MAKE CONNECTIONS
One question.
Many ways in.
Follow a topic across different guests, disciplines, and points of view.
Status & hierarchy
Prestige, dominance, reputation, rank, and the pursuit of recognition.
Cooperation & altruism
Why we help, reciprocate, share resources, and solve collective problems.
Mating & relationships
Attraction, partner choice, sexuality, pair bonds, and reproductive strategies.
Cultural evolution
How traditions, norms, beliefs, and technologies spread and change.
Morality & norms
Moral judgment, punishment, fairness, and the rules of social life.
Religion & ritual
Supernatural beliefs, ritual, shamanism, and shared meaning.
Cognition & reasoning
How minds infer, remember, reason, and make sense of the world.
Emotions
Shame, pride, guilt, fear, disgust, and other evolved feelings.
Parenting & kinship
Families, parental investment, kin selection, and cooperative care.
Childhood & development
Learning, play, life stages, and growing up across cultures.
Conflict & violence
Aggression, warfare, exploitation, coalitions, and competition.
Politics & institutions
Power, governance, ideology, and organizing large societies.
Language & communication
Speech, signaling, conversation, and the exchange of information.
Learning & social transmission
Imitation, teaching, expertise, and learning from other people.
Friendship & social networks
Social bonds, alliances, loneliness, and community.
Health & mental life
Evolutionary medicine, mental health, stress, and well-being.
Ecology & adaptation
Environments, resources, subsistence, and adaptive tradeoffs.
Human origins
Ancestral lives, hunter-gatherers, and the history of our species.
Life history & reproduction
Longevity, fertility, energy budgets, and competing life priorities.
Personality & differences
Variation between individuals in traits, preferences, and behavior.
Sex & gender differences
Sexual selection, differences, similarities, and their interpretation.
Stories, humor & the arts
Fiction, music, laughter, creativity, and imaginative life.
Methods & scientific debate
Evidence, experiments, cross-cultural research, and competing explanations.
Evolutionary theory
Natural selection, adaptations, byproducts, and levels of explanation.