This View of Life

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 ...

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 biograph...

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 Dar...

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 or...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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 t...

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, beyon...

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 Kauffma...

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 epi...

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...

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 publicatio...

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...

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....

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...

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 avo...

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 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, Po...

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 art...

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 T...

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 h...

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...