The Most Virtuous Signaling Theory

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Like costly signaling theory, this is called, it has a few other explanations in biology. But basically, like the Bauer Bird builds this massive structure to appeal to females, it has to be costly so that the female knows he must have really good genes to be able to pull this off. And so this is often explained why men drive super expensive cars. It has to be something that the other people can't afford. That you're really putting it out there or another explanation for why men perform dangerous sports. You know, the Darwin Awards, right? They do crazy shit.

Shermer and Gold discuss: diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media • social justice movements and their motivations • bias in STEM fields • why people believe weird things • exorcisms • UFOs • faith healers • Derren Brown and how magic works on minds • hypnosis • sex and where to have an affair • Ashley Madison • female/male differences in sexual preferences and choices • non-offending pedophiles in Berlin • the curious case of Jimmy Seville: why didn’t anyone notice his pedophilia?

Andrew Gold is a British journalist whose podcast On the Edge with Andrew Gold investigates belief, cults and extreme ideologies. He speaks five languages, has lived in six countries and has made award-winning documentaries around the world for the BBC and HBO about fringe topics, from exorcism and UFOs to abortion and porn stars, and even more controversial terrain, such as his two years investigating pedophiles. On his podcast he has interviewed Richard Dawkins, Amanda Knox, John McWhorter, Gad Saad, Peter Boghossian, Robbie Williams and that Shermer guy…as well as several psychopaths, murderers, cult defectors and a guy who had to eat his friends after a plane crash. The reason he started his podcast is because the UK TV producers who work with the BBC kept insisting that he no longer be visible on-screen in his films because, he was told, they needed “a minority.”