Posted 02 Oct 2015 / 0
WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “Options Grow For Starting a Non-Traditional Family” As I continue to work on my popular science book with the working title Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a parent. Biological parenting (what I call “breeding”… why to be explained) is a Read More
A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Kin Selection, Parenting, Radio & Podcasts, Reproductive Fitness, Social Diversity, Sociology
Posted 02 Oct 2015 / 0
WNYC The Brian Lehrer Show “Where Women Go from Here” Several years ago, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote the seminal article on the conflict between work and parenting. Published in The Atlantic and entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All“, Slaughter’s article used her own professional experience to explore the challenge faced by many women in the developed world: the Read More
A Major Post, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Parenting, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sex and Reproduction, Sociology
Posted 02 Oct 2015 / 0
National Geographic Germination blog “Antibiotic Resistance Getting Worse Globally, But Fixes Could Be Simple” Antibiotic resistance is an interesting problem because it highlights how individual decisions drive international-scale dynamics and then come right back to impact individuals. Unlike other big international tragedies of the commons such as climate change or fisheries collapse, the effects of Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Coevolution, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Resistance Evolution in Parasites, Social Norms, Web
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
PLoS ONE “Future Discounting in Congo Basin Hunter-Gatherers Declines with Socio-Economic Transitions” These findings are really fascinating, because they suggest that some degree of “building towards the future” is inspired by the ability to accumulate wealth. There’s a lot in these findings to explain why small-scale societies stay small and how larger-scale societies evolve from smaller-scale Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Memetic Fitness, Phenotypic Plasticity, Psychological Adaptation, Social Norms
Posted 29 Sep 2015 / 0
I was excited to recently discover that The Evolution Institute, a “think-tank that doesn’t just think” about how to apply evolutionary understanding to human problems, is working to foster a new professional society dedicated to the study of cultural evolution. Dubbed the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution (SSCE), this emerging society endeavors to Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Archaeology, Behavior, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Environmental Justice, Evolutionary Modeling, Political Science, Professional Societies, Psychology, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Religion, Social Science, Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Sociology
Posted 20 Sep 2015 / 0
The Guardian “Why the UK sperm bank is running short” Further evidence that while we are — on the one hand — one of the weirdest species in the world, at our core we remain not unlike the rest of our animal brethren. Think about it for a second: if humans were both rational and Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Belief, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Psychology, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
National Geographic News “Sperm Whales’ Language Reveals Hints of Culture” It is interesting how the number of animal species displaying culture keeps getting larger. There’s a lot of evolutionary convergence involved here, as the phylogenetic tree of vertebrates is still only sprinkled with pockets of culture. But those pockets of culture are deep, and therefore Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cetaceans, Communication, Convergence, Cultural Evolution, Exaptation, Human Uniqueness, Web
Posted 08 Sep 2015 / 0
Cliodynamica “From Big Gods to the Big Brother” There are a bunch of really interesting ideas in this post, particularly related to the challenges associated with scaling up cooperation. As Turchin nicely points out, once you get past the tribal scale reputation alone — even fueled by the power of gossip — is not going Read More
A Minor Post, Altruism, Behavior, Belief, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, History, Human Uniqueness, Multilevel Selection, Punishment, Religion, Reputation, Social Norms, Web
Posted 26 Aug 2015 / 0
National Public Radio “For Prospective Moms, Biology and Culture Clash” Seven years later, I need to check and see how these American demographic trends have developed. Are even more women having babies later in life? Interesting thing here is how big a tension there is between our cultural choices and our biological realities. If fertility peaks Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Memetic Fitness, Radio & Podcasts, Reproductive Fitness, Senescence, Sex and Reproduction, Social Norms
Posted 13 Aug 2015 / 0
This is a wonderful little video that is absolutely packed with great ideas about how evolution works, how human evolution works, and how two different evolutionary pressures pushing in opposite directions reach equilibrium. It also makes wonderful use of infographic techniques, using color and quantity throughout the video to clearly convey numerical and conceptual ideas Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Educational Software and Apps, Evolutionary Modeling, Film, Television, & Video, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Quantifying Costs and Benefits, Social Norms
