Dr. Alex Mesoudi is an Associate Professor of Cultural Evolution at the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus, UK. He studies cultural evolution, both in the lab and by constructing models and simulations of it. He’s also the author of the book Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences.

In this episode, we talk about some of the theoretical foundations of cultural evolution. We first discuss the relationship between culture and biology, and how we can get differences between groups. We refer to cultural group selection. Also, to issues regarding traditional social science. We talk about integrating lab studies and ethnographic studies. We then get into the differences and similarities between cultural evolution and modern synthesis genetic evolution. Finally, we talk about Galton’s problem and how to be sure that the cultures we are studying are independent, and also about migration and cultural transmission.

Follow Dr. Mesoudi’s work:

Faculty Page: http://bit.ly/2YiXf2W

Website: http://alexmesoudi.com/

ResearchGate profile: http://bit.ly/2M4z7e4

Twitter handle: @amesoudi

Books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Z5cqtV

Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences: https://amzn.to/32FxoS9

A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, SCIMED, PER HELGE HAAKSTD LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, RUI BELEZA, ANTÓNIO CUNHA, CHANTEL GELINAS, JERRY MULLER, FRANCIS FORDE, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BRIAN RIVERA, ADRIANO ANDRADE, YEVHEN BODRENKO, SERGIU CODREANU, ADAM BJERRE, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, AIRES ALMEIDA, BERNARDO SEIXAS, HERBERT GINTIS, RUTGER VOS, RICARDO VLADIMIRO, BO WINEGARD, AND JOHN CONNORS!

A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, ROSEY, AND JIM FRANK!

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