This View of Life

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 literature that I have ever encountered...he gets it right." But what does this mean? In this nearly two hour conversation, I take a deep dive with Agren into the history and current status of the selfish gene concept. You might be surprised by how much we agree upon and how much the concept of selfish genes has been scaled down, compared to its original pretensions. 

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 Steve co-edited with his colleague Richard Arvey). They also explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on the world of work. Stephen Colarelli is professor of psychology at Central Michigan University. His research is concerned with how evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology can influence how we think about, conduct research on, and manage behavior in organizations. Max Beilby is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology. Max has written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and is a member of TVOL's Business Action Group, which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective. Anyone is free to join and take part of our networking events, discussions, and collaborative projects.

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. It was Kurt who introduced me to the Interspiritual Movement and who I invited to join me on my visit to converse with H.H. Dalai Lama last year. In this podcast, we discuss what my new novel, Atlas Hugged, adds to transformative change efforts in the real world.    --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 interplay between fiction and the real world. In the second half, we also discuss Brian's biography-in-progress of the legendary philosopher of science, Karl Popper, who pioneered the study of epistemology from an evolutionary perspective.   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 catalyzing positive change in the real world.   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 working practices.    Andrew O’Keeffe is director of Hardwired Humans, a consulting firm that helps organizations design their people strategies to fit human instincts. He is the author of Hardwired Humans and The Boss. Andrew’s background is in senior HR roles with IBM , Cable & Wireless Optus and in professional services. He began his career in industrial relations in the mining and manufacturing industries. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from The University of Sydney. Andrew has a close connection with Dr Jane Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). When Andrew runs leadership programs at zoos, he does so in collaboration with JGI. And over the last decade when Jane Goodall has visited Australia, she and Andrew have joined forces to speak to business leaders about the importance of our social instincts (Dr Goodall talking about chimps, and Andrew talking about humans).   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 historical scholar of the period and an eminent evolutionary scientist. His newest book on Peale’s museum, Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale’s Museum, helps to situate “this view of life” against the background of centuries of intellectual thought.    --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 Leadership. They also explore the impacts of the pandemic on the world of work. Also mentioned is Nigel's Harvard Business Review article, "How Hardwired Is Human Behavior?" Nigel Nicholson is an Emeritus Professor at London Business School, where he has had wide-ranging involvements in research, executive education and business. Nigel writes, teaches, speaks and advises on leadership, family business, biography and legacy, executive development, management in finance, and interpersonal skills. Max Beilby is a professional organizational psychologist as well as a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology. Max has written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and is a member of TVOL’s Business Action Group, which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective. Anyone is free to join and take part of our networking events, discussions, and collaborative projects. --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 fields of science. Alex's book, "Cultural Evolution: How Darwinian Theory Can Explain Human Culture and Synthesize the Social Sciences" --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 design. Modularity suggests that there is no "I." Instead, each of us is a contentious "we"—a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world. --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 studying microbial genetic evolution, including diseases such as cholera and anthrax. The second is the story of cultural evolution and the lack thereof, such as entrenched sexism in science and the reluctance of the medical establishment to embrace new  ideas. My conversation with Rita uniquely weaves these two themes of her book and life together into a single braid.   Other Referenced Materials: "Ages of Discord", Peter Turchin TVOL podcast on education with Peter Gray "Diffusion of Innovations", by Everett M. Rogers  --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 place, spreading to a degree on the basis of their success, but then coming up against boundaries, beyond which they remain unknown. So it is with Positive Deviance, which has been used to prevent child malnourishment in Vietnam, female circumcision in Egypt, and even improve an American pharmaceutical company's outreach to doctors. Our guide to this effective change method is David K. Hurst, a Management educator and author of The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World among other books.  Sage Gibbons, budding evolutionist and TVOL's Marketing and Development Strategist, joins me as guest host as we explore what Positive Deviance teaches us about the Third Way and how a formal articulation of the Third Way can add value to Positive Deviance.  Referenced Materials: "Of Boxes, Bubbles, and Effective Management", David K. Hurst "From Life Cycle to Ecocycle: A New Perspective on the Growth, Maturity, Destruction, and Renewal of Complex Systems", David K. Hurst and Brenda J. Zimmerman "Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science", Celia Hayes Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and Influencing Human Behavior, David Sloan Wilson and Steven C. Hayes The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems, Richard Pascale , Jerry Sternin, Monique Sternin  --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book  

