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104 - Nicholas Christakis: Evolutionary Biology & Society’s Genetic Underpinning

104 - Nicholas Christakis: Evolutionary Biology & Society’s Genetic Underpinning

Robinson's Podcast vor 3 Jahren

0:00

1:24:30

Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and
Natural Science at Yale University, where he is also Director of
the Human Nature Lab and Co-Director of the Yale Institute for
Network Science. Nicholas is both a sociologist and a physician;
after completing his undergraduate at Yale in biology, he
received an M.D. and M.P.H. from Harvard and then a Ph.D. in
sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Nicholas has
written numerous books, including Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound
and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live (Little,
Brown Spark, 2020) and Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a
Good Society (Little, Brown Spark, 2019), and this latter book is
the subject of this episode. Robinson and Nicholas first discuss
the way that genetics manifest themselves in behavior before
turning to the way that specific behaviors and tendencies have
evolved in humans to promote the flourishing of societies. They
then talk about some particular such behaviors and tendencies,
like in-group bias and hierarchy, before turning to some
implications of the view for how societies ought or ought not to
be structured.

Nicholas’s Website: https://www.humannaturelab.net

Nicholas’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NAChristakis

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society:
https://a.co/d/4BeJyS0

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

01:16 Introduction

04:28 The Motivation Behind Blueprint

23:02 The Genetic Basis of Human Societies

28:27 What Is Network Topology?

38:28 Trade-Complementarity

42:07 The Cultural Universality of Love

48:12 The Eight Cultural Universals

01:02:06 Is Hierarchy Natural?

01:07:13 Human In-Group Bias

01:12:23 Is There a Relationship Between Genes and Social Status?

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of
mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations
with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and
everyone in-between.