#594 - Dr Richard Wrangham - The Incredible Evolution Of Human Violence

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2023

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr Richard Wrangham is an anthropologist and primatologist, a Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and an author whose research focuses on ape behaviour, human evolution, violence, and cooking.

Humans have the capacity for incredible benevolence and kindness, but also are able to be execute other members of our species with a uniquely effective ruthlessness. Why would evolution give us such differing capacities to chimps and apes and what can this tell us about our nature?

Expect to learn the fascinating evolutionary story of human aggression through the ages, how humans actually selectively bred ourselves to become less aggressive, how our capacity for violence informed the evolution of morality, the true reason for why humans might have a sense of right and wrong, what would have happened to a hyper aggressive male ancestrally and much more...

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Richard Rangham. He's an anthropologist and
0:06.9	primatologist, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University and an author whose research
0:12.9	focuses on ape behavior, human evolution, violence and cooking. Humans have the capacity for incredible
0:19.8	benevolence and kindness, but are also able to execute other members of our species with a uniquely
0:26.5	effective ruthlessness. Why would evolution give us such differing capacities to chimps and apes?
0:32.7	And what can this tell us about our nature? Expect to learn the fascinating evolutionary story of
0:38.5	human aggression through the ages, how humans actually selectively bred ourselves to become less
0:44.5	aggressive, how our capacity for violence informed the evolution of morality, the true reason for why humans
0:50.4	might have a sense of right and wrong, what would have happened to a hyper-aggressive male
0:54.8	ancestral and much more. This is a very, very cool conversation. Richard's work is phenomenal. He
1:04.3	literally was one of the first assistants that went out to work with Jane Goodall, who was studying
1:10.7	chimped behavior in the wild. 40, 50 years ago, maybe even longer than that. He is super legit,
1:17.2	really, really wonderful storyteller. And I mean, some of the insights from this are, they really
1:23.6	upend a lot of what I assumed and thought that I knew about human nature. So yeah, get ready for
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	...

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