Okay okay okay, so only one of these explicitly promotes “paleo”. There are a few general guidelines I followed when putting together this list: Paleo isn’t just about humans eating an evolutionarily appropriate diet, but also eating plants and animals that are being fed an evolutionarily appropriate diet. Grain fed ruminants, vegetarian fed chickens, and [...]

A while ago, I stumbled across an article that made me think twice about the evolution of human stature in terms of both natural and sexual selection. It wasn’t particularly well argued, but it did get me to think. One of the curiosities that popped into my head was the case of the African pygmies. [...]

Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain (2004), discusses the ‘Green Revolution’ and the end of cheap oil. It’s only about 5 minutes, and well worth the time. A few important quotes: “agriculture, because it’s catastrophic, must constantly have new land. it also continuously needs new land because it creates excess population… for 10,000 years, [...]

Evolvify was started in part as an extension of a book I was working on synthesizing and applying evolutionary psychology to branding. For whatever reason, when I started shopping that idea around to agents and publishers, I was nudged more in the direction of “paleo applied to lifestyle” in a wider sense. Even though I hadn’t begun [...]

Selected Passages from “The Abolition of Work” by Bob Black (bold added). “No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have [...]

Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain (2004), frames civilization as a human zoo that makes us all psychotic. Hunter-gatherers who observe domesticated humans literally think we’re crazy. A few important snippets: “Think of an animal in the zoo. It’s deprived of things that keep that animal going — the smells, the sights, the sounds, [...]

It disturbs me that vegetarians/vegans didn't seem to take the briefest of moments to reflect on a report of impending water shortages as an indictment of farming's inherent unsustainability, but spoke of it enthusiastically as a vindication of their ideology.

Exploring the theory and implementation of an intentional paleo community by drawing from hunter-gatherer anthropology and evolved human psychology.

Why nature? I’ll admit it, I used to be skeptical of nature — not that I didn’t enjoy nature, but I wasn’t satisfyingly convinced that nature was necessary. I always appreciated it, but I was stuck in some postmodern relativist loop where everything was too subjective to trust. Despite my own intuitions, I also wasn’t [...]

The fitness community surrounding "paleo" doesn't work for me. I don't mean it doesn't physically work, I mean that I don't find it satisfying in the context of pursuing a life less agrarian. I quit searching for the perfect thing a while ago. I couldn't bury the compulsion any longer, and I started building stuff.

Announcing my next expedition, "Fatbikerafting the Arctic". It's been called epic, but there's a chance I might live.

The narrative of human males evolving as tribal leaders in the paleolithic is a myth. The anthropology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology all refute the pick-up artist narrative.

I hope this is just as appropriate for non-United-Statesians as those celebrating Thanksgiving today. Over the past year, I witnessed a lot more criticism of evolutionary psychology than expected. Most of it seems to amount to little more than the political and emotional gasps of a dying blank slate paradigm. One criticism that I did [...]

[Republished with permission from the officially fake weekly publication Crossfit Quarterly] I know, it’s a scary thought: What if, by the sheer stroke of fate, life somehow happens to you? For goodness sake let’s hope it doesn’t, but be prepared just in case. I mean, perish the thought, but honestly, what happens if you lose [...]

An Oregon wolf extermination hunt was temporarily delayed, and conservationists have been ordered to put up cash to compensate ranchers for the existence of wild animals.

 Journal Article of the Week Externalities from grain consumption: a survey by Matthew Metzgar, PhD. Okay, well… I wanted this to be way more awesome than it actually is. Rather, it was kind of soft on the criticism of studies purporting benefits to humans from grain, while presenting a lukewarm case for avoiding grain. Despite [...]

This article in the journal Nutrition was pretty simple. A 19 year old male sought treatment for lack of libido and sexual dysfunction. He had voluntarily started a vegan diet previously. The study measured the effects of ceasing a vegan diet and removing soy from the diet. Yeah, this study has been around for a [...]

