PODCAST · science
This View of Life
by This View of Life
This View of Life takes a deep dive with the best and brightest thinkers on anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective. TVOL is a product of the non-profit ProSocial World and hosted by co-founder and President David Sloan Wilson.
Episodes
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Evolving Cooperative Systems: The Case of Housing and Homelessness
Homelessness is a wicked problem in its own right and is connected to the larger problem of affordable housing, which affects everyone but the wealthy. Even though these problems are complex, they are not incomprehensible. Join David Sloan Wilson for a conversation with Rosanne Haggerty, whose...
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Evolving Complex Systems in Seattle and Beyond, with Marina Alberti
How can cities deliver on their ambitious agendas? In conversation with David Sloan Wilson, Marina Alberti is a true pioneer of adopting a new perspective based on a combination of complex systems science and evolutionary science. She is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the...
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Evolution's Rainbow, Revisited: Sex, Gender, and Evolution
Nature doesn't draw straight lines, and neither should we. In this special conversation, evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden and geneticist Nathan Lents explore how sex and gender diversity shape life itself - from fish that swap roles to humans who defy binary boxes. They'll unpack why...
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The Evolution of Place: How Environments Shape Us
What if your neighborhood is quietly shaping your stress levels, immune system, and trust in others? In this episode, David Sloan Wilson talks with David McAleavey, Amy Clair, Blair Gross, and Rick O'Gorman about how environmental cues – such as order, greenery, and decay – act as signals to our...
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Evolving Prosocial AI: A conversation with Peter Fenton and David Sloan Wilson
Artificial intelligence is evolving faster than most of us can think about it—but few of its creators understand evolution itself. Venture capitalist Peter Fenton joins evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson for a wide-ranging conversation about how evolution and artificial intelligence might...
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Forever Green: Building a cooperative innovation platform for diversification in Midwest agriculture with Nick Jordan & Whitney Clark
David Sloan Wilson speaks with Professor Nick Jordan and Whitney Clark, Executive Director of Friends of the Mississippi River, about their work on the Forever Green Initiative – a regional effort to scale regenerative agriculture in the Upper Midwest. They reflect on seven years of cross-sector...
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The Science of Imagined Worlds: Evolution and Ecology for World Builders - A conversation between Carlo Maley, Vaughn Aktipis-Maley & David Sloan Wilson
Join David Sloan Wilson in conversation with Carlo Maley and Vaughn Aktipis-Maley as they explore how evolutionary science can inspire deeper, more internally consistent worldbuilding. Based on their recent publication Evolution and Ecology for World Builders, this episode blends fantasy...
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Shaping AI for Good: Prosocial Hybrid Intelligence for a Thriving Future - A conversation between Cornelia Walther and David Sloan Wilson
AI is no longer a distant future - it's shaping our lives right now. But what if we could design it not just to be smart, but to be good? In this powerful conversation, Cornelia Walther and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson explore how we can build AI systems that truly serve people and…
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Democracy's Deep Roots: From Hunter-Gatherers to Modern Society -- A conversation between Vivek Venkataraman and David Sloan Wilson
What if the roots of democracy run far deeper than ancient Greece or Enlightenment Europe, but back to our evolutionary origins as humans? In this thought-provoking conversation, evolutionary anthropologist Vivek Venkataraman and renowned scientist David Sloan Wilson dig into how early human...
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Decolonizing Ecology: Rethinking Nature in a Broken World
A conversation between Madhusudan Katti and Amitangshu Acharya Join us for a thought-provoking virtual dialogue exploring how colonial worldviews have shaped modern ecology - and what it means to decolonize our relationship with nature in an era of social and environmental upheaval. Building on...
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Addressing the Wicked Problem of Housing Insecurity in Binghamton New York with Rebecca Rathmell
Originally published on September 9, 2024
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Hunter-Gatherer Societies, Human Origins, and Modern Democracies with Vivek Venkataraman (Part 2)
Hunter-gatherer societies are fascinating in their own right and--with appropriate caution--a major source of insight about our ancestral past, stretching back to our origin as a species. Remarkably, hunter-gatherer societies also have much to teach us about modern Democratic governance. Vivek...
