Let's Stick Together*

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Crowded subway driving you crazy? Sick of the marathon-length grocery store line? Wish you had a hovercraft to float over traffic? If you are itching to hightail it to an isolated cabin in the woods, remember, we evolved to be together. Humans are not only social, we’re driven to care for one another, even those outside our immediate family. We look at some of the reasons why this is so – from the increase in valuable communication within social groups to the power of the hormone oxytocin. Plus, how our willingness to tolerate anonymity, a condition which allows societies to grow, has a parallel in ant supercolonies. Guests: Adam Rutherford – Geneticist and author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature – a New Evolutionary History” Patricia Churchland – Neurophilosopher, professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California San Diego, and author most recently of “Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition” Mark Moffett – Tropical biologist, Smithsonian Institution researcher, and author of “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall” *Originally aired July 22, 2019 Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.
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0:23.6	at Shopify. co-deek slash special offer,
0:26.4	all lowercase.
0:27.5	That's Shopify. co-deekk slash special offer.
0:32.3	Get ready to geek out. The Wired Science Podcast explores all the
0:36.8	latest and greatest in science, everything from strange diseases and
0:40.6	biological breakthroughs to interesting tech and mysteries in outer space.
0:45.0	Listen to Wired Science today wherever you get your podcasts.
0:49.0	That's Wired Science wherever you get your podcasts. I remember the last time I was in New York riding a jam-packed
1:06.9	train into Manhattan. The train was rumbling through a hot tunnel and it was
1:10.8	stuffed with poorly groomed protoplasm.
1:13.7	A woman nearby was eating chicken nuggets and licking her fingers.
1:17.9	Some other guy had all too obviously never met a bar of soap and the clown behind me kept bumping me with his backpack.
1:25.0	I mean I just wanted to throttle them all.
1:28.0	But here's the thing.
1:29.4	We don't like people but we do like people. Humans have evolved to be together. We're perpetually stuck in the
1:36.4	crowded subway car of humanity. So the question is, how did we get here?
	...

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