Most of the response from my post, “Agriculture Is Imperialism“, was positive. There were a few naysayers, but none really had any substantive critiques, and tended to recycle the flawed “yeah, but we have to turn the entire planet into a factory farm to support an infinite population” argument — the same argument I pointed [...]

Agriculture is the basis for models of the primitive and imperial state. Plant-based diets cannot support even paleolithic human population levels without agriculture. Therefore, a plant-based diet is a fundamentally imperialist diet. The agrarian has offered us a devil’s bargain. By inducing population levels unsustainable by our planet’s naturally ecology through industrial agriculture, they now [...]

As part of my ongoing obsession for Arctic adventures, I've been watching everything I can get my eyeballs on about high latitudes. In the service of this, I stumbled upon Flying Wild Alaska. Between my nostalgia for the few years I spent growing up in Alaska and real people who are more fun than you [...]

Context of questionable relevance It was exactly one year ago today that I first uttered the phrase, “paleo is a logical framework applied to modern humans, not a historical reenactment.” That idea seemed pretty straightforward to me, and it was well-received to the point of being quoted in a real life book (you should buy [...]

I’m just going to go way out on a limb here and assert that individual liberty is a good thing. I mean, it’s not good if you long to be a dictator, but Noriega doesn’t read this site. Now that we have the obvious disclaimer out of the way, I’ll make a few more claims [...]

The list is my subjective (yet absolutely definitive and authoritative) list of areas of inquiry in the evolutionary health and fitness realm that I feel have the most room for exploration and application.

It's tempting to think about evolution as a function of time. This makes some intuitive sense because evolution happens over time, and longer periods of time theoretically allows for more mutations, which theoretically allows for more adaptations. However, it is misleading to use time as a heuristic for thinking about evolution in an individual species, or when making comparisons between species.

I was stuck in anthropology/evolutionary theory mode on the train to Austin from the Ancestral Health Symposium in LA. I used a large portion of the time to chip away at rereading Sex at Dawn. My intent was to fulfill my longstanding desire to present a significant critique of the ideas presented in the book. [...]

My attendance at the Ancestral Health Symposium was positive in a zillion ways. I spent most of the two days soaking up as much information as possible and agree with most of the sunny commentary that’s been coming out of the other attendees. I’ll probably write more about my experience (let me know if you [...]

What personality traits make women more likely to be cheated on? What can be done to avoid it?

What personality traits in men lead make them more likely to be cheated on? Is there any way to prevent such nastiness?

I don’t know about you, but blatant show-offs strike me as some of the basest individuals on the planet. From garish displays of physical prowess to oversized means of transportation to ostentatious domiciles, there’s nothing so arbitrary and wasteful than showing-off. So if you’re like me, you no doubt loathe gazelles for their smug stotting, [...]

This is a review of Power Up Your Brain: the Neuroscience of Enlightenment by David Perlmutter, MD and Alberto Villoldo, PhD. Briefly, I consider this book is both annoying and a must-read. As Emily Deans, MD has shown us, healthy brain chemistry and diet are impossible to disentangle. While I think intentional evolutionarily informed (EI) [...]

Analysis of the 13,000,000+ viewed (in a month) video of two kids high-fiving after their first kiss. A follow-up video on what the kid thinks is really important in a wife, and a study about kids as young as 4 thinking skinny is more attractive. What does it all mean!?

Your hunger: CURED. Your boring Saturday night: SOLVED. Eat some bacon laced goodness whilst watching key animal rights bioethicist, Peter Singer, give a surprisingly good talk about evolution and ethics.

With summer arriving in the northern hemisphere, the eternal questions of “how much sun” and “to suncreen or not to suncreen” are back in season. Through recent population studies, the pendulum seems to be swinging back in the direction of more sun is better. We know that vitamin D is important, and that the best [...]

When Satoshi Kanazawa isn’t killing puppies, eating babies, and biting the heads off of chickens while on stage, he writes articles with titles like, “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?” Fortunately for the Nurture Nazis, if you just read “Black Women [...]

