The Nature & Nurture Podcast

Adam Omary
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  • SCIENCE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
The Nature & Nurture Podcast

Discussing the interaction between Nature (our biology, genes, evolutionary past, and the laws of our universe) and Nurture (our social environments, culture, history, and upbringings), and how these forces impact our lives. New episodes every week with scientists, authors, and bright minds from a wide array of backgrounds. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNatureNurturePodcast

  1. Nature & Nurture #150: Dr. Michael Bailey - Gender Dysphoria and Sexual Orientation

    DEC 2

    Nature & Nurture #150: Dr. Michael Bailey - Gender Dysphoria and Sexual Orientation

    Dr. Bailey is a psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and Professor at Northwestern University specializing in the etiology of sexual orientation, sexual preferences and paraphilias, and gender diversity. In this episode, we discuss the history of transexualism in clinical psychology and its relation to modern transgender identifying people, the science and ethics of gender affirming care in adults and children, and the different manifestations of gender dysphoria across children, men, women, and comorbidity with autogynephilia. We also discuss the heritability of sexual orientation, the role of prenatal hormones in determining sexual orientation, gender identity, and psychological gender differences, and arousal patterns. Lastly, we discuss the politics of sexology as a field, and how to conduct effective and impartial research on politically charged topics such as researching gender dysphoria, its causes, and evidence bases.

    1h 38m
  2. Nature & Nurture #149: Dr. Ogi Ogas - Autism, Sex, & Consciousness

    NOV 26

    Nature & Nurture #149: Dr. Ogi Ogas - Autism, Sex, & Consciousness

    Dr. Ogi Ogas is a mathematical neuroscientist and author several books including Consciousness: How It’s Made, and A Billion Wicked Thoughts. He writes about autism, mathematical neuroscience, consciousness, and more on his Dark Gift blog: https://www.ogiogas.com/  In this episode Ogi and I discuss the history of mathematical neuroscience, competing computational views of consciousness and why Ogi favors dynamical theories over statistical and deterministic theories of mind, how consciousness evolved, and how human consciousness differs from other species. We also discuss human sexuality and his book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, reflecting on sex differences in online sexual behavior and media consumption. Lastly, we discuss the neuroscience of autism, the subjective experience of autism, its diagnostic history, and how a mathematical and biological account can improve clinical psychology.

    1h 42m
  3. Nature & Nurture #148: Dr. Holly Bowen - Emotion, Motivation, & Memory

    NOV 16

    Nature & Nurture #148: Dr. Holly Bowen - Emotion, Motivation, & Memory

    Dr. Holly Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University.             Dr. Bowen’s research focuses on how affective states, specifically emotion and motivation, influence how we form memories and remember past experiences. She is also interested in how the links between emotion, motivation and memory are impacted by age-related cognitive changes, using multiple methods including behavioral paradigms, computational modeling, and neuroimaging with event-related potentials (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this episode Holly and I discuss emotion and motivation’s impact on memory encoding and consolidation, the differences between emotional valence verses arousal and their neurophysiology, and their connections to the reward system, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. We talk about dual-systems models of reward processing, cognitive control, and decision-making, the role of dopamine in facilitating learning and memory, the role of norepinephrine and cortisol in threat processing and fear conditioning, and paradoxes in how brain activity and behavior changes with age. Lastly, we discuss the negativity bias in memory, the positivity bias in nostalgia, and how socioemotional selectivity and changes in emotion regulation skills may explain age-related changes in these phenomena.

