This View of Life takes a deep dive with the best and brightest thinkers on anything and everything from an evolutionary perspective. TVOL is a product of the non-profit ProSocial World and hosted by co-founder and President David Sloan Wilson.
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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 problems are complex, they are not incomprehensible. Join David Sloan Wilson for a conversation with Rosanne Haggerty, whose organization Community Solutions has had remarkable success solving the homelessness problem in…
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 combination of complex systems science and evolutionary science. She is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Washington and author of Cities that Think Like Planets: Complexity, Resilience, and Innovation…
Nature doesn't draw straight lines, and neither should we. In this special conversation, evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden and geneticist Nathan Lents explore how sex and gender diversity shape life itself - from fish that swap roles to humans who defy binary boxes. They'll unpack why variation isn't an exception in nature but one of its greatest strengths, and how embracing that truth can…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 "Decolonizing Science" , ecologist Madhusudan Katti and…
