The Evolutionary Psychology Of Bullying - Tony Volk - #637

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's happening, people? welcome back to the show. My guest today is Tony Volk. He's a psychologist, a professor of evolutionary psychology at Brock University, a researcher and an author. Almost everyone will encounter bullying at some point in our lives, be it in school, sports or even at the workplace. There seems to be no shortage of individuals ready to prey on others. But why does bullying exist? Why is it so ubiquitous? And what are the adaptive reasons why people engage in it? Expect to learn whether bullying actually serves any purpose in society. Whether bullying is heritable from parents. What factors can predict whether you will be a bully? Whether broken homes make bullying kids? Which people are most likely to be victims? Whether bullying has gotten worse over time? What to do if you're the parent of a bully or a victim? And much more. This breakdown is absolutely awesome. I love finding researchers like Tony, who is massive in his field and publicly in the space of sort of science communication, podcast, bro stuff, hasn't really been broken yet. And this is an absolutely awesome episode. So many great insights, loads of interesting ways to reminisce and reflect on your time in school, interacting with the politics of young kids and growing up. It's so great having this adaptive lens, looking at things using this evolutionary perspective is so interesting to me. And I really, really hope that you take tons away from today and that it's hopefully going to nudge your future and the future of your kids in the right direction. Don't forget that you might be listening but not subscribed. And that means that you're going to miss episodes when they go up. So if you want to support the show and if you want to ensure that you know when every episode drops, and if you want to make me very happy, go and press subscribe on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever else you are listening. I thank you. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Craftd London. They are the number one men's jewelry company worldwide, over half a million happy customers. And it doesn't surprise me that pieces are so easy to dress in. It's what I wore in the Mark Normand episode last Thursday for all of the people that were asking. It was the feather pendant. And I absolutely love their stuff. It's the right price range. It's between sort of 30 and 60 pounds or bucks per piece, which means that it's sufficiently expensive to make it really high quality and nice, but not so expensive that you're terrified of wearing it in case you break it or lose it. 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