(Continued from: Male Physical Attractiveness Part I or: You Shallow, Shallow Ladies) The attractiveness of facial symmetry seems to have woven itself thoroughly into the nerdier shallower echelons of pop culture. Long-story short: symmetry is a reflection of developmental stability via genetic quality and/or resistance to parasites that would cause asymmetrical development. In the eternal [...]

It has been brought to our attention that milk is good for you. Thus, our team would like to introduce an updated version of paleo called The Paleo Diet for Crackers™. We believe the integration of recent evidence that dairy is good for you will lead to marked improvements in health for all adherents. More [...]

Some months ago I started pondering the paleo diet, or some of its purveyors and adherents, as possibly embodying a concept akin to The Self-Justification Diet™. Understanding that this tendency springs from the confirmation bias we all share, I first broached the subject by pointing a satirical finger at myelf. The cognitive bias is bad enough in individuals, [...]

Beautiful people don’t mind being judged beautiful any more than smart people mind being judged smart. Yes, some will object to that statement — most likely those will be ugly people and dumb people. “But, Andrew” you say, “I’m beautiful and smart and I still object to your assertion.” That’s fine, I see your nod [...]

First off, thanks to everyone who expressed concern for me and the boat in the hours before and after the tsunami. We’re both 100% fine. The dock my boat is tied to consists of several sections, mine being at the end of the first. The other sections (and boats that were attached) were washed away [...]

A common veg*n argument is that we’ve all just been tricked into eating meat by our cultural programming. However, that notion is exactly contrary to my experience. Granted, this sort of self-analysis is fraught with potential errors, but I don’t think the argument I’m about to make is easy to dispute. To my mind “meat”, [...]

Every time I hear someone say “if you don’t like it, leave”, I half expect someone to artfully discharge saliva and tobacco (tobaccy?) at a spittoon so close to me that I nearly spill my sarsaparilla. I grant no credit to those offering the line as a coherent argument, as it seems most often to [...]

Note: this contains a review, click here if you’re looking for the official site of The Hollywood Physique. Applied Evolutionary Psychology: Male Attractiveness Over the course of running a few blogs, I’ve met some of the most interesting and fun people I know. When I started evolvify, I reached out to them for ideas for [...]

A standard principle in evolutionary biology is that the sex that invests the most in reproduction is the most choosy when it comes to picking suitable mates. In most mammals, this means females because of the heavy cost of gestation. In humans, the huge reproductive investment difference between 9 months for females and 9 seconds [...]

It should be no secret that I’m no fan of regurgitated arguments. If you’re going to recite a standardized argument as your own, you should first understand the argument. Evolution deniers spout off lies about “missing links” and “no facts to support” and “it’s just a theory” to perpetuate their vapid argumentum ad ignorantiam and arguments [...]

There’s probably an evolutionary psychology explanation for why guys are attracted to the “hot librarian” stereotype. I’ll put forward one hypothesis: They have access to information and everybody knows information is sexy. Right? Well… let’s just go with that. So my advice for the long-term is… be nice to your librarian. Bonus points if your [...]

Ostensibly, conversations about “health care” in the United States of America are conducted within the prevailing framework of market capitalism. Distilling the debates to their essence typically reveals a legitimate disagreement between the concern for moral hazard (e.g.: those with fire insurance tend to have more fires, or those with unemployment insurance are less motivated [...]

Preface *Skip to below the videos if you don’t care about an aside about doctors. I almost feel bad focusing this piece on one article in particular. I’ve been squinting skeptically at the talk surrounding epigenetics for months now. Because of that, much of what follows is directed at pop science journalism as much as [...]

Ironically, annual celebrations are somewhat more agrarian than paleo. It became more important to mark off calendar dates in relation to the earth’s orbit in order to grow crops more effectively. Of course, that isn’t to say that seasons weren’t important in the paleolithic, just that keeping track of them was a matter of a [...]

A new study, ‘Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets‘, got a brief writeup in Scientific American today under the title, ‘Fossilized food stuck in Neandertal teeth indicates plant-rich diet‘. I haven’t seen the inevitable spin-off articles proclaiming the death of the paleo diet, but I can hear the [...]

