I'm Brett McCay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.

Now a few months ago I wrote an in-depth series on the anthropology, the history, the philosophy,

the biology of the culture of manhood that we find across the globe and across time.

Yes, there are differences between culture to culture, small ones, but they all have these high-level general principles in common and what it means to be a man and what manhood means.

And one of those high-level principles that a man is supposed to be a protector.

And that means using violence and aggression to protect his family, his tribe, and also to invade other countries to get more resources.

And that means being competitive, having a martial courage, that's what it means to be a man.

And we make the case that's the core of masculinity on what it means to be a man across cultures.

But why is this? Why is it that men are called upon to fulfill this role as protector and are expected to be aggressive and competitive and sometimes willing to do violence if necessary?

Some would say that it's just a completely a cultural construct and that if you change the culture you can change the way men behave.

But our guest today has an argument that there is a biological component to why men tend to be more violent, more aggressive, more competitive.

His name is Dr. Richard Rangham. He's the professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University and he's the co-author of the book, Demonic Mills, Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.

And in his book he highlights research that's been done in recent years among primates, specifically the Great Apes and specifically the Chimpanzees on male violence.

And what he's found is that there's a lot of similarities specifically between male chimps and male humans on how we approach violence and how they form male bonded groups.

Male chimps also are very violent and we'll talk about how they actually engage in warfare in a way, just as male humans do.

Male chimps tend to form male bonded groups, like little armies, basically little gangs, just like male humans tend to do.

So it's just a fascinating discussion and we only scratch the surface in this conversation.

So I recommend you pick up the book after you listen to this podcast to delve deeper into this.

So without further ado, let's get on to the show with Dr. Richard Rangham.

Dr. Rangham, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Much to be here.

Well, before we get to talking about your book, Demonic Mills, let's talk a bit about your profession.

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