Robin Dunbar
Part One
#47: The Chemistry of Connection
Part Two
#48: Friends, Tribes & Social Cohesion
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The equally erudite and jovial Robin Dunbar joins Jef Szi and the How Humans Work Podcast for the first of a two part conversation about limits and leaps of social patterns in primates and humans. An Oxford University professor of evolutionary psychology and someone with a facile grasp of multiple sciences and histories, Professor Dunbar offers us a fascinating account of the social roots of human nature.
#47: Episode Summary
In part 1—The Chemistry of Connection—we dive deeply into the endorphin system and the how it functions to stabilize social bonds in groups. We come to see freshly how critical a role endorphins play in our day to day reality. Drawing on his rich understanding of touch, primates, and the wildly comprehensive health benefits endorphins, Dunbar illustrates the connections between chemistry, evolution, and the roots of social blueprint—translating it into the very familiar ‘raw feels’ of relationships that inform how we see, think, and feel about the world…(more)
#48: Episode Summary
In part 2, Professor Dunbar expands on the evolutionary foundations of human relationships, moving beyond social grooming and the endorphin system to explore kinship and the deeper nature of our social lives.
He begins by examining the cost and time investment required to maintain our inner circle of intimate friends. From there, he maps out the concentric layers of more peripheral friendships and the behaviors and expectations that characterize them… (more)
