The Nature & Nurture Podcast

Dr. Matt Zwolinski is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego specializing in Political Philosophy and Applied Ethics. He is the director of USD’s Center for Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy, and co-author, together with John Tomasi, of The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism. In this episode we discuss the intellectual hist...

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 p...

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 postmoderni...

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 prio...

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...

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 neuro...

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,...

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...

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 expl...

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...

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 Og...

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 meth...

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, an...

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 ph...

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...

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 an...

Dr. Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. Dr. Christakis is an MD-PhD physician and sociologist known for applying social network analysis to the study of public health and the evolutionary psychology of cooperation. He is the author of several books including Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a G...

Dr. Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist, Professor at the University of Cape Town, and author of The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness.  In this episode, we discuss The Hidden Spring - core areas within the brainstem which are the root of all feeling and consciousness in all vertebrates - and pioneering discoveries from affective, cognitive, and computational neuroscience that...

Dr. Jorge Morales is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at Northeastern University, where he directs the Subjectivity Lab. In this episode, we discuss Jorge’s research on the neuropsychology and philosophy of visual perception, introspection, and theory of mind as lenses through which to study consciousness. We discuss the neural and computational building blocks of perception, th...

Dr. Beatriz Luna is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, where she directs the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development. Dr. Luna is an expert in adolescent brain development and the neurodevelopment of the dopamine reward system, and its interactions with inhibitory control to produce developmental changes in sensation seeking and risk-taking.  In this episode,...