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 private consulting practice and served as Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation between 2016-2019. Few people have played a larger role or have a more comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurship in the 21st century and the need for it to follow 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 Entrepreneurship". --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 pivotal work in the study of humanity from a full-bodied evolutionary perspective. This is the second episode of a two-part series on morality out of the TVOL archives. Listen to the first episode with philosopher Simon Blackburn. Dive deeper with our special publication asking scientists and philosophers if there is a universal morality. --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 institutional and evolutionary economics, with a background in economics, philosophy and mathematics. His research has applications to the understanding of organizations, organizational change, innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development. Hodgson is also the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics and has published 18 academic books and over 150 academic articles, which he is the winner of the Schumpeter Prize 2014 for his book on "Conceptualizing Capitalism". Geoffrey also participated in our series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". You can read the in-depth written conversation or listen to his other podcast conversation inspired by the same theme. --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 episode of a two-part series on morality out of the TVOL archives. Dive deeper with our special publication asking scientists and philosophers if there is a universal morality. --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 Development and the Environment, and Atle Midttun, a professor of Norway’s largest Business School, BI. Nina and Atle have become thoroughly familiar with viewing Norway through an evolutionary lens as participants of the Evolution Institute’s Norway Project. Nina and Atle's Sustainable Modernity (open access)   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 Entrepreneurship". --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook

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 interests, or having the wrong systemic goals, other development efforts have converged upon 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 Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 the Third Episode of This View of Life's new series, "Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship". Dan's book: The Urban Commons: How Data and Technology Can Rebuild Our Communities --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 Character of Science --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook

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 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 Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 Way of Entrepreneurship". References from the Show: 12:00- Why aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen? by David Colander 23:30- Chaos by James Gleick --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship".   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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.     Announcing the latest major TVOL series, Evolution, Complexity, and the Third Way of Entrepreneurship   Toby's "Ideas at Work" podcast: https://ideasatworkpodcast.com   EthicalSystems.org, an organization founded on the conviction that in the long run, good ethics is good business.   Prosocial, the first change method based on evolutionary science to enhance cooperation and collaboration for groups of all types and sizes.   Evonomics article, "Evolving the New Economy: Tim O’Reilly and David Sloan Wilson"   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 pre-print). Contributors: Michele Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, Xinyue Pan, Dana Nau, Chi Yue Chiu   --- Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Cultural Evolution Science, and Contextual Behavioral Science, Hanisch and Eirdosh have advanced a collection of teaching tools and materials that can be used across subject areas in general education to help students understand the evolutionary change dynamics within our species, our communities, and ourselves. Discussing core conceptual challenges in current gene-centric evolution education provides a window into the opportunities created by focusing the human traits at the center of our everyday experience.  Bios Susan Hanisch and Dustin Eirdosh are the co-founders of the non-profit organization Global ESD (www.GlobalESD.org) and education researchers in the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Dustin and Susi work across the disciplines of education and human sciences to advance interdisciplinary teaching materials and teacher development supports to understand global sustainability issues through the lens of evolution and human behavior.  EEO Article: Can the science of Prosocial be a part of evolution education? Hanisch & Eirdosh Preprints: Conceptual clarification of evolution as an interdisciplinary science Educational potential of teaching evolution as an interdisciplinary science Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution Other articles mentioned in the Podcast: Regardless of students' belief systems (creationist, theistic, non-theistic) students tend to view evolution has having negative personal and social implications.  Brem, S. K., Ranney, M., & Schindel, J. (2003). Perceived consequences of evolution: College students perceive negative personal and social impact in evolutionary theory.Science Education,87(2), 181-206. A biology teacher encourages students to "boo" other students for any reference to "need" in evolutionary explanations as opposed to helping students resolve the role of behavioral responses to need in evolutionary processes (see Hanisch & Eirdosh preprint: Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution) Bravo, P., & Cofré, H. (2016). Developing biology teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through learning study: the case of teaching human evolution. International Journal of Science Education,38(16), 2500-2527.

