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PODCAST

This View of Life

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.

science social sciences

All Episodes

56:32

The Third Way in the Internet Age with Tim O’Reilly

This View of Life ·

2020/07/02

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 connected future designed for the common good? Tim O’Reilly, Internet pioneer and founder of O’Reilly Media, is our perfect guide. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This

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01:03:14

Smart Cities and the Third Way with Dan O'Brien

This View of Life ·

2020/06/28

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 directs the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), helps me explain how the Smart Cities Movement can avoid the mistakes of the past by traveling the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is

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01:15:09

Science as a Moral System with Robert T. Pennock

This View of Life ·

2020/06/23

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 Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and co-director of BEACON, a NSF-funded center for the study of evolution in action. Robert's book: An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral

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01:08:52

Libertarianism and the Third Way with Peter Boettke

This View of Life ·

2020/06/18

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 conversation with Peter Boettke, who directs the center’s F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, provides a far more nuanced view that is consilient with the Third Way. This

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01:06:47

Economics, Public Policy, and the Third Way with...

This View of Life ·

2020/06/11

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 the economic schools of thought that best exemplify the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third

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56:57

Socialism, Capitalism, and the Third Way of National...

This View of Life ·

2020/06/04

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 already been– blended together into the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of

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48:50

Pragmatism and the Third Way with Trygve Throntveit

This View of Life ·

2020/05/27

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 of the period, helps me tell the story of how the Pragmatists discovered the Third Way. This episode has an accompanying article and is part of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity,

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01:15:49

Evolving the Future of Corporations: A Conversation...

This View of Life ·

2020/05/25

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 a thriving ecosystem into the far future. Now he is teaming up with scientists such as Jonathan Haidt and myself to help Shopify achieve its laudable goals and provide a model for other corporations.

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56:21

Tightening and Loosening Up for the Coronavirus...

This View of Life ·

2020/05/05

TVOL's first podcast with Michele Gelfand explored an axis of cultural variation from "tight" (strong norms, strongly enforced) to "loose" (tolerant of individual differences). In this new podcast, we explore the distinctive blend of tightness and looseness needed to adapt to the pandemic. Related Material Michele's book: Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World Institutional and Cultural Factors Predicting Infection Rates and Mortality of COVID-19. (OSF

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01:11:03

Finding Purpose in Evolution Education

This View of Life ·

2020/04/27

Evolution education is often considered solely the domain of the biology classroom, with evolutionary explanations centered largely on genetic change over generations. In this TVOL Podcast, David Sloan Wilson talks with education researchers Susan Hanisch and Dustin Eirdosh about emerging approaches in evolution education that challenge this view and embrace an interdisciplinary conceptualization of evolutionary change more suitable to understanding the human condition. By drawing on perspectives in

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01:01:14

Evolutionary Mismatch in the Workplace with Mark van...

This View of Life ·

2020/03/29

Max Beilby and Mark van Vugt discuss the science of evolutionary mismatch how it can help us understand human behavior in modern novel environments such as the workplace. Mark van Vugt is a professor in Evolutionary and Organizational Psychology at VU Amsterdam and is also a research associate at the University of Oxford. His latest book is, "Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day (and What We Can Do About It)". Max Beilby is is a professional organizational psychologist as well as

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32:09

PsychTable.org: A Digital Classification Table of...

This View of Life ·

2020/03/06

In 1992, the evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby predicted, "Just as one can now flip open Gray's Anatomy to any page and find an intricately detailed depiction of some part of our evolved species-typical morphology, we anticipate that in 50 or 100 years one will be able to pick up an equivalent reference work for psychology and find in it detailed information-processing descriptions of the multitude of evolved species-typical adaptations of the human mind...” Finding it

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44:29

Evolution Doesn't Make Everything Nice: A...

This View of Life ·

2020/02/26

The idea that nature, left to itself, reaches some sort of harmonious balance is still widespread in the lay public and some public policy circles. "This View of Life" leads to a different conclusion; that "niceness" can evolve, but only when special conditions are met. Otherwise, evolution results in organisms that impose suffering on each other. David explores this theme for primate societies with the pre-eminent primatologist and evolutionary behavioral ecologist, Joan Silk. --- Become a

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41:07

Dugnad as part of Norway's Culture of Cooperation: A...

This View of Life ·

2020/01/29

What is Dugnad? It is a uniquely Norwegian word that identifies an important aspect of its culture of cooperation. David Sloan Wilson talks with Carsta Simon and Hilde Mobekk on their recently published article titled Dugnad: A Fact and Narrative of Norwegian Prosocial Behavior, published in Perspectives on Behavior Science and available open access for a limited time period. Carsta and Hilde's study of Dugnad emerged from the Evolution Institute's Norway Project, which examines Norway as a case

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42:51

Peter Gray on Education as a Biological Phenomenon,...

This View of Life ·

2019/10/21

Peter Gray, the first psychologist to write an introductory psychology textbook from an evolutionary perspective, experienced a family crisis when his son started to rebel against public school. Finding alternative schooling for his son led Peter to champion a new paradigm for child development and education from an evolutionary perspective. He joins David to discuss this journey and more, including how children learn by imitating “real” people, how graduate school is like hunter-gatherer

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35:52

Elliott Sober on the Origins of Multilevel Selection

This View of Life ·

2019/10/21

One of the high points of David's professional life has been to work with Elliott Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. Elliott has made foundational contributions to many topics in evolutionary science, including his and David's collaboration on multilevel selection (MLS) theory. In this conversation, they discuss the roots of MLS theory and more, including the subtlety of Darwin, what Bret Weinstein misses about

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27:17

Lynette Shaw on Social Constructionism and Finding...

This View of Life ·

2019/10/21

Phrases such as "social constructivism" and "relativism" signal the importance of symbolic meaning systems in human life. Taken to extremes, they have been used to undermine the authority of science and even to deny the existence of objective knowledge, paving the way for today's epidemic of "fake news". Against this background, evolutionary science can establish a sensible middle ground that recognizes the importance of symbolic thought in human cultural evolution and provides a disciplined way to

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48:52

Michele Gelfand on Tight and Loose Cultures

This View of Life ·

2019/10/20

Most people think of cultural differences in terms of race, class, nationality, or religion. Michele Gelfand introduces the concept of 'tight" and "loose", which cuts across all of those other categories. Michele is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park and joins David to discuss cultural diversity from an evolutionary perspective and more, including why the working class cares more about following the rules, the fractal nature of social norms, gamma

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58 results

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