Episode list

Where Are You?

What is blame? What happens when you assign responsibility to someone else, or to a group of people, and use that to inform how you treat them? What does scapegoating accomplish, and what is the root cause of tribalism? Kevin examines philosopher René Girard's Mimetic Desire and Scapegoat Mechanism concepts to unearth the very core of human behavior and how we function as a society. It all starts with babies imitating adults immediately out of the womb, and it ends with burning disco albums at a baseball game. Somehow that bizarre human journey all makes sense -- and you'll know more about yourself and the world around you.

Now widely polled as the most popular color in the world, there was a time in which there was no blue -- at least not the way we see blue now. Sure, the sky and water haven't changed colors, but without the ability to easily create blue dye or pigments, we had no use for the word "blue." And it turns out that we need words to identify, think, and talk about things for them to exist in our minds. Journey with Kevin as he tells the strange story of how humans discovered the color blue, which existed right in front of them the whole time.

How many friends can you actually have? No, really... how many friends can your brain handle? Kevin details the work of anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who suggests that human beings are cognitively-equipped to handle around 150 friendships. While studying primates, Dunbar found a correlation between the size of the neocortex and the size of the average social group and applied that to humans... but why 150? The Social Intelligence Hypothesis suggests that we evolved to understand and manage relationships, and it turns out that sharing is a concept few animals seem to possess. Developing and maintaining real, meaningful friendships may be a lot harder than we realize.