Angela Saini

And that's where you get, that's where you get Ronald Fisher.

And I'm gonna tell you right now, the reason, the way I talk about this and the way I write about this is, and I think this is where some of the imprecision even from, from my, my friends come in, you have to deal with, if you wanna deconstruct these ideas, and scholars like Adam Rutherford, and scholars like Angela Saini, and scholars like Evelyn Hammond, and the people have thought about this, you know, deeply and carefully in their own work.

You have to deal with the whole shape of the problem.

You can't break one off.

Uh-huh.

And so last book was Life Ascending, um, which was about evolutionary biology, and this one I've picked is called The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini, um, which is basically like a history of societies over the course of human existence, and making the argument that patriarchy is not defaulted by our biology, and in fact is reinforced by societal and political pressures.

Um, and basically goes through the history of other societies over the years and the rise of patriarchal societies and how they kind of like became so prevalent across the globe.

So I'm very excited, and I feel like I'm doing my duty to make straight men read [laughs] about the patriarchy.

I might have to pick that one up.

[laughs] I'll let you know.

It's supposed to be very readable, um, because Angela Saini is a science journalist.

Nice.

Oh, absolutely.

I can't help but think back to, um, I mean, many episodes where these, these themes have been recapitulated o- on the show here, but especially I would direct, um, listeners back to I think the second time that I had Angela Saini on the show to talk about, uh, her book, The Patriarchs.

Early on-

Yeah

His theory was that this helped keep couples interested in each other, an evolutionary positive, or as he said, "To make sex sexier." Remember, this was the 1960s.

So how has his legacy stood the test of decades? This is Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University evolutionary biologist, followed by Angela Saini, a science journalist, both writing in The Guardian on the 50th anniversary of The Naked Ape.

Morris' central claim that much of our behavior can be understood in the context of animal behavior has surely stood the test of time, even if some of the details haven't.

He's probably still right that those bits of human behavior that enhance sexual experience function to promote pair bonds.

His theory was that this helped keep couples interested in each other, an evolutionary positive, or as he said, "To make sex sexier." Remember, this was the 1960s.

So how has his legacy stood the test of decades? This is Robin Dunbar, an Oxford University evolutionary biologist, followed by Angela Saini, a science journalist, both writing in The Guardian on the 50th anniversary of The Naked Ape.

Morris' central claim that much of our behavior can be understood in the context of animal behavior has surely stood the test of time, even if some of the details haven't.

He's probably still right that those bits of human behavior that enhance sexual experience function to promote pair bonds.

Last up this week, our latest scientific biography.

Host Angela Saini talks with astronomer Sarah Seeger about her book, The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

And it's a moving account of her life after losing her husband.

What do chatbots sound like when they're chatting with each other? When a mob of AI agents broke out of their sandbox and hacked into a website to solve a challenging problem, researchers looking into these events found that the chatbots were not using plain old English to communicate amongst themselves.

You can find a link to her latest paper at science.org slash podcast.

Stay tuned for the second to last of our series of science biographies.

This month, host Angela Saini talks with astrophysicist Sarah Seeger about her book, The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

Hi there, I'm science writer Angela Saini.

Your book was featured in our series on books on science and death.

I really, really liked your discussion with our host there, Angela Saini.

The book was called Playing Possum [laughs], sure, How Animals Understand Death, and I think this kind of gives us a good entry point to your column.

It's this focus on cognition in animals, researching how animals think.