Latest Darwinian Podcast Episodes
Season 5 Episode 6: Gender Bender
Discovering Darwin - March 15, 2024 20:17 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this final episode of Season 5, Sarah, Mark, and James discuss the last chapters from Lucy Cooke's book Bitch: On the female of the species. Sarah described the sex lives of barnacles and encouraged us to watch the Green Porno episode that illustrates the impressive size of a barnacle penis....
Season 5 Episode 5: Hot Orcas and Superfluous Males
Discovering Darwin - November 05, 2023 21:54 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode Sarah, Mark and James continue their discussion of the book Bitch by Lucy Cooke where they explore menopause in humans and non-human animals and discuss those animals that have forwent males when they reproduce. The first conversation explored how orcas are an unusual mammal in ...
Season 5 Episode 4: Ken the Naked Mole Rat
Discovering Darwin - September 24, 2023 21:42 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode Sarah, Mark, and James continue their coverage Bitch by Lucy Cooke. We discussed systems where female aggression was common and the subjugation of other females and males was done by "alpha" females. We were surprised to learn how murderous and violent naked mole rats and swe...
Seson 5 Episode 3 - Variable Vaginas and Punchable Penises
Discovering Darwin - July 25, 2023 01:27 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsWe continue our discussion of Lucy Cooke's book entitled Bitch: On the female of the species focusing on chapters 5 & 6 which covered variation in female genitalia, the evolution of the human penis, and maternal care. We spent some time talking about the baculum, a bone that is found in the pe...
Season 5 Episode 2: Your O face
Discovering Darwin - June 22, 2023 16:34 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we continue our conversation based upon Chapters 3 & 4 of Lucy Cooke's book Bitch: on the female of the species. We started off the conversation doing a deep dive on the famous Bateman experiment that purported to reveal 3 principles concerning variation in male and female rep...
Season 5 Episode 1-Incubated in misogyny
Discovering Darwin - May 04, 2023 13:22 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsWe have returned from a long hiatus to discuss a wonderful book entitled Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke. Sarah asked James and Mark to read this book that gives an updated look at Darwin's original model of sexual selection, a topic we covered extensively in Season 4. In this ...
Season 4 Episode 10: Darwin is WRONG! Click here to learn more
Discovering Darwin - November 27, 2022 15:54 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this final episode of Season 4, Mark, Sarah, and James finally critiqued Darwin's analysis of secondary sexual characteristics in humans and his clumsy attempt to apply his model of sexual selection in explaining the diversity of forms in what Darwin called "races" and we call geographically...
Season 4 Episode 9: Love Antics and Conspicuous Ornamentations
Discovering Darwin - October 10, 2022 18:40 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsAfter a long COVID induced hiatus, we have returned to tackle the meaty middle of Charles Darwin's magnum opus The Descent of Man. It was actually most of Volume 2, three hundred and nineteen pages of anecdotes, observations, wild conjecture, and chuck'splaining his crazy system of inheritanc...
Season 4 Episode 8: Sexy time and selection
Discovering Darwin - July 06, 2022 21:02 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we dive into Chapter 8 from Darwin's Descent of Man. James incorrectly attributed this chapter to the end of Volume I of the two volume set but it is actually the first chapter of Volume II, which makes more sense given its dramatic shift in focus and topic. Sarah tried to get...
Bonus Episode - Are Angels moral?
Discovering Darwin - June 13, 2022 14:09 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsimage from:https://www.artsales.com/ARTistory/angelic_journey/index.html In this bonus episode we return to our conversation with our favorite ex-monk philosopher friend Dr. Jack Furlong where he discusses whether angels, as described in scripture, could actually be moral. We then briefly ...
Season 4 Episode 7: We are Many, We are One
Discovering Darwin - May 10, 2022 01:06 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we finally confront Chapter 7 of Descent of Man, entitled On the Races of Man. In this chapter Darwin discusses the races of humans and outlines the scientific arguments of the time that questioned if humans are more than one species. These arguments, of course, were based u...
Season 4 Episode 6: Your Inner Sea Squirt
Discovering Darwin - April 06, 2022 00:16 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsMark, Sarah, and James discuss Chapter 6 of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man. In this chapter Darwin unequivocally declares humans evolved from ancestral primate stock and that event occurred in Africa. We discussed how prescient Darwin was in interpreting the biology and scant fossil record in de...
Season 4 Episode 5: I am Jack's morality
Discovering Darwin - February 19, 2022 17:45 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we enlist a different Furlong, Dr. Jack Furlong, to help us untangle morality and determine if there really is such a thing as big M morality, as Sarah calls it. <spoiler alert> Jack, after a very in depth explanation, says "No". Jack invokes the classic Trolley thought exper...
Season 4 Episode 4: Big M morality &c
Discovering Darwin - December 07, 2021 22:10 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn Chapter 4 Darwin begins to sketch out his views on how complicated human behaviors, like sacrifice, empathy for others, and group defense would evolve when selection would favor us to act otherwise. Chapter 4 is entitled Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals - continu...
Season 4 Episode 3: Civilised as much as a dog
Discovering Darwin - October 18, 2021 02:28 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discuss Chapter 3: The Mind from Darwin's Descent of Man. We are joined by a very special guest - Dr. Ellen Furlong from Illinois Wesleyan University who studies cognition in dogs. In this chapter Darwin spends some time going through a litany of traits that he associates ...
