About
I explore the world through science and story.
I love to discover new things—places, ideas, relationships, organisms, processes, foods. I create with words, with hypotheses, with craft. I grew up in Los Angeles, have lived all up and down the West coast of the United States, and also lived in Michigan for many years. For months at a time, I have conducted research and lived in parts of Central America, as well as Madagascar.
I have fallen in love with the Amazon and with Istanbul, with the Sea of Cortez and with Rome. Archipelagos I have known and hope to return to include Bocas del Toro and Kuna Yala in Panama, Galápagos in Ecuador, the San Juan and Gulf Islands in the U.S. and Canada, and the Exumas in the Bahamas.
Scientist
I am an evolutionary biologist, which means I’m interested in everything from brains to bugs, culture to consciousness. Just about everything most humans think about is evolutionary, except for rocks and quarks and the like. Other descriptions for what kind of scientist I am include animal behaviorist, zoologist, herpetologist, tropical biologist, and evolutionary ecologist. I have conducted research on the evolution of social systems and sexual selection, from frogs to humans. I received my PhD in Biology from the University of Michigan, where I earned the university’s top honor for my dissertation, and have a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. From 2019 – 2021 I was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University.
Educator
For 15 years, I was a professor at The Evergreen State College, where I provided undergraduates an evolutionary toolkit with which to understand what it is to be human, and how to be critical, engaged citizens of the world. I architected curriculum that prioritized the scientific method, and pushed students outside of their own certainty and comfort zones, in part through exploring remote sites in the neotropics.
That ended in 2017 when my husband, Bret Weinstein, and I resigned in the wake of violent protests on campus. Since then we have both been educating outside of the classroom, in invited talks, in written work, and especially, in our weekly livestreamed episodes of the DarkHorse podcast.
Author
I have written and spoken about higher ed and the postmodern takeover of the academy; the evolution of sex, relationship and consciousness; wild nature; the philosophy of science, and more. I or my work have appeared in venues as varied as the U.S. Department of Justice, the Krishnamurti Institute, and Oxford University; the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal; Joe Rogan, and Real Time with Bill Maher. My first book, Antipode, is based on my experiences in Madagascar while studying the evolution of sociality, and the sex lives of poison frogs (St. Martin’s Press, 2002). My second book, co-authored with husband Bret, is A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, and provides an evolutionary toolkit for living a good and honorable life as an ape in the 21st century (Portfolio, 2021). I also write Natural Selections at Substack.
Inklings of all the other things
I am the mother of two fantastic young men, Zack and Toby. Along with my husband and their father, Bret Weinstein, we have a small crew of carnivoran friends with whom we share our space. I aim to spend as much time outside as possible, exploring and moving, on my feet, on my bike, on a paddleboard or with a mask and snorkel, or any other mode that seems interesting. I have worked and played and made things with clay, and paper, and color. I have sometimes spent hours at a time, for months at a time, watching animals in the wild. Sometimes, especially if said animal is a lizard or a snake, I feel compelled to hold the animals for a bit.
