Today The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC featured a segment called “The Future of Fish” with Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine. Walsh recently published a cover story in Time about the worldwide rise of aquaculture, the practice of raising domesticated fish for human consumption. There was a lot of valuable information covered in the segment, Read More
Animal Domestication, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Mangrove Forests, Radio & PodcastsToday there was an interesting feature on the Leonard Lopate show highlighting former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda and his new book Manana forever? Mexico and the Mexicans. The central thesis of the book is that Mexicans are a very individualist people, and that the failure of Mexican culture to foster collective action explains much Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Radio & Podcasts, SociologyRecently, Scientific American‘s “Science Talk” podcast featured a valuable interview with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researcher Kathleen Barnes called “Can It Be Bad to Be Too Clean?: The Hygiene Hypothesis“. In the interview, Dr. Barnes explained the state of contemporary research into the “Hygiene Hypothesis”, which suggests that the reason we are seeing an Read More
Coevolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Mismatch theory, Radio & PodcastsToday’s episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross featured a nice interview with Ellen Prager, a marine biologist who just published a book entitled Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Oceans’ Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter. The Fresh Air segment, “Under the Sea, Sex Is Slimy Business“, covered a number of really interesting marine Read More
Marine Ecosystems, Radio & Podcasts, Sex and ReproductionFor hundreds of thousands of years, Homo neanderthalensis was the dominant hominid species of Europe and the Middle East. Then, somewhere in the range of 80,000 to 50,000 years ago, modern humans (Homo sapiens) expanded out of Africa and came in contact with the Neanderthals. Although there is some evidence of limited interbreeding between Homo Read More
Articles, Development, Homo species, Human Evolution, Radio & PodcastsBack in the early 1990’s, I could be found skateboarding around the campus of Pomona College. As I rolled my way from the dining hall to those eight o’clock classes in Chemistry that served to weed out potential Biology majors who were not inclined to early rising or algebra, chances are that there was a Read More
Evolution, Music, Radio & Podcasts, Religion, ReviewsThere was an interesting piece today on Public Radio International‘s The World about the Convention on Biological Diversity (taking place in Japan) called “Environment Biodiversity as natural capital“. Guest Thomas Lovejoy talks about various examples of natural capital, including the oft-cited example of how New York City’s watershed was preserved through a valuation of ecosystem Read More
Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Radio & PodcastsA recent incident in Obion County, Tennessee has gotten national media attention from the likes of MSNBC, NPR, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. A resident of this rural county called 911 when a fire broke out in his yard, but was told that he would not receive a response from the local Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Film, Television, & Video, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Radio & Podcasts, WebToday National Public Radio‘s All Things Considered featured a good piece on the Asian Carp problem entitled “White House ‘Asian Carp Czar’ Outlines His Strategy For Eradicating Species“. The story explains how two human actions — the importation of carp for aquaculture and the reversal of the Chicago River by a massive engineering project — Read More
Coevolution, Freshwater Ecosystems, Invasive Species, Predation, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Urban EcologyIt is kind of amazing how much evolution has found its way into the news of late. National Public Radio usually has pretty good science coverage via Talk of the Nation Science Friday, but lately they have been providing some excellent coverage of important evolutionary concepts that do not always get good press. First, there Read More
Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Human Evolution, Psychological Adaptation, Radio & Podcasts, Religion, Reviews