Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast)

It stinks to be sick. Our guest, Josh Tybur (VU Amsterdam), is the one of the foremost experts on how our brain--or better yet, our "behavioral immune system"--helps us avoid pathogens while still navigating the necessities of social and physical life: eating, hugging, parenting, mating, and so on. Topics include whether pathogen avoidance actually drives attitudes towards social outgroups, how disgust, sex, and morality all interact (including David's pet theory of kinky sexual practices), and whether evolutionary mismatch is over-used and under-specified (or not). Oh, that whole world-wide pandemic thing. 

More about Josh Tybur:

https://www.joshtybur.com/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ash8oRMAAAAJ&hl=en

Intentions be damned! Whats matter is selection! In this episode, Paul Smaldino (UC Merced) takes us on a tour of his work on social signals, social identities, the perverse incentives of science, the stupidity and yet usefulness of models, and so much else. (Paul also shows us his small model of the solar system in the background). 

More about Paul Smaldino:

https://smaldino.com/wp/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AwHfbP0AAAAJ&hl=en

https://smalldinosaurs.bandcamp.com/album/dad-songs

Consciousness: is it really that hard of a problem? In this episode, we talk to our favorite mechanistically-minded (and possibly clearest) thinker about consciousness we've had the pleasure to stumble across, Michael Graziano (Princeton). Topics include why consciousness has been so hard to study, what it is, and what future (evolutionary) work on consciousness would look like. 

More about Michael Graziano:
https://grazianolab.princeton.edu/

https://pni.princeton.edu/people/michael-graziano

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Graziano

https://www.press53.com/michael-s-a-graziano

https://www.amazon.com/stores/B.-B.-Wurge/author/B001JS4X0U?

The evolution of war has occupied science. But what about the evolution of peace? In this episode, we talk to Luke Glowacki about his framing of peace as requiring just as much, if not more, explanation, than the evolution of war, and how it comes about via cultural technology interacting with our evolved psychology. Other topics include the distribution of conflict, the Omo valley research project, and how to think about our own species through the lens of other species--including mongeese (mongooses?) 

More about Luke Glowacki:

https://www.hsb-lab.org/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DaCQ-UIAAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.bu.edu/anthrop/profile/luke-glowacki/

Free will: Do we really have it? And what is it, exactly?  In this episode, co-host David Pietraszewski takes the role of guest and explains his recent evolutionary, adaptationist approach to the problem of free will, explaining what people are talking about when they talk about free will, why different people have different opinions about whether it really exists in light of science, and what an evolutionary approach has to say about how to study it in the first place. If you love or hate the study of free will--or think it is a forever-unsolvable mystery-- then this episode is for you!

 

More about David Pietraszewski:

https://cal.psych.ucsb.edu/david-pietraszewski

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rGFYm8AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao