#05: Robert Trivers - The Logic of Evolution
Episode Summary In Episode #05, Jef Szi welcomes the always forthright and more than occasionally provocative Robert Trivers. Together they discuss one of Robert’s many seminal papers in the field of Evolutionary Biology: Parental Investment and Sexual Selection. Written in 1972, this paper lays bare how time and energy investment differences between the sexes of any species (maternal/paternal) influence who makes the mating choices and who competes to be chosen. Joining the show by Zoom over a couple of beers at an increasingly noisy Jamaican saloon, Trivers waxes professorial while never shying away from explicit and sometimes abrasive thoughts on matters of relationship, sex and violence. In Episode #05 we get a sense of not just the brilliance of strong-willed biologist who made waves across academia, but also one of a man, a son, and a father in whose life we can hear the hurtful, the turbulent, the unreconciled and the messy. Among the stories Robert recounts are a few searing memories about his father's harsh ways of parenting. Through it all, we come to see Robert Trivers in his human complexity. He has clear biological theories for our collective condition but becomes more opaque, in some measure, with his personal understandings…something we can all relate with to one degree or another. Buckle-up for this one, because the father of modern evolutionary biology is not only an insightful genius that transformed a field, but a maverick and forceful soul not who rides roughshod over conventions and decorum as he gets real with his life and the ways of evolution.
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