A Conversation with Darcia Narvaez, PhD: The Evolved Nest

One Week Rental

Originally recorded as the inaugural conversation in our Connection Masterclass series, this is a 30-minute interview with Professor Darcia Narvaez about her work on the Evolved Nest.

Small Band Hunter Gatherers are the baseline of human normalcy, the ancestral context in which our species developed for 95-99% of its lineage history. These cultures prioritize connection above all else. The polycrisis of modernity can be best understood as an accelerating deviation from this ancestral baseline in connection, which began about 12,000 years ago, and has continued to accelerate since then.

In this filmed conversation, award-winning trans-disciplinary psychology researcher Darcia Narvaez explains her concept of the Evolved Nest, the species-specific extra-genetic (cultural) context in which an animal raises its young. She explains how far we've deviated from the evolved nest of humans, the impacts this is having on our wellbeing and moral development, and how we can recover the nest.