Nicholas Wade is the author of several books on human evolution, and has served as staff writer and editor for Nature, Science, and the science section of The New York Times.
In this episode, we discuss Nicholas’ latest book The Origins of Politics on the evolutionary psychology of social cognition, tribalism, altruism, aggression, and other psychological factors relevant to understanding modern politics.
Dr. Simon LeVay is a neuroscientist and author of Attraction, Love, Sex: The Inside Story.
Dr. Lars Krutak is an anthropologist, a research associate at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, host of the Discovery Channel series Tattoo Hunter, and author of Indigenous Tattoo Traditions.
Dr. Robert King is a researcher at the School of Applied Psychology of University College Cork in Ireland. He is an expert in evolutionary psychology, sexual selection, and the science of orgasms, as detailed in his book Naturally Selective: Evolution, Orgasm, and Female Choice.
Dr. Jaap de Roode is the Samuel C. Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, and the author of Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, & Other Animals Heal Themselves. He is an expert in the population biology of parasites and virus transmission, and how animals defend themselves against these threats.
Dr. Eric Kaufmann is a Professor of Politics at The University of Buckingham and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He is the author of several books including The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism.
In this episode, Eric and I discuss The Third Awokening, beginning with the history of the term woke, its intellectual foundations in postmodernism and ties to Marxism, and its connection to identity politics.
Dr. Bill von Hippel is a social psychologist and author of The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness.
Dr. Dean Hamer is a geneticist, author of several books including The Science of Desire and The God Gene, and a filmmaker. In this episode, we talk about Dean’s background in genetics and how the science of sexual orientation helped shape the “born this way” movement in gay civil rights. We talk about ethical debates surrounding the biological study of sexual orientation, and why it should be prioritized, and examine various evolutionary, genetic, hormonal, and neurological theories for sexual orientation. We talk about the role of prenatal sex hormones, fraternal birth order, the maternal immune hypothesis, the evolutionary gay uncle hypothesis, antagonistic pleiotropy, and more. We also discuss connections between sexual attraction and philosophy of mind, sex differences in sex drive, animal research on mating psychology, and more. Lastly, we talk about Dean’s recent work on gender and sexuality in the Pacific Islands, cultural anthropology documenting gender and sexual diversity across history, and how to best approach ethical discussion and research on sensitive topics related to sex and gender.
Dr. Helen Joyce is a journalist, mathematician, women’s right advocate, and author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
In this episode, we talk about Helen’s background in mathematics and transition into journalism, and eventually the so-called gender culture war. We discuss sex differences in personality, why gender nonconformity is normal, and why the transgender debate has turned into such a contentious and politicized topic. We trace this story back to both the complex biology of sex differentiation, and postmodern philosophical problems surrounding identity, and how these decision points become difficult to enshrine into law. We discuss what social and legal norms should be surrounding protected gendered spaces, freedom of speech and pronoun use, intersex populations, libertarianism, and whether adults should be free to choose medical sex reassignment. Helen offers sound and practical advice for individuals wanting to navigate these contentious waters with an open mind, and do right by people when trying to both remain respectful to individuals struggling with gender dysphoria and not invalidate the truths of biological sex.
Dr. Carl Marci is a psychiatrist, Director of the Social Neuroscience Psychotherapy Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, and author of Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age.
In this episode, we discuss how social media and digital technology impact attention span and brain development, what is happening to kids in the digital age, and how advertising companies use neuroscience research to addict their users. Dr. Marci talks about his experience as both a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, and entrepreneur who has worked with digital broadcasting and technology companies. We talk about the rapid rise of mental health problems, social contagion theory, and why in-person communication is more enriching than online communication (ironically, as we speak on an online platform). Dr. Marci shares his recommendations for developing healthy screen habits and how to turn the fear of missing out into the joy of missing out on digital immersion.
Dr. Robin Nusslock is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. He is an expert on the interactions between the brain and the immune system, including the role of neuroinflammation in regulating positive emotion, negative emotion, and mental health.