Since this talk is conducted by paleoanthropologists, it should be worthwhile for those interested in both evolutionary psychology and diets related to evolution. The topics are listed below. The talk progresses from an introduction of evolution within the context of the paleolithic, then introduces EvPsych from the perspective of language and culture. The discussion of [...]

Obligatory disclaimers: Any implied hypothesis in this post is more speculative pondering than a scientific claim. That feels like a major cop-out, but there just isn’t enough non-anecdotal, non-folk knowledge for me to take a confident position on this. Further, keep in mind that we’re talking about groups, not individuals; it’s easy to find individuals [...]

The California Academy of Sciences presents a talk by Teresa Steele, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropoplogy at the University of California, Davis. Steele’s research focuses on the emergence of the earliest people who were behaviorally, culturally, and anatomically modern. I highly recommend investing an hour into watching this video. It’s a great archaeology/anthropology introduction for [...]

Ladies, gentlemen, and miscreants… You know that conversation that starts off something like, “what physical feature of mine do you most like”? I’ve been on the receiving end of that question from girlfriends far too many times (i.e., 1 or more). The question has a more crass iteration that goes something like, “are you a [...]

(I wanted to title this post: ‘Of Wheat and Women: Toward a Darwinian Feminism’. Alas, I couldn’t shake the gasping desperation of being mired in a spectacular patriarchal construct in which my sincere effort at departing from its all-encompassing grasp has been detourned and regurgitated as a gelatinous pile of simulacrum.) I hate postmodern feminism. [...]

Stock up on light beer and dip, let the drawstring on your sweat pants fly, and let that gut pour into your favorite recliner! Joke with your bros about your wife not getting you and your need to identify yourself with the playtime of guys in much better shape than you and spend a few [...]

While doing research for my post on the mammalian dive reflex, I stumbled across an interesting TED video. It discusses the idea that humans evolved as "aquatic apes" somewhere between the common ancestor between chimps (~6,500,000 years ago) and the first know Homo sapiens (~200,000 years ago). If you look at a timeline of paleolithic [...]

As you all know, Thanksgiving (in the United States of America) falls on the monumentous occasion of the 2 month & 2 day anniversary bimestrial blogoversary of the launch of evolvify.com. Since the site is already on track to gross in the low-mid double figures in cold, hard cash this month, after a stellar first month, I [...]

My recent post that touched on the evolutionary applications to marketing was revelatory. Though it received fewer public comments than other posts have been getting recently, there was an explosion of sincere and interesting private messages related directly to that it. And hey, that’s cool too; I enjoyed everyone’s messages. I’m just not sure what [...]

Today I’d like to share an interview of Geoffrey Miller, PhD recorded at Wieden + Kennedy (Portland) on May 26, 2009. First, I’ve rattled off a bit of background on the interview. Below the audio player, I’ll try to connect a dot or two to how this relates to what I’ve got brewing in the [...]

[Rated 4.95/5 by 6,000+ viewers] In his talk, “A New Tale of the Primate Split”, Dr. Todd Disotell delivers an interesting, if heady at times, talk about alternative dating of primate species using differential comparisons of mitochondrial DNA. The research discussed uses variable rates of genetic evolution in mitochondria to corroborate and refine human and [...]

Heated debates about what definitively *IS* and what definitively *IS NOT* “paleo” abound. While that’s often an interesting question, it also often misses the point. You see, everything is paleo. From computers to the agricultural revolution to individual cereal grains themselves… everything is paleo. “Well, we know that’s not historically true, so what are you [...]

What? Am I psychic, or does my attempt to make a logically connected hypothesis just blow my own mind? In yesterday’s post, I linked the politics of veganism to that of agribusiness by way of what I thought was a coincidental connection… An article by President Obama’s Personal Trainer, Cornell McClellan. Shocker! News just floated [...]

I hoped this day would never come. Alas, it was almost inevitable. Of the many #notpaleo concepts we face in the modern world, two of the biggest are politics and religion; the collision of the paleo ideas with 10K years of subsequent dogma has only just begun. State politics and codified law arose directly from [...]

