June 2, 2026
Seattle Is a Superorganism
With David Sloan Wilson
Player coming soon
About this episode
Why does one city solve collective problems its neighbors can’t? We take MLS down to street level — zoning fights, mutual-aid networks, the unwritten code of a four-way stop — and argue that a city is not a place. It’s a level of selection.
Transcript
Full transcript coming soon — searchable across every episode.
Papers referenced
Governing the Commons
Elinor Ostrom
People sharing a limited resource — a fishery, a forest, a budget — don’t always wreck it. Given the right rules, ordinary communities govern themselves better than markets or governments do.
Unto Others
Sober & Wilson
The book that put group selection back on the table. Real altruism exists, and natural selection can favor it — as long as it’s selection between groups, not just within them.
The Major Transitions in Evolution
Maynard Smith & Szathmáry
Every big leap in life’s history — genes into cells, cells into bodies, bodies into societies — is the same trick repeated: a crowd of competitors becomes a single cooperating unit.