The Dissenter | 3 April 2023 | 2h 11m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Alessandra Cassar discussing female competitiveness and what motivates it; sex differences in competitiveness, and their effects in the workplace and the job market; the evolution of prosociality anchored to human cooperative breeding; how civil conflict affects trust and market development; the effects of natural disasters on altruism; how microfinancing works, and how social capital applies to it; the role of goals, incentives, and support groups in the success of microentrepreneurs; what financial exclusion is; and networked markets.
Tag: The Dissenter
Andrew Knoll – A Brief History of Earth
The Dissenter | 20 January 2023 | 0h 54m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Andrew Knoll about his book A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. Discusses the main events in the history of the Earth: its formation, the formation of its atmosphere, where water came from, plate tectonics, the origins of life, the rise of oxygen, evolution from the first unicellular organisms to animals, the colonization of land by plants and animals, the mass extinctions, the evolution of and ecological impact of humans, and the future of the Earth.
Simon Baron-Cohen: Autism, Systemizing, Empathy, and Sex Differences
The Dissenter | 20 February 2023 | 1h 00m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Simon Baron-Cohen about his book The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Discusses what characterises autism; why it is classified as a mental disorder, and the idea of neurodiversity; its early signs; and the lower quality of life of autistic people; the systemizing mechanism, and the distinction between systemizing and empathizing; the role of testosterone in intra-uterine development, and differences in the brain development of autistic people; the distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy; sex differences, regions of the brain that might be sexually dimorphic, criticisms of the biological bases of sex differences, and whether it is possible to distinguish between male and female brains.
Tibor Rutar on Capitalism for Realists
The Dissenter | 6 February 2023 | 1h 21m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Tibor Rutar about his book Capitalism for Realists: Virtues and Vices of the Modern Economy. Surveys and critically evaluates the virtues and vices of capitalism, covering what Marx got wrong about capitalism; different explanations for the origins of capitalism, from Weber, Henrich, and Mokyr; an alternative explanation for its development in 15th and 16th-century England; market exploitation; the minimum wage; the relationship between capitalism and poverty; economic inequality; the term “neoliberalism”; claims about the morality of markets; and climate change.
Victor Kumar on A Better Ape
The Dissenter | 29 August 2022 | 1h 26m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Victor Kumar about his book A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made us Human. Discusses gene-culture coevolution; the three ingredients of the moral mind: core moral emotions, core moral norms, and a capacity for open-ended moral reasoning; moral intuition; moral reasoning; moral progress; institutional moralities; the role of religion, and moral philosophy; whether it is possible to a universal ethical code; political correctness, and a theoretical framework for addressing injustice and inequality.
William Costello: The Psychology of Involuntary Celibates
The Dissenter | 4 August 2022 | 1h 37m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with William Costello about his research on the psychology of incels, and modern mating. Discusses the psychological traits of incels, their mental wellbeing, their self-perceptions of their own mate value, possible psychotherapeutic approaches, singlehood, how people should view incels, misrepresentations in the media, issues with modern mating and potential solutions.
Manvir Singh: Going Beyond the Nomadic-Egalitarian Model of Hunter-Gatherers
The Dissenter | 17 June 2022 | 1h 09m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Manvir Singh about his paper Human Social Organization During the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the Nomadic-Egalitarian Model. Argues that some of our late Pleistocene forbears lived in large, sedentary, dense communities, not just as nomadic-egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Discusses the nomadic-egalitarian hunter-gatherer model, his diverse histories model, the implications it has for our evolved psychology, and how we think about evolutionary mismatches; how human societies get organized; the origins of agriculture; the transition to large-scale agricultural societies, and non-agricultural state societies; the sympathetic plot in fiction, and its psychological origins; and the functionality of beliefs.
I nearly missed this episode – don’t make that mistake – it is truly excellent. I suggest checking out his writing. I also recommend Razib Khan’s interview.
Melanie MacEacheron: The Evolution of Motherhood and Feminism
The Dissenter | 11 July 2022 | 0h 48m | Listen Later |
Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Melanie MacEacheron about her research on motherhood and marital surname changes. Discusses the evolutionary psychology perspective on motherhood; sex differences in mateships and romantic relationships; marital surname changes and the factors and predictors associated with them; and whether feminism and evolutionary psychology need to be in conflict with one another.