In the first episode of Season 3, we kick off our new miniseries, "Foundations of Animal Behavior" in a conversation between Matthew and Darwin scholar and intellectual historian Dr. William Kimler. We recommend that you read Chapter 7 either before or after this conversation.Here is the version (1st edition) that William and Matthew reference, starting on[...]

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Thore Bergman about Niko Tinbergen's 1963 paper "On Aims and Methods of Ethology." They discuss Tinbergen's four questions as well as additional context for each and Thore describes how he has applied Tinbergen's principles to his own work.After the break, they discuss a paper that Thore and Jacinta Beehner published last[...]

In this episode,  Matthew speaks with Sara Lewis about her book, "Silent Sparks" and her career studying fireflies. They discuss the sexually selected behaviors that are so central to fireflies' lives.  After the break, they talk about Sara's conservation work focused on documenting firefly population dynamics and threat levels that different species face. This week's Two-Minute Takeaway comes from Cheyenne McKinley,[...]

Matthew hosts a live episode of the podcast at the 2023 meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Portland, Oregon.The show features friends of the pod, Swanne Gordon and Jeff Podos! As well as special guests Steve Nowicki and Ted Stankowich.Content relevant to this episode:1. Buy books of poems written by Janie E. Bibbie, the poet[...]

In this episode, Matthew speaks with Robert Seyfarth, professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania. In the first half of the show, they discuss in detail some of the foundational playback experiments that Robert performed in partnership with his late wife Dorothy Cheney. These legendary experiments revealed fundamental discoveries about the kind[...]

In this episode, Matthew travels to South Africa to talk with legendary zoologist and behavioral ecologist, Tim Clutton-Brock. They discuss how Tim came to study meerkats and the logistical benefits of meerkats as a study system. Then they dig in to cooperative breeding and its implications for evolution. In the second half of the show,[...]

This week Matthew speaks with Jenny Tung, McArthur fellow and the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.They start out by discussing the mutual benefits that molecular biologists and behavioral ecologists can gain from bringing their methods and frameworks together. They discuss two examples of the power of that synergy from Jenny's work as[...]

In this week's episode, Maren Vitousek joins the show to talk about stress and her work in tree swallows. She starts by describing what stress is and what it is not. Matthew and Maren talk about the development of the stress response and its long-term implications. Then Maren's talk about the tree swallow project that[...]