#229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution

Richard Wrangham is a biological anthropologist at Harvard,
specializing in the study of primates and the evolution of
violence, sex, cooking, culture, and other aspects of ape and
human behavior. Please support this podcast by checking out our
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EPISODE LINKS:
Richard’s Website:
https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/richard-w-wrangham
The Goodness Paradox (book): https://amzn.to/3aqg9tg
Catching Fire (book): https://amzn.to/3FAZAcz


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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players
you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that
time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(08:13) – Violence in humans vs violence in chimps
(27:45) – Study of violence in chimps
(46:40) – Human evolution and violence
(1:43:08) – The Goodness Paradox and Catching Fire
(1:55:26) – How cooking changed our evolution
(2:10:11) – The beauty of the human mind emerges
(2:14:18) – A map of how chimps, gorillas, and humans are all
related
(2:26:50) – Preserving nature
(2:34:41) – The meaning of life