The Great Simplification Podcast - What Are You Most Optimistic About?

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David Stonewallson: The idea that global cooperation is possible and this entire fact, the word hope comes up again and again when I speak with people. So isn't that wonderful to have a perspective that's hopeful and realistic at the same time? There are solutions and we can achieve them. We can achieve them in our lives and we can achieved them for the world. If you were a benevolent dictator, hypothetically, and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures? "I would act like such a Nadella," he says.

On this episode, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson joins Nate to unpack how evolution can be used to explain and understand modern human behavior, particularly with respect to cooperation and pro-social behavior. David is a leading scholar in this field, especially on the resurgence of the concept ‘multi-level selection’. How can an evolutionary idea, first thought of by Darwin and subsequently ignored until recently, shed light on human’s inherent balance between competition and cooperation? And how might our improved knowledge of where we come from inform our behaviors and collective governance in the decades ahead?

About David Sloan Wilson:

David Sloan Wilson is one of the foremost evolutionary thinkers and gifted communicators about evolution to the general public. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology Emeritus at Binghamton University and President of the nonprofit organization ProSocial World, whose mission is "To consciously evolve a world that works for all". His most recent books are This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups (with Paul Atkins and Steven C. Hayes), and his first novel, Atlas Hugged: The Autobiography of John Galt III.

For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/56-david-sloan-wilson