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Hunter-Gatherer Societies, Human Origins, and Modern Democracies with Vivek Venkataraman (Part 1)
Originally published on January 8, 2025. Hunter-gatherer societies are fascinating in their own right and--with appropriate caution--a major source of insight about our ancestral past, stretching back to our origin as a species. Remarkably, hunter-gatherer societies also have much to teach us…
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Barry-Wehmiller's Bold Experiment in Prosocial Cultural Evolution
Who is Barry-Wehmiller (BW)? Not a person, but a manufacturing corporation and star attraction of the Conscious Capitalism movement. If you are familiar with this movement, you might have read Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, by CEO Bob Chapman and...
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Assessing the Complexity/Evolution Paradigm for Economics with Eric Beinhocker
The first book-length articulation of an economic paradigm based on complex systems science and evolutionary science was Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth, published in 2006. He is currently Professor of Public Policy Practice at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government and Executive Director...
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A Theory of Everyone as a New Paradigm with Michael Muthukrishna and David Sloan Wilson
Michael Muthukrishna's new book A Theory of Everyone is the latest in a lineage of authors that include Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Not By Genes Alone) and Joseph Henrich (Secret of Our Success, WEIRDest People in the World). All of them illustrate what…
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Conscious Capitalism Viewed Through The Lens of a New Paradigm with Bob Chapman & Raj Sisodia
Conscious capitalism is well known as a business movement that goes against almost everything that is taught in business school. However, the same movement makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of a new paradigm for economics and business based on a combination of complex systems…
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Evolving Prosocial Cities, with Jonathan Rose
Few people know more about cities than Jonathan Rose, author of The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life. Jonathan is a practitioner in addition to a scholar. His urban development company is at the forefront of...
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Updating Darwin and Tocqueville on Self Interest, Rightly Understood, with Robert Putnam
In 1831, two youths embarked upon voyages that would change the way that we view the world today. The first was Charles Darwin and the second was Alexis de Tocqueville. Both addressed the nature of competition, cooperation, and community in ways that are highly relevant to the social dilemmas...
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Wicked Problems and How To Solve Them with Guru Madhavan
Guru Madhavan is Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar, Senior Director of Programs, and Director of the Forum on Complex Unifiable Systems (FOCUS) at the US National Academy of Engineering. His new book is on how to solve wicked problems anywhere, but it is also rooted in a particular...
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Depolarizing Economic Theory and Practice with Paul Dragos Aligica
In my writing on generalized Darwinism as a new paradigm for economics and public policy, I stress that it doesn't fall into any current ideological camp. It isn't left, right, or libertarian and draws upon the valid elements of all three. This conversation with the political economist and social...
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Announcing a New Paradigm for Economics and Beyond with Dennis Snower and David Sloan Wilson
Is it time to fundamentally rethink economics - its theoretical foundations, activities and processes; its purpose and goals? How should we reimagine and redesign our economic models to better reflect and serve human needs and wants, and the flourishing of all life on our one planet? It is…
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Anti-Trust From a Multilevel Evolutionary Perspective with Denise Hearn
Increasingly, policymakers, investors, and advocates recognize that the neoliberal theory of economic organization – laissez faire – is a failed experiment. However, certain areas of law – particularly antitrust law are still beholden to false econometric notions about how markets operate, which...
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What Happened to Selfish Genes? with J. Arvid Agren
J. Arvid Agren's book The Gene's Eye View of Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2021), is a highly praised scholarly account of the concept of selfish genes, which Richard Dawkins made hugely popular in 1976. Dawkins himself calls Agren's book "the most thorough reading of the relevant…
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No Best Way, with Stephen Colarelli and Max Beilby
Max Beilby and Steve Colarelli discuss the application of evolutionary psychology to Human Resource Management. They cover Steve's academic career, and his books No Best Way: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource Management and The Biological Foundations of Organizational Behavior (which...
