Everything is MLS

Raise Your Hand if You're a Dumbass A/K/A Tinbergen's Four Questions

In our first episode, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson walks us through Tinbergen's four questions: mechanism, function, development and evolutionary history. Ask all four about anything and you can explain why it exists. We test it on ice cream, lactose tolerance, an E. coli experiment that has run since 1988 and a Paper Plane cocktail. Andy can't help himself from asking David about Calvinism.

Full stats, corrections and all 94 references: everythingismls.com/episodes/1

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro

1:31 Why everything is MLS

5:15 Tinbergen's four questions, in brief

11:19 The four questions with David

16:49 Who was Niko Tinbergen?

17:05 Ethology and the 1973 Nobel Prize

18:55 How vs. why: Mayr's proximate and ultimate causes

22:14 Evolutionary mismatch: why ice cream tastes so good

27:22 Mendel and the modern synthesis

28:07 Dobzhansky and the fruit fly

37:50 Two bird brains: why ecology matters

40:20 The E. coli long-term evolution experiment

45:30 Path dependence and lactose tolerance

51:38 Design principles for cooperative groups

53:27 Drink break: the Paper Plane and the Last Word

1:02:14 Darwin's Cathedral

1:04:41 Multilevel selection and superorganisms

1:06:05 The body of Christ

1:07:03 Holism vs. the selfish gene

1:14:51 Where the word "religion" comes from

1:15:46 The Axial Age

1:18:28 Symbotypes: a genotype for culture

1:19:39 Seven neck vertebrae

1:21:05 Gulliver's Travels and Calvin's catechism

THE AWARDS

Best Question: Olin (his questions drew 191-word answers on average)

Longest Monologue: Olin (302 words, the four-questions explainer)

Lexicon Award: David (most varied vocabulary)

Signal-to-Noise Award: David (11.7 references per 1,000 words)

Laugh Track Award: David (6 laughs)

Four Questions Evangelist: Andy (said it 16 times)

Filler King: Andy (5.5 fillers per 100 words)

The Filibuster Award: Andy (most words per point)

Translator of the Episode: Andy (judges' pick)

MVP: David Sloan Wilson

RAISE YOUR HAND (CORRECTIONS)

41:02 David said 500,000 generations. The E. coli experiment is at about 82,000.

1:19:39 Nearly all mammals have seven neck vertebrae. Sloths and manatees are the exceptions.

More on the episode page.

BY THE NUMBERS

94 works cited across 2,069 years, from Cicero (45 BCE) to 2024

451 authors credited

"Multilevel" said 7 times, in a podcast called Everything Is MLS

ABOUT OUR GUEST

David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist and president of Prosocial World.

Prosocial World: https://www.prosocial.world

David's books mentioned this episode: This View of Life (2019), Evolution for Everyone (2007), Darwin's Cathedral (2002)

START HERE

Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1963.tb01161.x

MUSIC

Intro: "Your Way to Tell Me Go" by Plastic Penny

Outro: "Wants for Everyone" by Slippers

Everything Is MLS is Olin and Andy Poehlman, with David Sloan Wilson.

Episode page: everythingismls.com/episodes/1