Natural Reward Podcast
The Natural Reward podcast will focus on questions of innovation, progress and advancement in the evolution of life. We will discuss the evolution of scientific theories, how to think critically about science, and questions of progress and advancement in technology and human culture. The Natural Reward podcast will cover the philosophy and history of science, evolutionary theory, and economic theory. Music by Christian Bjoerklund.
Podcasting since 2021 • 11 episodes
Natural Reward Podcast
Latest Episodes
Hamilton’s Rule and Inclusive Fitness, Part I: What Did Hamilton (1964) Actually Define?
KeywordsInclusive fitness, Hamilton’s rule, kin selection, altruism, social evolution, population genetics, gene substitution, Fisher’s average effect, relatedness, evolution of cooperation, greenbeard effect, dominance, allele frequency...
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17:06
Composite-trait evolution in pitcher plants: Ulrike Bauer
Ulrike Bauer discusses the evolution and diversity of pitcher plants, focusing on the spring trapping mechanism found in some species. Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants that capture insects in a fluid-filled cavity. They have evolved indepe...
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1:48:08
Using Drones and AI to Find Illegal Dumping Sites: Interview with Brian Johnson
Illegal dumping is a widespread problem in cities throughout the world and differentially affects disadvantaged neighborhoods. Brian Johnson is a software engineer who moved to San Francisco nearly a decade ago. At the time, Brian could a...
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1:15:01
Supplement to "Updating the Software of Social Evolution"
In this episode, Jon and I discuss some of the background to the previous episode. We discuss generalized versions of Hamilton's rule, Fisher's fundamental theorem, and Wright's fitness maximization formula. W. D. Hamilton used Sewall Wright's ...
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28:18
Updating the Software of Social Evolution to Patch the Kin-Recognition Bug
In this episode, my brother Jon and I discuss my work on the evolution of kin recognition. Jon is a software engineer and likes to put my arguments in terms of debugging software. For many years, the mere finding of kin recognition in nature wa...
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1:00:48