First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any kind of idea, behavior, or skill that may be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture.

Susan Blackmore demonstrates once our distant ancestors acquired the key capability to imitate, a second kind of normal selection began, a success of the fittest amongst competing concepts and behaviors. Tips and behaviors about The Meme Machine that demonstrated most adaptive-making equipment, for example, or using language-survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as much minds as it can be. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to make sure that the genes of these who acquired them also survived and reproduced.

Applying this theory to many areas of human life, Blackmore provides brilliant explanations for why we reside in cities, why we speak so much, why we can’t stop considering, why we act altruistically, how exactly we select our mates, plus much more. With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free of charge will, our extremely feeling of ‘personal,’ The Meme Machine gives a provocative theory everyone will soon be talking about.