In this episode, we discuss Robin’s research on the brain and immune system in the context of diet, stress, and lifestyle choices. We discuss Robin’s research on Tibetan Buddhist monks, what monastic lifestyles reveal about mindfulness, sleep, and how the brain processes rewards and concepts of self and other. We also discuss the neurobiology of reward processing, including hedonistic vs. eudaimonic rewards, and the role of narrative and reinforcement learning in shaping the brain’s ability to delay gratification as exemplified by monastic life, religious sacrifice, and the practice of delayed gratification in pursuing an education.
Dr. Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is an expert in the anthropology of religion and ethics; semiotics and language; material culture; gifts, commodities, and money; and media. He is the author of Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination.
In this episode we discuss Webb’s central argument that ethical dilemmas posed by interactions with non-humans and near-humans, including animals and AI, share common themes reflected in narrative and mythology cross-culturally. We discuss these findings in relation to cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology, AI and large language models, and video games.
00:23 Exploring the Book's Themes
01:04 AI and Moral Imagination
04:51 Religious Language and AI
08:29 Human-AI Interaction
17:32 Moral Dimensions of Hunting
22:01 Animal Emotions and Morality
31:10 AI as a Moral Entity
34:45 The Fear of AI and Human Intentions
35:38 The Moral Implications of AI Decisions
38:34 Ethics and Social Interaction
41:04 Language and Perception
47:19 Cultural Differences in Language
52:48 The Intersection of Technology and Identity
59:46 Mythology and Technology in Popular Culture
Dr. Michael Bernstein is an experimental psychologist, Assistant Professor
at Brown University Medical School, and the author of The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick. Dr. Bernstein’s research is focused on the overlap between cognitive science and medicine, studying the role of expectation in healthcare and leveraging the placebo effect to improve patient outcomes.
In this episode, we explore the mechanisms, implications, and ethical dilemmas of the placebo and nocebo effects in healthcare. Dr. Bernstein explains that the nocebo effect is essentially the opposite of the placebo effect, where negative expectations can lead to worsening symptoms. He shares examples from randomized trials and addresses ethical challenges in medical disclosure. We also discuss the impact of patient expectancy, anxiety, and media influence on symptom manifestation, along with considerations for future research and practical applications in medicine.
00:27 Understanding the Nocebo Effect
02:11 Ethical Dilemmas in Medical Disclosure
04:38 The WebMD Effect and Media Influence
08:20 Psychological Mechanisms of Nocebo and Placebo
17:28 Conditioning and Expectation in Healthcare
18:34 Evolutionary Perspectives on Placebo
23:16 Trust, Authority, and the Placebo Effect
29:04 Understanding Negativity Bias in Behavioral Economics
29:46 Environmental Factors and Nocebo Effects
31:54 Recency Bias in Medical Procedures
33:47 The Role of Cognitive Biases in Healthcare
35:46 The Placebo Effect in Surgeries
43:24 AI in Medicine: Ethical Considerations and Future Directions
51:52 Open Label Placebos and Pain Management
53:44 The Importance of Ritual in Healing
55:30 Exploring Placebo Effects in Animals
Dr. Bailey is a psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and Professor at Northwestern University specializing in the etiology of sexual orientation, sexual preferences and paraphilias, and gender diversity.
In this episode, we discuss the history of transexualism in clinical psychology and its relation to modern transgender identifying people, the science and ethics of gender affirming care in adults and children, and the different manifestations of gender dysphoria across children, men, women, and comorbidity with autogynephilia. We also discuss the heritability of sexual orientation, the role of prenatal hormones in determining sexual orientation, gender identity, and psychological gender differences, and arousal patterns. Lastly, we discuss the politics of sexology as a field, and how to conduct effective and impartial research on politically charged topics such as researching gender dysphoria, its causes, and evidence bases.
