All Episodes

#192 Paulo Gama Mota: The History of Sexual Selection Theory, And Cultural Evolution

Jun 20, 2019

Dr. Paulo Gama Mota is Associate Professor of Biology in the Department of Life Sciences of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra. He’s also a researcher at the Center for Research in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources at he University of Porto (CIBIO). Dr. Gama Mota is very interested in science communication, having been a former Director of the National Museum of Science and Technique, and the Museum of Science of the University of Coimbra (2006-2015), and also an organizer of initiatives and science communication exhibitions, as well as citizen science projects. His areas of interest and research include: animal behavior, behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary anthropology. More»
#191 Susan Blackmore: How Memetics Works

Jun 17, 2019

Dr. Susan Blackmore is a psychologist, lecturer and writer researching consciousness, memes, and anomalous experiences, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth. She is best known for her book The Meme Machine, and has written or contributed to over 40 books, mostly on consciousness. More»
#190 Philip Kavanagh: Evolution And Clinical Psychology, Self-Esteem, And The Dark Triad

Jun 14, 2019

Dr. Phillip Kavanagh is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the Institute for Social Neuroscience, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of South Australia. Dr. Kavanagh lectures across both the undergraduate and postgraduate psychology programs, provides research supervision to honors, master's, and PhD students, and clinical supervision to students in the clinical program. More»
#189 Viviana Weekes-Shackelford: Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, And Modern Society

Jun 13, 2019

Dr. Viviana Weekes-Shackelford received her Ph.D. in evolutionary developmental psychology in 2011 from Florida Atlantic University. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminal Justice at Oakland University and Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab. Her research over the years has been evolutionarily inspired and has had the broader goal of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of violence and conflict in families and romantic relationships. Her research interests and record cut across the psychological domains of forensics, development, social, personality, clinical, and criminology. More»
#187 Robert Trivers: Parental Investment, Reciprocal Altruism, Self-Deception

Jun 7, 2019

Dr. Robert Trivers is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. He proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict. Steven Pinker considers Dr. Trivers to be "one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought". He’s also the author of books like Social Evolution (1985), Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements (2006), Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011), and Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist (2015). More»
#186 Felix Warneken: Cooperation And Altruism In Apes And Children

Jun 6, 2019

Dr. Felix Warneken is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He’s interested in Developmental Psychology; Culture; Cognition; and Comparative Animal Behavior. His research group addresses questions like how and why human social life involves complex interactions between individuals working together, and what cognitive skills allow them to do so. They do so by examining the earliest forms of cooperation in young children, untangling the processes shaping cooperation across development in different sociocultural contexts, and comparing human cooperation with that of our closest evolutionary relatives, the great Apes. More»
#185 Helen Fisher: The Anthropology Of Romantic Love, Attraction, And Attachment

Jun 3, 2019

Dr. Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist, and a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships-- what she calls: slow love. She’s the author of books like Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love, and Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. More»
#184 Hector Garcia: Sex, Power, And Partisanship

May 31, 2019

Dr. Hector A. Garcia is a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He’s Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He has published extensively on the treatment of PTSD in combat veterans, masculine psychology in the aftermath of war, the evolutionary roots of political partisanship, and the interplay between religious practice and psychopathology. He’s also the author of Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression, and Sex, Power, and Partisanship: How Evolutionary Science Makes Sense of Our Political Divide. More»
#183 Charles Lineweaver: Astrobiology, And What Is Life

May 30, 2019

Dr. Charles H. Lineweaver is the convener of the Australian National University's Planetary Science Institute and holds a joint appointment as an associate professor in the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Research School of Earth Sciences. He was a member of the COBE satellite team that discovered the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Before his appointment at ANU, he held post-doctoral positions at Strasbourg Observatory and the University of New South Wales where he taught one of the most popular general studies courses "Are We Alone?". His research areas include cosmology, exoplanetology, and astrobiology and evolutionary biology. More»
#182 David Bjorklund: Evolution, Child Development, And Modern Environments

May 27, 2019

Dr. David F. Bjorklund is a Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in developmental and evolutionary psychology. He served as Associate Editor of Child Development (1997-2001) and is currently serving as Editor of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. His books include The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (with Anthony Pellegrini), Origins of the Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Child Development (edited with Bruce Ellis), Why Youth is Not Wasted on the Young: Immaturity in Human Development, Child and Adolescent Development: An Integrative Approach (with Carlos Hernández Blasi), and Children's Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences, now in its fifth edition. His current research interests include children's cognitive development and evolutionary developmental psychology. More»