Today I sat down with Professor Joe Henrich to discuss what makes our species special—which is, by his lights, culture. Our conversation centers on how culture develops, and from this topic, we managed to hit a wide range of other subjects, including but not limited to: the validity of children as models for uncultured humans, the relevance of intelligence to human success, the potential philosophical implications of known facts about cultural evolution, neanderthals vs. humans, and the extent to which human nature is genetic.

Henrich is Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, and he is the author of two widely-acclaimed books, The Secret of Our Success and The WEIRDest People in the World. Our conversation today focused on the first book, but you can find both on Henrich's website: https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/