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Atlas Hugged and Our Moment of Choice, with Kurt Johnson
Kurt Johnson wears many hats--a distinguished evolutionary biologist, a leader of the Interspiritual Movement, an authority on the scientific career of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and most recently co-author of the anthology Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future.…
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Atlas Hugged and the Nature of Fiction, with Brian Boyd
Brian Boyd is a renowned evolutionary literary scholar (The Origin of Stories), biographer of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov (1,2,3), and 2020 recipient of the Rutherford Medal, New Zealand's highest academic honor. He is the perfect person to discuss my first novel, Atlas Hugged, and the…
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Atlas Hugged and Catalyzing Positive Change in the Real World, with David Korten
David Korten is the renowned futurist, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning among many other books, founder of YES! Magazine, and a prominent member of the Club of Rome. There is no better person with whom to discuss the world-changing theme of AH in relation to...
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Human Nature at Work, with Andrew O'Keeffe
TVOL guest host Max Beilby talks with Andrew O'Keeffe about his work helping leaders make better sense of the human dimension of their role, so that they can work with, rather than against, human nature. Max and Andrew also discuss the coronavirus pandemic, and its potential long-term impacts on...
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The Study of Nature in Early America: A Conversation with Lee Dugatkin
What was the study of nature like before Darwin? It was an integral part of the Enlightenment and was avidly pursued by early Americans such as Thomas Jefferson and the portrait artist Charles Willson Peale, who created the most famous museum of the Revolutionary era. Lee Dugatkin is both an...
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Managing the Human Animal, with Nigel Nicholson and Max Beilby
Max Beilby and Nigel Nicholson discuss the application of evolutionary psychology to the world of business and management. They cover Nigel Nicholson's academic career, his books Managing the Human Animal (marketed in the United States as The Executive Instinct), Family Wars, and The "I" of...
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Cultural Evolution with Alex Mesoudi
In the last 30 years, evolutionary theory has undergone explosive growth in studying humans as a fundamentally cultural species. David talks with Alex Mesoudi about this field of cultural evolution and how it is bringing a full view of humanity into inquiry and building bridges across disparate...
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[BONUS] Robert Kurzban On the Modular Mind
In this bonus archive episode, David talks with evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban about his book, "Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind" which shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's modular…
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A Tale of Two Evolutionary Processes, with Rita Colwell
Rita Colwell pioneered the study of microbial ecology and genetics and served as Director of the National Science Foundation during 1998-2004. Her new book A Lab of Her Own: One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science tells two evolutionary stories. The first is the story of her career...
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Positive Deviance as the Third Way: A Conversation with David K. Hurst
During our discussion group exploring TVOL's Third Way Series, What is Positive Deviance? There's a small chance that you know all about it and a larger chance that you've never heard of it at all. That's because successful cultural change methods have a way of emerging at a particular time and...
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The Third Way of Entrepreneurship with Victor Hwang
Since the Third Way series is centered on entrepreneurship, even though it also applies to all forms of positive social change, it is only fitting for the capstone episode to be a conversation with Victor Hwang. Victor developed an evolutionary and ecosystem approach to entrepreneurship in his...
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Peter J. Richerson: Morality from an Evolutionary Perspective
David discusses morality from an evolutionary perspective with analytic philosopher Peter J. Richerson. Peter is best known for his seminal work on cultural evolution with his frequent collaborator Robert Boyd. Their book, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, remains a...
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[BONUS EPISODE] Geoffrey Hodgson on Evolutionary Thinking and Its Policy Implications for Modern Capitalism
This interview was recorded almost 10 years ago at a workshop entitled, "Evolutionary Thinking and Its Policy Implications for Modern Capitalism". We have revived it from the TVOL archives for your enjoyment and think you will find its contents as relevant as ever. Geoffrey is a specialist in...
