Queens College, City University of New York, where he runs a Behavior & Evolution laboratory. His work focuses on evolutionary and behavioral ecology, especially the evolution of complex and learned traits in birds and humans. More»
#429 Andrew Berry: The History of Evolutionary Biology (Pt. 1)

Feb 11, 2021

Dr. Andrew Berry is a lecturer in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He is an evolutionary biologist with a particular interest in Alfred Russel Wallace. His research combined field and laboratory methods to detect positive Darwinian selection (i.e. adaptive evolution) at the molecular level in natural populations. He has published two books: Infinite tropics: an Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology, with a foreword written by Stephen Jay Gould, and DNA: The Secret of Life with James Watson. More»
#428 Stanley Fish - There's No Such Thing as Free Speech

Feb 8, 2021

Dr. Stanley Fish is Professor of Law at Florida International University and Visiting Professor of Law at Cardoso Law School. In addition to being one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include He has authored over 200 scholarly publications and books. While his research covers a variety of fields, Professor Dr. Fish has written for many of the country’s leading law journals. including Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Texas Law Review. His books include Is there a Text in This Class? Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority (1980); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995); The Trouble with Principle (1999); How Milton Works (2001); and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump (2019). More»