A guest who needs no introduction. Leda Cosmides (UCSB) talks about how she and John Tooby co-founded the enterprise "evolutionary psychology"---including the how's, when's and why's---and what she thinks about current work. Other topics include why it's good for science to not be a jerk, and how she's come to understand what the heck behavioral and experimental economists are up to. More about Leda Cosmides: https://psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/leda-cosmides

https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V1vCfTYAAAAJ&hl=en

Along with Margo Wilson, Martin Daly (McMaster) is one the founding pioneers of evolutionary psychology. In this episode, we get Martin's take on the history and the field. Topics include studying real-world phenomena (like homicide), inequality, and how evolutionary biologists like Williams and Hamilton supported the upstart approach (and whether it's really a different approach at all), and what happens when you give a lab-reared rat the kind of plant that it evolved to eat out in the wild, but has never seen before.

More about Martin Daly: https://www.martindaly.ca/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Daly_(professor)

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1BUIq-UAAAAJ

What's up with music? Why do vibrating strings tug on our emotions? And why can't most animals keep a beat? In this episode, we talk to Greg Bryant (UCLA) all about things acoustic and musical. Other topics include: the evolutionary logic of distortion in rock, laughter (including in rats!), and the psychology of perfect pitch and jamming.

More about Greg Bryant:

https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=urz-QfkAAAAJ&hl=en

Greg's music:

/gbryant.bandzoogle.com/home

https://gbryant.bandcamp.com/album/soft-assembly-of-a-die-hard