Dr. Ogi Ogas is a mathematical neuroscientist and author several books including Consciousness: How It’s Made, and A Billion Wicked Thoughts. He writes about autism, mathematical neuroscience, consciousness, and more on his Dark Gift blog: https://www.ogiogas.com/
In this episode Ogi and I discuss the history of mathematical neuroscience, competing computational views of consciousness and why Ogi favors dynamical theories over statistical and deterministic theories of mind, how consciousness evolved, and how human consciousness differs from other species. We also discuss human sexuality and his book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, reflecting on sex differences in online sexual behavior and media consumption. Lastly, we discuss the neuroscience of autism, the subjective experience of autism, its diagnostic history, and how a mathematical and biological account can improve clinical psychology.
Dr. Holly Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University. Dr. Bowen’s research focuses on how affective states, specifically emotion and motivation, influence how we form memories and remember past experiences. She is also interested in how the links between emotion, motivation and memory are impacted by age-related cognitive changes, using multiple methods including behavioral paradigms, computational modeling, and neuroimaging with event-related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
In this episode Holly and I discuss emotion and motivation’s impact on memory encoding and consolidation, the differences between emotional valence verses arousal and their neurophysiology, and their connections to the reward system, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. We talk about dual-systems models of reward processing, cognitive control, and decision-making, the role of dopamine in facilitating learning and memory, the role of norepinephrine and cortisol in threat processing and fear conditioning, and paradoxes in how brain activity and behavior changes with age. Lastly, we discuss the negativity bias in memory, the positivity bias in nostalgia, and how socioemotional selectivity and changes in emotion regulation skills may explain age-related changes in these phenomena.
Dr. Jason Storm is a philosopher, historian, and the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century
Professor of Religion at Williams College. Dr. Storm is the author of several books including Metamodernism: The Future of Theory.
In this episode, Jason and I talk about the history of modernism and postmodernism in philosophy and the arts, the concept of paradigm shifts in science and the humanities, and the most recent paradigm shift from postmodernism to metamodernism. We discuss Jason’s book Metamodernism, its central themes and refutations of postmodernist claims, grounding theories about human language and subjectivity in evolutionary biology and computational neuroscience, and more. Lastly, we discuss the philosophy of religion in relation to evolutionary psychology, memetic and cultural evolution, and neuropsychoanalysis.
Dr. Susana Monsó is a philosopher, animal ethicist, and author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.
In this episode, we discuss how different animals grieve, how opossums fake death, why predators play with their prey, why dogs sometimes eat their deceased owners as a sign of love, and human rituals surrounding death. We discuss how this topic connects to interdisciplinary areas in philosophy, including animal sentience, the ethics of factory farmed food, moral utilitarianism and its pitfalls, the neuroscience of care and pain, and the moral responsibility that co-evolves with social intelligence.
Dr. Karen Bales is a Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology at UC Davis, and an expert in oxytocin, pairbonding, and the neurobiology of care.
In this episode we discuss Karen’s background, education, and research on parental care and pairbonding across a wide variety of species including marosets, tamarins, titi monkeys, prairie voles, and seahorses. We discuss the shared evolutionary lineage between humans and other primates, similarities and differences between apes and monkeys, monkey mating and parenting behavior. We then discuss Karen’s experience working with Sue Carter studying oxytocin and the neurobiology of pairbonding in prairie voles, which led Karen to form her own lab at UC Davis studying the oxytocin system in other species. Lastly, we discuss a recent influential study examining the parental behavior of gene-edited prairie voles lacking an oxytocin receptor.
Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky is a licensed psychologist and an adjunct professor at the George Washington University.
In this episode, we discuss Alexey’s clinical experience as a therapist, our shared research interests in neuropsychoanalysis, chaos theory as a way to measure complexity in neuroscience and psychology, narrative fallacy in research, and the importance of specifying the right level of analysis for psychological problems. As case studies we discuss personality traits, anxiety, core affects within basic emotion theory, and their connections to evolutionary psychology and analytic psychology.
