Speeding Up Human Evolution

Thanks for the show. I read this book last September; I didn't find it politically incorrect. But I have previously read Crisis In Sociology: The Need For Darwin by Lopreato & Crippin, which cleared out a lot of deadwood for me to trip over. Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left, and maybe Steven Pinker, serving as shock-absorbers. Anyway... I've just started Dinner With A Cannibal which promises to un-taboo-ulate that touchy subject.

Interesting! While listening, I also thought of Jeremy Rifkin, who proposes that technological advances boost neuro-development. If I understand him, a description of this would be that humans invented written language for 'bean counting' need, but it morphed into broader application, and human brains were actually changed ... Every development along the way has contributed, not only those directly linked to communication. A child born into a culture with lots of technological applications established, is born into an environment that stimulates the brain toward greater complexity of inter-connected "thought links" than a child born into a more limited technological environment. (I may be way off, am summarizing some of what I've heard from interviews with Rifkin on his book: "The Empathic Civilization".) It would be interesting to hear these two disparate views share and create some kind of synthesis! I suspect there is great, and ultimately compatible, insight in both approaches to understanding "who we are now, and where we have come from." Thanks for this interview, and for your podcasts generally. I enjoy them very much, find them stimulating as well as pleasant via your style.

[Thanks, Maggie, for your very kind comment — I appreciate it! g.]