Jonathan Gottschall.

I've always blamed it on being a Montanan. When the open fields and rolling hills turn your ambition into taking on the approaching storms. You learn to battle the mountain. Why at 53 am I still in the Martial Arts ring? Because men like to fight. From the iHeart Radio Studio I'm Unplugged and Totally Uncut with Jonathan Gottschall. Jonathan Gottschall, pushing forty, out of shape, and disenchanted with his job as an adjunct English professor, joins a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym when one opens across the street from his office. Part of him is terrified and part of him yearns to conquer the fear, to “be a man.” For three years he trains for a cage fight, not only as a personal test but also to answer questions that, as a scholar, have intrigued him for years: Why do men fight, and why do so many seemingly decent people like to watch? In THE PROFESSOR IN THE CAGE, Gottschall dives into the MMA world, enduring extremes of pain and occasional humiliation, to explore the more disturbing aspects of male behavior. What he discovers is not just what attracts us to violence but how we keep our violence in check. Mixed martial arts is a full-contact hybrid sport in which fighters punch, choke, and kick each other into submission. MMA requires intense strength, endurance, and skill; the fights are bloody, brutal, and dangerous. Yet throughout the last decade, cage fighting has evolved from a small-time fringe spectacle banned in many states to the fastest-growing spectator sport in America. But the surging popularity of MMA, far from being new, is just one example of our insatiable interest not just in violence but in the rituals that keep violence contained Humans, especially men, are masters of what Gottschall calls the monkey dance: a dizzying variety of rule-bound contests that establish hierarchies while minimizing risk and social disorder. Gottschall’s unsparing personal journey culminates in his epiphany, and ours, that taming male violence through ritualized combat has been a hidden key to the success of the human race. Without the restraining codes of the monkey dance, the world would be a much more chaotic and dangerous place. About the Author JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL is a Distinguished Research Fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. His research has been covered in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and on NPR. His book, The Storytelling Animal, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice Selection and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.