This View of Life – Details, episodes & analysis

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 variation isn't an exception in nature but one of its greatest strengths, and how embracing that truth can transform both science and society. This dialogue kicks off This View of Life's new series on Sex, Gender Diversity & Evolution, where academic research meets the timeless question of what it really means to be alive and diverse.

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 brains and bodies.

From the Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress to the Social Baseline Theory, we explore why where you live affects how you feel, think, and connect.

Tune in to see your environment through a whole new lens.

Builds on this TVOL article. 

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 about modern Democratic governance. Vivek Venkataraman is an idea guide to this subject, with a background in philosophy, primatology, and human evolutionary biology, along with direct experience living with and researching indigenous people in Malaysia. 

Check out the resources, articles, and more mentioned in this conversation!

4:21 
A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
By Robert M. Sapolsky ·2007

12:37
The Goodness Paradox
The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution
By Richard Wrangham · 2019

14:30 
Hierarchy in the Forest
The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
By Christopher BOEHM · 2009

14:35 and 22:41 
Moral Origins
The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame
By Christopher Boehm · 2012

17:52
A Story of Us
A New Look at Human Evolution
By Lesley Newson, Peter J. Richerson · 2021

22:51
Morality from an Evolutionary Perspective with Simon Blackburn: https://www.prosocial.world/posts/morality-from-an-evolutionary-perspective-with-simon-blackburn

29:06 and 40:56
Man the Hunter Symposium

33:31
Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard Borshay Lee

37:23
Co-Residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure Kim R. Hill , et al.

44:43 
Variability in the organization and size of hunter-gatherer groups: Foragers do not live in small-scale societies

46:28 
The Evolution of Subjective Commitment to Groups: A
Tribal Instincts Hypothesis Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, 2011

48:23 
Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model Manvir Singh and Luke Glowacki, 2022

50:20
The Dawn of Everything
A New History of Humanity
By David Graeber, David Wengrow · 2021

57:19
Society Against the State: Essays in Political Anthropology by Pierre Clastres, 1987

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 Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Or perhaps a Harvard Business School case report titled Truly Human Leadership at Barry-Wehmiller.

But BW deserves to become known far beyond its current circle of fame. Not only has it created an extraordinary culture of caring for itself, but it has replicated its culture in over 140 other companies that it has acquired--or rather adopted, to use its preferred word. Stated in scientific terms that can be understood beyond the business world, BW has conducted a bold experiment in prosocial cultural evolution and replicated it 140 times.

An earlier podcast with Chapman and Sisodia views BW through a distinctively evolutionary lens. This podcast covers the same ground in more detail with three senior staff members—Rhonda Spencer, Brian Wellinghof, and David Pickersgill. We are also joined by Michael Pirson, James A.F. Stoner Chair for Global Sustainability at Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business, who works closely with BW staff to promote the relevance of BW  throughout the business world.

Originally published on September 16, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/barry-wehmillers-bold-experiment-in-prosocial-cultural-evolution

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 "building wellbeing through communities of opportunity". In our conversation, we discuss how two bodies of knowledge that are new within the last 50 years--complex systems science and generalized Darwinism--can help to catalyze prosocial cultural evolution at the scale of whole cities.

Originally published on August 10, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/evolving-prosocial-cities-with-jonathan-rose 

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 I call completing the Darwinian revolution in my own book This View of Life. In this podcast, Michael and I discuss the paradigmatic nature of generalized Darwinism and how it can improve our ability to accomplish positive change in the real world.

Originally published on May 10, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/a-theory-of-everyone-as-a-new-paradigm-with-michael-muthukrishna

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 science and evolutionary science. I discuss this paradigm shift with two leaders of the Conscious Capitalism movement Raj Sisodia and Bob Chapman.

Originally published May 10, 2024.

www.prosocial.world/posts/conscious-capitalism-viewed-through-the-lens-of-a-new-paradigm-with-raj-sisodia-and-bob-chapman 

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 of INET Oxford. Eric joins me to assess progress during the last 18 years and prospects for the future. One of Eric's recent essays that we discuss is titled Toward a New Ontological Framework for the Economic Good.

Originally published on August 7, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/assessing-the-complexity-evolution-paradigm-with-eric-beihocker 

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 facing us today. Join the legendary Robert Putnam and me as we update these pioneers on what Tocqueville called "self interest, rightly understood."

Originally published May 20, 2024.

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/updating-darwin-and-tocqueville-on-self-interest-rightly-understood-with-robert-putnam 

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 place--Binghamton, New York--where Guru did his graduate training at Binghamton University and where we first met and started working with each other. Join me as we discuss the general nature of wicked problems and how Binghamton and Binghamton University can become a city and university that is adept at solving them.

Links:

Guru's first book: Applied Minds: How Engineers Think

Guru's new book: Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

My earlier print conversation with Guru: Systems Engineering as Cultural Group Selection

My short essay with Guru titled Complex Maladaptive Systems

Originally published on February 29, 2024

https://www.prosocial.world/posts/wicked-problems-and-how-to-solve-them