‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ turns 50, and how Neanderthal DNA could change your skull

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1968, Science published the now-famous paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin. In it, Hardin questioned society’s ability to manage shared resources, concluding that individuals will act in their self-interest and ultimately spoil the resource. Host Meagan Cantwell revisits this classic paper with two experts: Tine De Moor, professor of economics and social history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Brett Frischmann, a professor of law, business, and economics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. They discuss how premodern societies dealt with common resources and how our current society might apply the concept to a more abstract resource—knowledge. Not all human skulls are the same shape—and if yours is a little less round, you may have your extinct cousins, the Neanderthals, to thank. Meagan speaks with Simon Fisher, neurogeneticist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, about why living humans with two Neanderthal gene variants have slightly less round heads—and how studying Neanderthal DNA can help us better understand our own biology. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Phillip Gunz; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Morgan State University, a Baltimore, Maryland Carnegie R2 doctoral research institution,
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0:16.0	Morgan continues to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment.
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0:25.7	and eight new National Centers of Excellence, Morgan is positioned to achieve Carnegie R1 designation in the next five years.
0:33.7	To learn more about Morgan and their ascension to R1, visit morgan.edu slash research.
0:40.8	This week's episode is brought to you in part by OpsGenie.
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1:21.3	Welcome to the science podcast for December 14th, 2018.
1:27.6	I'm Megan Cantwell.
1:29.3	On this week's show, I talk with Tina DeMore and Brett Frischman about their contemporary take on Garrett Hardin's 1968 paper, Tragedy of the Commons.
1:39.2	How does Hardin's paper hold up 50 years later?
1:42.9	I also speak with Simon Fisher about the link between Neanderthal
1:46.8	genes and less globular heads in living humans. This week marks the 50th anniversary of a
	...

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