Aug 8, 2019
History is rife with examples of people behaving badly, sometimes
with truly evil intent. Yet noted scholar Nicholas Christakis
argues that humans are actually wired for goodness. His recent
book, “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society,”
makes the case for what he calls a “social blueprint for goodness,”
which he discusses with Sam Wang and Julian Zelizer in this
episode. A physician and sociologist, Christakis directs the Human
Nature Lab at Yale University and is the Sterling Professor of
Social and Natural Science in the Departments of Sociology,
Medicine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Data
Science, and Biomedical Engineering. Nicholas was named one of Time
magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and one of
Foreign Policy magazine’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”