Monkey Business | Interview: Jonathan Leaf

May 20
1h 12m

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Episode Description

For years, Jonah Goldberg’s enemies, acquaintances, and wife have accused him of being little more than a slightly advanced proboscis monkey. Today’s guest, author Jonathan Leaf, is here to prove them definitively wrong. Jonah and Jonathan explore how similar humans and apes actually are, while also touching on warlike animals, humans and the herd, chimp violence, the Jets, polygamy, language, hardwiring, Jane Goodall, and preferential homosexuality along the way. 

Show Notes:

Jonathan Leaf - The Primate Myth: Why the Latest Science Leads Us to a New Theory of Human Nature

James C. Scott - Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Robert Wright: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Atlantic piece - “The YOLO Presidency” 

James Q. Wilson - The Moral Sense

City Journal review of The Primate Myth

L&L Review

Ed West’s Substack review

Washington Free Beacon review

Religion and Liberty Online review


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