A mathematician sets out to participate in the study of evolution... and ends up engaging in some fascinating research about social cooperation and the queerness of evolution!    In this episode, Sara Jolena sits down with her old college friend Ben Allen, a mathematician whose work models how cooperation evolves — from iron-sharing bacteria to communal-nesting birds. They consider what this research might illuminate about cooperation in human communities. They then turn towards some of Ben's current research on queerness in evolution. Same-sex behavior has now been documented in more than 1,500 species... and it just keeps getting more interesting! 

Key Topics & Timestamps

• 00:00 — Intro: welcome to ReMembering and ReEnchanting

• 01:05 — Meet Ben Allen: mathematician, old friend, and a researcher on evolution 

• 02:56 — From pure math to evolutionary biology: how Ben's path unfolded

• 04:26 — Why organisms cooperate — and why "survival of the fittest" is an incomplete story

• 06:27 — The bacteria that share iron with their neighbors

• 08:18 — Modeling evolution mathematically: networks, neighbors, and cooperation

• 09:13 — From microbes to mammals: what changes (and what doesn't) when culture enters the picture

• 11:03 — Local connection as a strategy for large-scale engagement (including activism)

• 12:52 — Other paths to cooperation: kin selection, reciprocity, and reputation

• 14:26 — What evolution actually means: reproduction, inheritance, and mutation

• 16:53 — A parallel to religious traditions: continuity and change in tension

• 17:42 — What "reproduction" really means across the tree of life (sexual, asexual, horizontal gene transfer)

• 19:37 — What biologists actually mean by "male" and "female" — and why the definition breaks down

• 23:04 — Evolution "finds a way": clonal fish, sex-changing clownfish, and the limits of a human template

• 25:45 — Sex beyond reproduction: play, pleasure, and social bonding across species

• 26:43 — The 2019 paper reframing same-sex behavior in animals

• 31:28 — Ben's current research: could early marine life not even "see" sex at all?

• 33:15 — Deep-sea squid, imperfect filtering, and why indiscriminate mating can be an evolutionary advantage

• 36:37 — Two evolutionary strategies: cost of mating vs. population density

• 38:36 — Connection, yearning, and sociability across species

• 41:10 — Individual variation: why generalizing about any species misses the truth

• 42:16 — "A very queer evolutionary story"

• 43:20 — Darwin's Victorian assumptions that we are still unlearning

• 44:40 — The perspective of the scientist shifts the questions and analysis that the scientist does. We need many, many different perspectives for these big complex questions! 

• 45:31 — Situated knowledge, Donna Haraway, and the case for multiple vantage points

• 46:23 — Closing reflections and thanks