This View of Life

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