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 a member of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology.   Both Mark and Max have written extensively for This View of Life Magazine and are members of TVOL's Business Action Group which is focused on understanding and improving business from an evolutionary perspective.

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 unnecessary to wait until 2042 or 2092, Niruban Balachandran first proposed and published a classification table of human evolved psychological adaptations in 2011. He then teamed up with Daniel Glass in 2012 to co-found and co-publish a research paper announcing PsychTable.org, an open-science taxonomy devoted to uncovering the richness and complexity of our evolved human behavior. In addition to these two peer-reviewed research papers, Niruban and Daniel have also written a This View of Life article to accompany this podcast episode. The PsychTable team is crowdfunding $10,000 in order to hire the highly experienced web designers and developers needed to create a robust and intuitive web interface. Interested TVOL readers can help support PsychTable by donating here.

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. 

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 study of cultural evolution leading to a high quality of life at the national scale. A book length account of the Norway project titled Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond, is published by Routledge Press and is permanently open access.  Both the article and the book illustrate a distinctive approach that involves asking four questions about any particular product of evolution, whether genetic or cultural, concerning its function, history, mechanism, and development.   Carsta Simon is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Agder in southern Norway. Hilde Mobekk is a PhD fellow in Behavior Analysis at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. Both are trained in Behavior Analysis, which makes them especially well qualified to comment on the "mechanism" and "development" questions concerning Dugnad as an enduring product of cultural evolution.   Other Related Materials (pdfs available upon request) "Why Norwegians Don't have Their Pigs in the Forest: Illuminating Nordic 'Co-Operation" - Carsta Simon [Open Access] "The ontogenetic evolution of verbal behavior" - Carsta Simon [Open Access] "Selection as a domain-general evolutionary process" - Carsta Simon and Dag O. Hessen "Group selection in behavioral evolution", Rachlin H  

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 education, and whether we need creativity more than ever.   Links from the Show 00:52- Peter's blog on Psychology Today 00:58- Peter's book, Free To Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life 11:57- The Sudbury Valley School (website)   Also see these related TVOL articles: "Mismatch Between Our Biologically Evolved Educative Instincts and Culturally Evolved Schools" by Peter Gray "Free To Learn: Does The Hunter-Gatherer Style Of Education Work?" by Gabrielle Principe   And explore the Evolution Institute's East Tampa Academy project, where we are taking the best of what science tells us about how young minds learn to create a high-quality, tuition-free school for children at risk of academic failure.   ---   Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book    

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 group selection, the problem of the averaging fallacy, and path dependency in scholarship. Links from the Episode 1:05- Upcoming Debate with David Sloan Wilson (video) and also see "What Bret Weinstein Gets Wrong About Group Selection" (TVOL article) 1:42- Elliott Sober's 1993 book, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus1:50-1:57- "Reviving the Superorganism" (Wilson & Sober 1989), "Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences" (Wilson & Sober 1994), and their book, Unto Others (1998). 2:12- Elliott Sober's 2010 book, Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards? Philosophical Essays on Darwin's Theory  22:58- "Altruism in Mendelian Populations Derived from Sibling Groups: The Haystack Model Revisited" (Wilson 1987) 31:20- Michael Gilpin's 1975 book, Group Selection in Predator-Prey Communities Also see "The Mathematics of Kindness" (TVOL article) ---   Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book

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 scientifically understand it.    Lynette Shaw holds a PhD in Sociology and is Assistant Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. She joins David to discuss "this view of social constructivism” and more, including the micro to macro link of culture, the social construction of digital currencies, automatic sense making, human symbolic thought as niche construction, and the need for common ground between different academic disciplines.   Links from the Episode 1:30: "Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship"   ---   Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book  

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 wave synchrony in response to threat, and the strengths and limits of a tight-loose axis approach.   Links from the Episode 00:56- Michele's book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World 04:00- "On the nature of religious diversity: a cultural ecosystem approach" 22:26- Michele's response to David and Harvey Whitehouse's TVOL article, "Developing the Field Site Concept for the Study of Cultural Evolution"   ---   Become a member of the TVOL1000 and join the Darwinian revolution   Follow This View of Life on Twitter and Facebook   Order the This View of Life book