Anti-Trust From a Multilevel Evolutionary Perspective with Denise Hearn
Release Date: 03/15/2023
The Evolution of Place: How Environments Shape Us
This View of Life
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 .
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Evolving Prosocial AI: A conversation with Peter Fenton and David Sloan Wilson
This View of Life
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 evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson for a wide-ranging conversation about how evolution and artificial intelligence might shape each other. Fenton, a central figure in the AI startup world and a lifelong student of philosophy, brings a unique lens to technology. Together, they explore how the principles of variation, selection, and replication—the core of evolutionary theory—can guide AI’s growth toward...
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Forever Green: Building a cooperative innovation platform for diversification in Midwest agriculture with Nick Jordan & Whitney Clark
This View of Life
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 Initiative – a regional effort to scale regenerative agriculture in the Upper Midwest. They reflect on seven years of cross-sector collaboration to develop new crops and farming systems, and how their partnership with ProSocial World has helped strengthen the initiative.
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The Science of Imagined Worlds: Evolution and Ecology for World Builders - A conversation between Carlo Maley, Vaughn Aktipis-Maley & David Sloan Wilson
This View of Life
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 worldbuilding. Based on their recent publication Evolution and Ecology for World Builders, this episode blends fantasy storytelling with real-world biology to ask: What makes a creature believable? What makes a society work? And what can fiction teach us about cooperation in reality?
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Shaping AI for Good: Prosocial Hybrid Intelligence for a Thriving Future - A conversation between Cornelia Walther and David Sloan Wilson
This View of Life
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, Cornelia Walther and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson explore how we can build AI systems that truly serve people and the planet. They dive into the concept of Prosocial AI, technology that’s designed to support human connection, equity, and environmental sustainability—and the emerging field of hybrid intelligence, where human empathy and creativity team up with AI’s speed and precision....
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Democracy’s Deep Roots: From Hunter-Gatherers to Modern Society -- A conversation between Vivek Venkataraman and David Sloan Wilson
This View of Life
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 conversation, evolutionary anthropologist Vivek Venkataraman and renowned scientist David Sloan Wilson dig into how early human societies, particularly hunter-gatherers, managed to balance individual freedom with the needs of the group. Long before constitutions and parliaments, our ancestors developed powerful, organic systems for cooperation, decision-making, and fairness. This discussion explores how evolution shaped us into...
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Decolonizing Ecology: Rethinking Nature in a Broken World
This View of Life
A conversation between Madhusudan Katti and Amitangshu Acharya Join us for a thought-provoking virtual dialogue exploring how colonial worldviews have shaped modern ecology - and what it means to decolonize our relationship with nature in an era of social and environmental upheaval. Building on themes from the This View of Life series , ecologist Madhusudan Katti and writer-researcher Amitangshu Acharya delve into questions at the intersection of science, history, and justice. Together, they’ll challenge dominant narratives and invite us to reimagine ecological knowledge that is rooted...
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Addressing the Wicked Problem of Housing Insecurity in Binghamton New York with Rebecca Rathmell
This View of Life
Originally published on September 9, 2024
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Hunter-Gatherer Societies, Human Origins, and Modern Democracies with Vivek Venkataraman (Part 2)
This View of Life
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. Originally published January 29, 2025.
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Hunter-Gatherer Societies, Human Origins, and Modern Democracies with Vivek Venkataraman (Part 1)
This View of Life
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...
info_outlineIncreasingly, policymakers, investors, and advocates recognize that the neoliberal theory of economic organization – laissez faire – is a failed experiment. However, certain areas of law – particularly antitrust law are still beholden to false econometric notions about how markets operate, which influences legal interpretation, case precedent, and ongoing debates about reviving antitrust’s role in the political economy. Can Multilevel Cultural Evolution provide a new paradigm for anti-trust law, along with the rest of economics?
Hearn serves as a Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and co-lead of the Access to Markets initiative. Hearn also serves as Board Chair of The Predistribution Initiative which aims to improve investment structures and practices to address systemic risks like inequality, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
Denise co-authored The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition with Jonathan Tepper — named one of the Financial Times’ Best Books of 2018. Her writing has been featured in publications such as The Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Responsible Investor, and The Washington Post. Hearn currently authors the Embodied Economics newsletter.