104 - Nicholas Christakis: Evolutionary Biology & Society’s Genetic Underpinning

Nicholas Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he is also Director of the Human Nature Lab and Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. Nicholas is both a sociologist and a physician; after completing his undergraduate at Yale in biology, he received an M.D. and M.P.H. from Harvard and then a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Nicholas has written numerous books, including Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live (Little, Brown Spark, 2020) and Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (Little, Brown Spark, 2019), and this latter book is the subject of this episode. Robinson and Nicholas first discuss the way that genetics manifest themselves in behavior before turning to the way that specific behaviors and tendencies have evolved in humans to promote the flourishing of societies. They then talk about some particular such behaviors and tendencies, like in-group bias and hierarchy, before turning to some implications of the view for how societies ought or ought not to be structured.

Nicholas’s Website: https://www.humannaturelab.net

Nicholas’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NAChristakis

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society: https://a.co/d/4BeJyS0

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

01:16 Introduction

04:28 The Motivation Behind Blueprint

23:02 The Genetic Basis of Human Societies

28:27 What Is Network Topology?

38:28 Trade-Complementarity

42:07 The Cultural Universality of Love

48:12 The Eight Cultural Universals

01:02:06 Is Hierarchy Natural?

01:07:13 Human In-Group Bias

01:12:23 Is There a Relationship Between Genes and Social Status?

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.