The biggest mistake we can make as individuals faced with the daily decisions about what to put in our body is: assuming there is such a thing as food. There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. Food. Since I took time out to poke fun at the “everything is caused by culture” crowd yesterday (and almost [...]

This is not a treatise on the merits of a veg*an diet versus a paleo diet from a health perspective. In my sphere of perception, the veg*an world is less often interested in the health perspective anyway.  Among other things, that sphere includes dating multiple veg*ans off and on since the 5th grade.  Like Samuel [...]

Understanding the elemental foundation of evolutionary psychology is as simple as pondering this question: [start timer] Why do we ride horses, but not zebras? [end timer] One of the tricky parts about evolutionary psychology research is that we don’t have a surviving species to which we can compare Homo sapiens in a closely analogous way. [...]

Yesterday, I made it to the bottom of the mountain before my bike did… shattering my clavicle in the process. Since I’m not going to type 3,000 words with one hand, and didn’t want to leave you all alone, here’s a thought I’ve been having lately…

Why does pornography exist? No seriously, setting aside the self-righteously-moral-majority. The question of red dudes with pointy horns is good for art, but isn’t particularly interesting if we want to answer real questions. Why does pornography exist from an evolutionary standpoint? Without diving into minutia, there’s not much of a survival benefit to pornography. And [...]

A superpower we all have! Some of the quirks of evolution shine through in weird ways. The examples you hear about all the time are enough to make evolution denying believers in an “intelligent” design cringe, but they’re typically along the lines of nipples on men, the appendix, and vestigial tail(bone). Having experienced many a [...]

Okay, not all social scientists are dunces. However, an unfortunately large proportion of social scientists are fond of launching attacks on evolutionary psychology based on a misguided and misunderstood straw-man monolith. “But I’m not a social scientist!” Okay, fine. Unfortunately, the dominant paradigm in the 20th century was social science and postmodernism. Even if you’re [...]

Dr. Louann Brizendine discusses her latest book, The Male Brain: A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think. An article about Dr. Brizendine and her research in her first book The Female Brain in a July 2006 issue of Newsweek started a media frenzy that led to appearances on GMA’s “20/20″ and “Good Morning [...]

This comprehensive new look at the hormonal roller coaster that rules women’s lives down to the cellular level, “a user’s guide to new research about the female brain and the neurobehavioral systems that make us women,” offers a trove of information, as well as some stunning insights. Though referenced like a work of research, Brizedine’s [...]

Richard Dawkins discusses his bestseller, The God Delusion, in which he argues that there is no rational or moral reason to believe in God or any other supernatural higher power. He contends that atheists tend not to be vocal about their views because they are discriminated against in the United States, even though collectively they [...]

Christopher Hitchens speaks about his new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hitchens, an always colorful and sometimes outrageous commentator, now takes aim at God. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have tried, but that hard-to-hit Fellow keeps popping back up. Worse still are the violent ways of his flock: waging religious warfare, [...]

TED Talks: Why do people see the Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich or hear demonic lyrics in “Stairway to Heaven”? Using video and music, skeptic Michael Shermer shows how we convince ourselves to believe — and overlook the facts.

Robert Wright uses evolutionary biology and game theory to explain why we appreciate the Golden Rule (“Do unto others…”), why we sometimes ignore it and why there’s hope that, in the near future, we might all have the compassion to follow it. Robert Wright The best-selling author of “Nonzero,” “The Moral Animal” and “The Evolution [...]

Believing the Unbelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World with Sam Harris speaking at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival. Some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world all gathered in [...]

Michael Ruse, philosopher of science, recounts the history of Darwinism by explaining the theories of evolution and natural selection. Ruse discusses the validity of those theories today, 200 years after Darwin’s birthday. Embed Code Topics About Charles Darwin Losing Christian Faith Aboard HMS Beagle As a Deist, Studying Finches, Natural Selection Natural Selection, Reading Paley [...]