2018/10/07 – Dr. James DeMeo – Saharasia

The recent, intensely controversial Supreme Court Senate hearings in Washington brought into sharp focus the deep, apparently systemic (centuries-long …) divisions in American society still remaining over issues of “women,” “sexism” and “male dominance.” My guest tonight, Dr. James DeMeo, has spent the last several decades studying this problem in-depth — and has come to some remarkable conclusions. As part of his PhD thesis at the University of Kansas, DeMeo undertook a cross-cultural review of modern ethnographic data. This was the first-ever mapping of human behavior around the world, in the largest ever cross-cultural study so far undertaken. 1170 different cultures, 63 different social variables, all related to “the treatment of infants and women,” “the status of woman, marriage and inheritance customs,” and the presence of hierarchical structures such as “class,” “caste” and “slavery” — with beliefs in a violent god with full time priesthoods of human “enforcers,” and [...]