245. Frank Sulloway on How Lives Turn Out: Genes, Environment, Pluck, and Luck

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2022

⏱️ 162 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Shermer and Sulloway discuss: relative roles of genes, environment, hard work, and luck in how lives turn out; 60s and 70s Harvard culture; his relationship and work with E. O. Wilson, who was recently defamed by Scientific American as a racist; measuring and studying personality; birth order and family dynamics in how personalities are formed; autocratic personality traits and why people follow and support Trump and other autocrats; why if you know a person’s stance on one issue (e.g., abortion) you can predict their stance on many other issues; and more…

American psychologist Dr. Frank J. Sulloway, author of Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend (1979), provides a radical reanalysis of the origins and validity of psychoanalysis and received the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society. For decades, Dr. Sulloway has employed evolutionary theory to understand how family dynamics affect personality development, including that of creative geniuses. He has a particular interest in the influence that birth order exerts on personality and behavior. In this connection, he is the author of Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (1996).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show
0:16.5	Welcome to the Michael Sherman Show. I'm your host Michael Sherman.
0:17.9	My guest today is Frank Sullivan,
0:21.1	his new book is Darwin and his Bears, How Darwin Bear and his Galapagos Island Friends
0:27.0	inspired a scientific revolution. This is something completely different from Frank.
0:31.9	You will probably know him from his famous
0:34.3	and highly successful and game-changing book, Born to Rebel, Birth Order, Family Dynamics,
0:39.7	and Creative Lives. And Frank is at UC Berkeley,
0:46.0	where he is the recipient of fellowships
0:50.0	from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
0:52.8	the Miller Institute for Basic Research and Science
0:55.6	at the University of California, Berkeley,
0:57.7	the National Science Foundation,
0:59.4	the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at
1:05.6	Stanford.
1:06.6	In addition, he is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1:11.2	the Association for Psychological Science, and the Lenean Society of London.
1:16.2	He's also the recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, for which
1:21.4	he was nominated by past recipients Francis Crick, Stephen J Gould, and
1:25.7	Edward O Wilson.
1:27.1	He currently lives in Berkeley, California.
1:30.1	I've known Frank since about 1990 or so, so we're longtime friends.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Shermer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Shermer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.