First up, do you have a telescope?
No, but I used to as a kid. I watched the moon out of my bedroom window quite a bit.
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As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a zoologist.
Explain what you do in one easy paragraph.
I try to understand human behaviour in an evolutionary light, as an adaptation to the environment. I am interested in everything from life history and social organisation to witchcraft and religion. I have worked in Africa, the UK and now China.
What do you love most about what you do?
I have loved visiting some corners of the borderlands in western China, stumbling across unexpected happenings such as sky burials and horse festivals.
Sum up your life in a one-sentence elevator pitch…
I am an anthropologist, using evolutionary theory to understand why we do what we do.
What’s the most exciting thing you’ve worked on recently?
One matrilineal population I am studying in western China has no marriage in the sense that we understand it. I first visited about three years ago and we are trying to gather data as quickly as possible, as the anthropological diversity of the region is disappearing fast.
Were you good at science at school?
Yes.
If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say?
Be more confident and proactive.
What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you?
Make sure you ask for your own pay rises, because no one else will.
If you could have a conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be?
My grandfather, C. A. Mace, a psychologist and philosopher who died when I was 9. His obituary in The Times said that he “helped establish psychology as an empirical science”. , we were both interested in what motivates behaviour. I would dearly love to have a chat with him now.
What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen in the past 12 months?
The TV series . It shows what happens to the UK’s poorest when they are given a month’s social security benefits all in one go. Within weeks, some were losing their homes and kids, and hunting rabbits for food. If the politicians who dreamed up that scheme had come to my class on human behavioural ecology, they might have realised that making life less predictable was going to make people’s decision-making more short-term, not longer-term. For some relief after that, try the exact opposite: Crazy Rich Asians.
“Islamic sects that believe in the apocalypse actually seem more likely to go extinct”
How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
Useless. My only hope would be if it occurred when I was out on the Tibetan plateau, where the yak herders are pretty self-sufficient and very hospitable.
Do you have an unusual hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?
Sometimes, I try to learn Mandarin, with no discernible progress. My excuse is that reactivity of the FOXP2 language gene declines with age.
OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds…
I have been studying eschatological (“end times”) beliefs in Islamic sects. We seem to have found that those sects that believe in the apocalypse are actually more likely to go extinct.