    59 min
  4. Nature & Nurture #147: Dr. Jason Storm - From Postmodernism to Metamodernism

    OCT 23

    Nature & Nurture #147: Dr. Jason Storm - From Postmodernism to Metamodernism

    Dr. Jason Storm is a philosopher, historian, and the Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Religion at Williams College. Dr. Storm is the author of several books including Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. In this episode, Jason and I talk about the history of modernism and postmodernism in philosophy and the arts, the concept of paradigm shifts in science and the humanities, and the most recent paradigm shift from postmodernism to metamodernism. We discuss Jason’s book Metamodernism, its central themes and refutations of postmodernist claims, grounding theories about human language and subjectivity in evolutionary biology and computational neuroscience, and more. Lastly, we discuss the philosophy of religion in relation to evolutionary psychology, memetic and cultural evolution, and neuropsychoanalysis.

    1h 32m
  5. Nature & Nurture #146: Dr. Susana Monsó - How Animals Understand Death

    SEP 12

    Nature & Nurture #146: Dr. Susana Monsó - How Animals Understand Death

    Dr. Susana Monsó is a philosopher, animal ethicist, and author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.  In this episode, we discuss how different animals grieve, how opossums fake death, why predators play with their prey, why dogs sometimes eat their deceased owners as a sign of love, and human rituals surrounding death. We discuss how this topic connects to interdisciplinary areas in philosophy, including animal sentience, the ethics of factory farmed food, moral utilitarianism and its pitfalls, the neuroscience of care and pain, and the moral responsibility that co-evolves with social intelligence.

    57 min
  6. Nature & Nurture #145: Dr. Karen Bales - Neurobiology of Care & Attachment

    AUG 30

    Nature & Nurture #145: Dr. Karen Bales - Neurobiology of Care & Attachment

    Dr. Karen Bales is a Professor of Psychology and Neurobiology at UC Davis, and an expert in oxytocin, pairbonding, and the neurobiology of care.  In this episode we discuss Karen’s background, education, and research on parental care and pairbonding across a wide variety of species including marosets, tamarins, titi monkeys, prairie voles, and seahorses. We discuss the shared evolutionary lineage between humans and other primates, similarities and differences between apes and monkeys, monkey mating and parenting behavior. We then discuss Karen’s experience working with Sue Carter studying oxytocin and the neurobiology of pairbonding in prairie voles, which led Karen to form her own lab at UC Davis studying the oxytocin system in other species. Lastly, we discuss a recent influential study examining the parental behavior of gene-edited prairie voles lacking an oxytocin receptor.

    56 min
  7. Nature & Nurture #144: Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky - Chaos Theory in Psychology & Neuroscience

    JUL 16

    Nature & Nurture #144: Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky - Chaos Theory in Psychology & Neuroscience

    Dr. Alexey Tolchinsky is a licensed psychologist and an adjunct professor at the George Washington University.  In this episode, we discuss Alexey’s clinical experience as a therapist, our shared research interests in neuropsychoanalysis, chaos theory as a way to measure complexity in neuroscience and psychology, narrative fallacy in research, and the importance of specifying the right level of analysis for psychological problems. As case studies we discuss personality traits, anxiety, core affects within basic emotion theory, and their connections to evolutionary psychology and analytic psychology.

    1h 31m
  8. Nature & Nurture #143: Dr. Nicholas Christakis - The Evolution of Social Networks

    JUL 7

    Nature & Nurture #143: Dr. Nicholas Christakis - The Evolution of Social Networks

    Dr. Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. Dr. Christakis is an MD-PhD physician and sociologist known for applying social network analysis to the study of public health and the evolutionary psychology of cooperation. He is the author of several books including Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. In this episode Dr. Christakis and I discuss the methods of social network analysis, similarities and differences to game theory and population simulation research, and how cooperation and friendship co-evolved with social cognition. We discuss evolutionary explanations of modern day public health dilemmas including disease spread, obesity, loneliness, and internalizing disorders, as well as their development across the lifespan and cross-culturally.

    57 min
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Discussing the interaction between Nature (our biology, genes, evolutionary past, and the laws of our universe) and Nurture (our social environments, culture, history, and upbringings), and how these forces impact our lives. New episodes every week with scientists, authors, and bright minds from a wide array of backgrounds. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNatureNurturePodcast

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