Understanding Ritualized Violence and Dominance Hierarchies in Humans and Animals

Jonathan Gottschall was an associate professor of English whose career had stalled in mid-life. Then one day he looked out his office and saw an MMA gym and he decided he was going to train to become a fighter to prove something to himself and to write a book about the biology, anthropology, and sociology of male violence. In the process, many of his assumptions about violence and masculinity changed. What he once saw as something terrible and despicable, came to be seen with some nuance. Part memoir, part anthropologic treatise, Gotschall's book The Professor in the Cage is a fascinating look at the role of violence in masculinity. In this episode I talk to Gottschall about violence and masculinity and why getting in a fight may be the best thing a man can do for himself.