Alex Mesoudi

With @saramitri.bsky.social, @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social and L. Lehmann we’ve launched the UNIL Center for Theory in Ecology and Evolution @unil.bsky.social🇨🇭

To kick things off, we’re offering short visiting fellowships for theorists in ecology & evolution. Apply & pls RP 😀

tinyurl.com/2wem36zz

Sure. It's a very nice study, I'm just not sure it tells us much about what makes human social learning interesting

For learning where to forage in a competitive task, at least

Transmission of human handedness: a reanalysis | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core Transmission of human handedness: a reanalysis - Volume 8

Transmission of human handedness: a reanalysis | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

We're pleased to announce the call for the 2026 Richerson Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research, for a recent PhD dissertation that significantly contributes to the field of CE.

Recipients receive a $300 award, a 3-yr CES membership and CES conference registration.

forms.gle/p4MqcskCs2Yz...

🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share 🙏

About the Program (Standard)｜Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research in Japan｜Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research in Japan Official Website of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)

From Apr 1, 2026, I’ll launch my own lab at Tohoku University as an Assistant Professor!
I’m happy to host applicants for the JSPS International Postdoc Fellowships.
If you’re interested in mathematical models of human history, feel free to DM me!

Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)

1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪

You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

Registration Registrations for the conference and the pre-conference workshop are now OPEN! Register for the conference (26-27/02): Culture Conference 2026 – Registration form Register for the worksh…

The Culture Conference 2026 is already starting next week! 🥳

If you plan to attend in-person, please register ‼️before Sunday 22/02‼️
We are almost full, so don’t wait 😊

Online registration will remain open 💻

See you next week in Utrecht 🌇

To register:👇
culture-conference.com/registration/

My kind of papers.
"Can LLMs Cook Jamaican Couscous? A Study of Cultural Novelty in Recipe Generation"
arxiv.org/pdf/2602.10964

ExE 2026

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

I have been sceptical of using genAI in my work so far, and still am with respect to writing and literature reviews, but my god it's useful when trying to write and debug Stan models

He got so close...

Simulation-based inference with deep learning suggests speed climbers combine innovation and copying to improve performance Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
and
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
check them out

These test key theoretical questions (how much should people copy vs innovate, to optimise CCE) with messy real world data. Other studies might be more exploratory, but they are useful too in other ways

I liked @masonyoungblood.bsky.social & @sampassmore.bsky.social's recent analysis of speed climbing, testing theories about the balance between social learning and innovation needed for cumulative cultural evolution. Also @elenamiu.bsky.social's similar analysis of programming contests.

I don't know, people like @sobchuk.bsky.social , @babeheim.bsky.social , @masonyoungblood.bsky.social and @acerbialberto.com himself are having a good go at applying cultural evolution to big messy real world data

Yeah that sounds right. At least some scientists. Some politicians, too

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell

I do wonder if he learned from Ghislaine's dad's profit-driven hijacking of the scientific publishing system, partly by again ingratiating himself into scientific social networks

www.theguardian.com/science/2017...

Cultural evolution in the Epstein files! Quite aside from the petty rudeness of Trivers towards Pete Richerson (one of the nicest and most respectful people I've ever met), how on earth did this two-bit pedophile financier scumbag inveigle himself into so many networks of scientists?

The social learning and development of intra- and inter-ethnic sharing norms in the Congo Basin Compared to other species, the extent of human cooperation is unparalleled. Such cooperation is coordinated between community members via social norms. Developmental research has demonstrated that ver...

🚨 New Paper Alert!

We investigated the developmental trajectories of intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic social norm acquisition among BaYaka and Bandongo in northern Rep. Congo, a community where inter-ethnic cooperation is common. We found that...

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Very happy to see our ice-fishing paper on the cover of @science.org this week! 🎣🎉

We tracked large groups of Finnish competitive ice-fishers to study how social foragers use social information when searching for resources. 🐟

Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (contact me for open access)

Post 1/13 📢🧵

Call for activities proposals !

You are invited to submit proposals for three activities to be held during the upcoming CES2026 conference:

Call for papers for an exciting interdisciplinary conference on „The Cultural Evolution of Migration and Diversity“ 25-26 Sept. 2026 at WZB Berlin. Confirmed speakers include @michael.muthukrishna, Peter Richerson and @alexmesoudi.com.
www.wzb.eu/de/veranstal...

How about @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social (we have many anthropologist members)

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

We received a TON of submissions for @ces2026.bsky.social ! This is definitely a trend you'll want to conform to. If you didn't submit, still come for the amazing speaker lineup. Registration will open soon. @hbes2026.bsky.social abstract submission closes today!

Call for papers for conference on "The Cultural Evolution of Migration and Diversity”.

This is the 12th Annual WZB Conference on Migration and Diversity, to be held at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, from September 25-26, 2026.

Transmissions Episode 2 with Dr Sarah Matthew YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society

Excited for the new Transmissions episode on ASU's Sarah Mathew on how human warfare evolved, and her fieldwork in Kenya.

Watch here:
youtu.be/eUqEcxf5uBQ?...

New Episodes monthly! Created by @ferylbadiani.bsky.social and @ahnisnaahsi.bsky.social

CC: @arizonastateuni.bsky.social

Very cool paper here. I'm particularly intrigued by the finding that population size negatively predicts innovation since that has a nice resonance with some of our recent work (doi.org/10.1098/rstb...).