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flickr/vin60New Normal?
How do you tell the difference between a sea change and a ripple in the water? Is a peacenik baboon, a man in a dress, or a cuddly fox a sign of things to come? Or just a flukey outlier from the norm? Is there ever really even a norm? In this hour we examine three stories that reframe our sense of normalcy.
New Baboon
John Horgan examines how Americans seem to have a completely different attitude toward war than we did thirty years ago. He takes us on a stroll through Hoboken, asking strangers one of the great unanswerable questions: "Will humans ever stop fighting wars?" Strangely, everyone seems to know the answer. Robert Sapolsky brings us farther afield - to eastern Africa, where a population of baboons defies his expectations of violent behavior. Robert is surprised to feel hopeful for a gentler future, but then primatologist Richard Wrangham asserts that their aggressive nature is innate, unchanging, and hanging over them like a guillotine.
Photo: flickr/hugo!
Monkeyluv, by Robert Sapolsky
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, by Robert Sapolsky
...and, Robert's book about life with the baboons
Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson's book on origins of human violence
New Stu
Stu Rasmussen, of Silverton, Oregon, is an avid metalworker, woodworker, and electrician - and in 2008 became our country's first transgendered mayor. News of his election swept the country, but what was it like at home?
Silverton, Oregon's homepage
Photo courtesy of Stu Rasmussen
New Nice
Brian Hare tells us the story of Dmitri Belyaev, a geneticist and clandestine Darwinian who lived in Stalinist Russia and studied the domestication of the silver fox. Through generations of selectively breeding a captive population, Belyaev noticed not only increased docility, but also unexpected physical changes. Why did these gentler foxes necessarily look different than their wild ancestors? Tecumseh Fitch has a hypothesis, something about trailblazing cells and embryonic development. And Richard Wrangham takes it a step further, suggesting us humans may have domesticated ourselves.
Photo: flickr/mattknoth
1999 NYTimes article on Belyaev's experiment
Video of aggressive and domesticated foxes in captivity
Scientific American Q&A with Richard Wrangham on human evolution
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