Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast)
Jun 23, 2026 · 1 hr 51 min · 15 segments
Pascal Boyer (St. Louis) is one of the greats! We talk about his shifting thinking in terms of belief selection to belief production, and why this is a subversive idea. Other topics include birthdays…
Pascal BoyerGuest
David PietraszewskiHostDavid PinsofHost... and Pascal, uh, for those who don't know, one of his early books was, uh, Religion Explained.
It wa- I mean, I m- I mean, basically everything he's written has been formative for me.
Um, really great, crystal clear, uh, laying out of the logic of evolutionary cognitive thinking and how it can explain different facets of religious ideas.
Uh, but what was interesting is he, in, in s- in large part, has moved beyond that specific framework in terms of understanding cultural products, in terms of the consumer of, of cultural items.
And Religion Explained is, is very much about why certain ideas are attractive or sticky to the human mind.
He is going in a different direction, which I think is really exciting and novel, uh, and powerful, which is focusing on the production side of culture.
So why, why do people produce, uh, cultural items like religious ideas, minimally counterintuitive contexts, concepts, uh, shamanism, political ideas? We get into all of that.
I could listen to Pascal all day, and this is a sample of his wide-ranging, um, and just brilliant insights.
And there's sometimes when I talk to people, um, when they're doing broad overviews, it feels like a million miles high, and we're not really dealing with spec- specifics, and somehow Pascal manages to simultaneously cover a lot of ground but be very concrete.
Um, and a- there's just a lot of fun examples of mysteries, and I feel like this was a good episode where we were once again sort of tackling problems that are very specific, and it was really fun.
... and Pascal, uh, for those who don't know, one of his early books was, uh, Religion Explained.
It wa- I mean, I m- I mean, basically everything he's written has been formative for me.
Um, really great, crystal clear, uh, laying out of the logic of evolutionary cognitive thinking and how it can explain different facets of religious ideas.
Uh, but what was interesting is he, in, in s- in large part, has moved beyond that specific framework in terms of understanding cultural products, in terms of the consumer of, of cultural items.
And Religion Explained is, is very much about why certain ideas are attractive or sticky to the human mind.
He is going in a different direction, which I think is really exciting and novel, uh, and powerful, which is focusing on the production side of culture.
So why, why do people produce, uh, cultural items like religious ideas, minimally counterintuitive contexts, concepts, uh, shamanism, political ideas? We get into all of that.
I could listen to Pascal all day, and this is a sample of his wide-ranging, um, and just brilliant insights.
And there's sometimes when I talk to people, um, when they're doing broad overviews, it feels like a million miles high, and we're not really dealing with spec- specifics, and somehow Pascal manages to simultaneously cover a lot of ground but be very concrete.
Um, and a- there's just a lot of fun examples of mysteries, and I feel like this was a good episode where we were once again sort of tackling problems that are very specific, and it was really fun.
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