43 - Steve Stewart Williams - An Astonishing Ape by Two for Tea Podcast

For Steve’s book, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2012) see:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/darwin-god-and-the-meaning-of-life/A3055F89051D5F4ADE4AFE9473BF0AAB

For Steve’s book, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2019) see:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ape-that-understood-the-universe/3448755E3BF801C936343555DA7AECBB

Find out more about Steve here:
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/

Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveStuWill

Further References

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
David Sloan Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (2019)
Erwin Frey, see the survival of the weakest
Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001)
Tim Taylor, The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution (2010)
Wilhelm von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Iona Italia, “A Wrong against Boys: An Impossible Conversation about Circumcision,” in Areo Magazine (2019)
Battlestar Galactica remake (TV series, 2004)

Timestamps

2:08 The gene’s eye view
7:04 Explaining altruism and strong reciprocity
13:44 Culture as an evolutionary accelerator
15:06 Lactose tolerance
16:12 The survival of the weakest
17:56 Sexual selection as an evolutionary ratchet
23:13 Intelligence and language
24:46 Homosexuality
32:22 Evolution and ethics
33:48 Technology and cumulative culture
38:39 The meme’s eye view
44:50 Inclusive fitness
48:46 Evolutionary psychology doesn’t provide a moral template
53:03 Memes and ethics
53:57 Gene-culture co-evolution
57:06 Traits vs. the selection processes that produce them
58:09 Romantic love and jealousy
1:00:39 Why do men hunt?
1:04:00 How will humanity develop in the future?
1:06:40 Intrasexual competition and mate choices
1:15:46 Why women prefer pretty boys
1:19:07 Memetic fitness
1:20:53 Misconceptions about evolutionary psychology; & when adaptationism goes too far