Season 4 Episode 2: Absolutely useless faculty
Discovering Darwin - September 14, 2021 15:25 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discuss Chapter 1 of Descent of Man and are joined by a special guest - Evolutionary developmental (EvoDevo) biologist Dr. Belinda Sly. Darwin spends the chapter documenting how human bodies show the scars from evolution past. Darwin takes two approaches in convincing the r...
Season 1 Episode 14: Chapter XV - Recapitulation and Conclusion
Discovering Darwin - August 17, 2021 01:30 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discussed Chapter XV - Recapitulation & Conclusion from Darwin's Origin of Species. It is our final podcast of this season and we chose not to recapitulate as much as discuss how Darwin's book was received at the time and how Darwin handled the release of his book. Although o...
Season 4 - Episode 1: The most interesting problem for the naturalist
Discovering Darwin - August 11, 2021 19:46 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/ This is the first episode of Season 4 where we begin our exploration of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex which was published in 1871. In this episode we explore how Darwin finally got around to discussing the evolution of humans...
Season 3 Episode 11: a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass
Discovering Darwin - May 21, 2021 20:30 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsBy Photographer unidentified - MS Am 1092 (1185), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34246605 In this final episode of Season 3 we actually do not talk about Darwin, but instead focus our attention to William James, a medical...
Season 2 Episode 5- Big Llama
Discovering Darwin - May 10, 2021 11:08 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discuss the interesting extinct and extant mammals that Darwin collected in South America during his voyage on the Beagle. James makes an argument that it was the mammals that Darwin collected that stimulated his idea that species evolve. Sarah talks about why there are so man...
Season 3 Episode 10: Shame, Blushing, and Guilt
Discovering Darwin - April 04, 2021 18:56 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsmodified image from Bridgeman Art Library Mark, Sarah, and James discuss the last technical chapter of Charles Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter XIII: Self Attention, Shame, Shyness, Modesty: Blushing. Mark Jackson's graduate research was on shame and guilt an...
Season 3 Episode 9: Fear, Anxiety, and Terror
Discovering Darwin - March 11, 2021 18:31 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsWe discuss Chapter XII of the text The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this chapter Darwin explores the expressions we associate with surprise, fear, terror, horror, and anxiety. The stereotypical expression of fear, as represented by the image above from the 1950's horror ...
Season 3 Episode 8: Disdain, Disgust, and Mark's secret time in Norway
Discovering Darwin - February 01, 2021 15:49 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsBilly Idol and his trademark sneer In this episode of Mark, Sarah, and James discuss Chapter XI from Darwin's text The Expression and Emotions in Man and Animals, 3rd edition. Sarah noted that this chapter was a potpourri of emotions, including: Scorn, Disdain, Contempt, Disgust, Jealousy, E...
Season 3 Episode 7:Sulkiness & Hatred
Discovering Darwin - December 29, 2020 17:56 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsDetail from Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind Jean Leon Gerome 1896 In this episode we discuss both Chapters IX & X from Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chapter IX dealt with the interesting phenomenon of the frown - a telltale expression we exhibit w...
Season 3 Episode 6: Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy
Discovering Darwin - October 28, 2020 14:54 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode of Discovering Darwin we tackle Chapter VIII - Joy, High Spirits, Love, Tender Feelings, Devotion in Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this chapter Charles explores how we express ourselves when we are happy, in particular he discussed the two...
Season 3 Episode 5 - Sweet Spot of Grief
Discovering Darwin - September 23, 2020 18:40 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsPersons suffering from excessive grief often seek relief by violent and almost frantic movements, as described in a former chapter; but when their suffering is somewhat mitigated, yet prolonged, they no longer wish for action, but remain motionless and passive, or may occasionally rock thems...
Season 3 Episode 4: Sarah Bares All
Discovering Darwin - August 29, 2020 16:20 ★★★★★ - 10 ratings"The fact of tears not being shed at a very early age from pain or any mental emotion is remarkable, as, later in life, no expression is more general or more strongly marked than weeping." pg 154 EEMA Charles Darwin. In this episode we explore Chapter VI: Suffering and Weeping where Darw...
Season 3 Episode 3: Erected Neck-hackles
Discovering Darwin - July 28, 2020 18:06 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discuss Chapters 4 & 5 of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions of Man and Animals, 3rd Definitive edition. Chapter 4 documented how animals use specific sounds and body postures to communicate their current emotional state. We explored how familiar we are to the sounds of ...
Season 3 Episode 2: Everyone has a Tell
Discovering Darwin - June 23, 2020 17:14 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsIn this episode we discuss the first three chapters of Darwin's On the Expression and Emotion of Man and Animals, and James fails to convince the team to refer to the book as EEMA for short. The first chapters of EEMA lays out Darwin's 3 principle foundations and each of us focused on one of th...
Season 3 Episode 1 - Darwin's Hobby-Horse
Discovering Darwin - May 18, 2020 20:52 ★★★★★ - 10 ratingsThis is the first episode of the long awaited Season 3 of Discovering Darwin. In this season we will be exploring Charles Darwin's 14th original published book entitled The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. We are reading the 3rd Edition of the book that has been edited by Paul Ekm...
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