Lex Fridman Podcast

#229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution

2021-10-10

Richard Wrangham is a biological anthropologist at Harvard, specializing in the study of primates and the evolution of violence, sex, cooking, culture, and other aspects of ape and human behavior. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order – Theragun: https://therabody.com/lex to get 30 day trial – ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod and use code LexPod to get 3 months free – NI: https:/...

Richard Wrangham is a biological anthropologist at Harvard, specializing in the study of primates and the evolution of violence, sex, cooking, culture, and other aspects of ape and human behavior. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
– ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order
– Theragun: https://therabody.com/lex to get 30 day trial
– ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod and use code LexPod to get 3 months free
– NI: https://www.ni.com/perspectives
– Grammarly: https://grammarly.com/lex to get 20% off premium

EPISODE LINKS:
Richard’s Website: https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/richard-w-wrangham
The Goodness Paradox (book): https://amzn.to/3aqg9tg
Catching Fire (book): https://amzn.to/3FAZAcz

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(08:13) – Violence in humans vs violence in chimps
(27:45) – Study of violence in chimps
(46:40) – Human evolution and violence
(1:43:08) – The Goodness Paradox and Catching Fire
(1:55:26) – How cooking changed our evolution
(2:10:11) – The beauty of the human mind emerges
(2:14:18) – A map of how chimps, gorillas, and humans are all related
(2:26:50) – Preserving nature
(2:34:41) – The meaning of life