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Morality from an Evolutionary Perspective with Simon Blackburn
David discusses morality from an evolutionary perspective with analytic philosopher Simon Blackburn. Along the way they cover whether functionality discredits altruism, the two sides of morality (thou shall not and thou shall), and the importance of intent for moral outrage. This is the first...
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The Nordic Third Way
Again and again—including some of the previous episodes—the Nordic countries are identified as exemplars of good governance and the Third Way. In this episode, we hear directly about the so-called Nordic model from Nina Witoszek, Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo's Centre for…
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Ecosystems are Probably Not What You Think: A Conversation with Tom Whitham
What are ecosystems? Do they achieve some kind of balance in their natural state? Do they evolve in a way that can't be explained by the evolution of their component species? I take a deep dive with Tom Whitham into territory that is controversial even among the experts. --- Become a member of…
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Development and the Third Way with Scott Peters
As part of TVOL's "Third Way" series of conversations, I explore the concept of "Development" as a type of cultural change effort with Scott Peters, Professor of Developmental Sociology at Cornell University. While many development efforts fail due to centralized planning, disruptive special...
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The Third Way in the Internet Age with Tim O'Reilly
Modern life has been transformed by electronic communication, starting with the telegraph and now in full force with the Internet Age. There are many blessings but also many curses associate with the Internet Age. Can the thesis of the Third Way explain both and forge a path to an electronically...
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Smart Cities and the Third Way with Dan O'Brien
Urban planning represents one kind of positive change effort that has suffered from excessive reliance on laissez-faire in some instances and centralized planning in other instances. The Smart Cities movement is a new breed of urban planning that makes use of technology. Daniel T. Obrien, who...
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Science as a Moral System with Robert T. Pennock
Science is often imagined as limited to the "facts" and deliberately set apart from "values". But the pursuit of objective reality requires its own set of values, norms, and ideal character of the individual scientist. I explore this fascinating topic with Professor Robert T. Pennock, University...
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Libertarianism and the Third Way with Peter Boettke
The economic and political school of thought known as Libertarianism is most closely associated with laissez faire as a public policy prescription. George Mason University's Mercatus (which means "market" in Latin) Center might seem like a bastion of Libertarianism, but think again. My…
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Economics, Public Policy, and the Third Way with David Colander
The economics profession includes many schools of thought–some that emphasize laissez faire, others that emphasize centralized planning, with many admixtures in between. David Colander, an acute observer of economics who is sometimes described as the profession's court jester, helps me identify…
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Socialism, Capitalism, and the Third Way of National Governance with Geoffrey Hodgson
Socialism and Capitalism will be among the hot words thrown around during the 2020 US presidential elections. Geoffrey Hodgson, a great scholar of economics and the social sciences, helps me explain how both forms of national governance fail in their pure forms but how they can be—and even have...
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Pragmatism and the Third Way with Trygve Throntveit
In the late 19th century, a tiny group of intellectuals who called themselves Pragmatists were to have an outsized influence on the nation and the world. They were inspired by Darwin and included well-known figures such as William James and John Dewey. Trygve Throntveit, a distinguished historian...
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Evolving the Future of Corporations: A Conversation with Toby Shannan
Meet Toby Shannan--the son of hippy parents growing up in rural Canada, high school jock, college dropout, construction worker--and Chief Support Officer of Shopify, the world's second largest online retail platform. Toby and Shopify have always had a long-term and holistic mission to be part of…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
This View of Life takes a deep dive with the best and brightest thinkers on anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective. TVOL is a product of the non-profit ProSocial World and hosted by co-founder and President David Sloan Wilson.
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This View of Life
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This View of Life currently has 60 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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This View of Life takes a deep dive with the best and brightest thinkers on anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective. TVOL is a product of the non-profit ProSocial World and hosted by co-founder and President David Sloan Wilson.
How often does This View of Life release new episodes?
This View of Life has 60 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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This View of Life is created and hosted by This View of Life.
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