This talk explores how assumptions about humans as evolved, embodied and embedded biological nested systems can be used to approach communication as a an adaptation that evolved to increase short term survival. Studies are presented testing hypotheses derived from this approach which explore how pictures differ from words, how persuasion can be conceptualized as the dynamic destabilization of behavioral states, how action perception theories reshape our understanding of what we remember from media, and how video games function to destabilize real world behavioral attractors and create game attractors through action in a virtual world.