This View of Life

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

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 comb

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 s

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 C

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 e

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 Init

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

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, C

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 con

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 eco

Addressing the Wicked Problem of Housing Insecurity in Binghamton New York with Rebecca Rathmell

Originally published on September 9, 2024  

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

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 ori

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 movemen

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 Fu

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

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 Proc

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

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. B

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 Academ