This is Democracy – Episode 170: Biology of Democracy

In this episode, Jeremi and Zachary talk with special guest Dr. Mark Moffett about human biology and how it affects the development of societies. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled "You Don't Really Wish You Were on a Mountainside" Called “the Indiana Jones of entomology” by the National Geographic Society, Dr. Mark Moffett is a modern-day explorer with more than a little luck on his side, having accidentally sat on one of the world’s deadliest snakes, battled drug lords with dart guns, and scrambled up trees to escape elephants, all part of his mission to find new species and behaviors in remote places. Presently Mark is studying the stability of societies across animal species and in humans right up to the present day, an outgrowth of his research for his fourth book, The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall. He received a Lowell Thomas Medal from the Explorers Club for his studies climbing into forest canopies around the world. Mark is one of only a handful of people to earn a doctorate under the Harvard sociobiologist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson. This episode of This is Democracy was mix and mastered by Karoline Pfeil.