NPTR 32

Dr. Christopher Ryan is an author and psychologist who received a BA in English and American literature from Saybrook University in San Francisco, California. He has held a number of odd jobs throughout his life which include gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real-estate in New York’s Diamond District, and helping Spanish physicians publish their research. Eventually Ryan began to focus on doctoral studies in psychology and trying to distinguish the human from the cultural. His most recent work is the 2010 publication Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. In Sex at Dawn, Ryan and coauthor Cacilda Jethá “debunk almost everything we ‘think we know’ about sex” while exploring how our promiscuous past haunts our current struggles regarding monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. His work has earned him media appearances on MSNBC, Canada’s CBC-TV, Oprah Radio, CNN, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Outside magazine, Salon.com, Seed.com, Big Think, and Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog while also appearing in numerous international newspapers and television programs. He is also a frequent contributor to Psychology Today and Huffington Post.