“Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change” with Professor Alex Madva

Achieving meaningful and sustainable social change is a complex task and a demanding challenge. Many of the most urgent problems, such as climate change, racism, and poverty are structural. They arise from collective practices, including laws, economies, history, culture and social norms. Yet structural change still depends on individuals making different choices—choices that confront existing structures and challenge established norms.

In their recent book “Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change” Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly present a novel and scientific account of how personal choices can contribute to transformative social change. The authors argue that individual action matters most when it connects people to collective efforts. Meaningful change happens when individuals work with others to challenge and reshape existing structures. In this episode of Bridging the Gaps I speak with Professor Alex Madva.

Alex Madva is Professor of Philosophy, Director of the California Center for Ethics and Policy, and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Consortium at Cal Poly Pomona.

We begin our discussion by unpacking a key point made in the book: many people feel trapped in “either/or thinking” about personal choices and structural change, as though they must choose between the two. The authors describe the book as a way to help readers “get unstuck,” and we explore what this means in practice.

We then examine the book’s two central themes: the climate crisis and racism. We discuss why the authors focus on these issues rather than others. We also discuss the book’s writing style, including its use of humour, and consider the value of humour when addressing serious and complex topics.

The discussion then turns to pluralistic ignorance, particularly the problem of people not knowing how much others care about social issues. We examine this concept in depth. We also consider several real-world examples, including Chris Smalls’s unionization campaign at Amazon.

Finally, we discuss the differences between face-to-face and online activism. We reflect on whether activists should observe certain limits when their actions affect the daily lives of ordinary people. We also touch on research showing how small actions can create wider social effects, and how movements that appear to fail in the short term may still lay the groundwork for future victories.

Overall, this has been an enlightening discussion.

Complement this discussion with “The Painful Truth about Hunger in America” with Professor Mariana Chilton and then listen to “A Passion for Ignorance” and for Denials and Negations with Professor Renata Salecl.

By |May 27th, 2026|Philosophy, Podcasts, Research, Social Science|
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“Everything Evolves” and the Generalised Evolutionary Theory with Professor Mark Vellend

The idea that evolutionary theory applies far beyond biology is not new. Yet one major obstacle to the broader acceptance of a generalized evolutionary theory is our tendency to begin with biology and extend outward from it. This approach obscures an important historical fact. Long before scientists developed theories to explain the evolution of life, scholars in fields such as linguistics, economics, and technology had already proposed ideas about change that were evolutionary in the modern sense.

The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould even suggested that “Darwin may have cribbed the idea of natural selection from economics.” Beginning with biology can create the misleading impression that evolutionary processes in areas such as language, technology, or economics are weaker or derivative forms of evolution. In reality, evolutionary processes are largely independent of the substrate on which they operate. They generate diverse outcomes—organisms, technologies, and cultural practices—that are well adapted to particular functions.

In his book Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics, Professor Mark Vellend shows how evolutionary dynamics shape many aspects of the world around us. He also explores how evolutionary principles are being applied to practical challenges, from increasing the global food supply to developing artificial intelligence systems that can evolve solutions to complex problems.

In this episode of Bridging the Gaps, I speak with Professor Mark Vellend.

Mark Vellend is a professor of biology at Université de Sherbrooke and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

We begin our discussion with an intriguing idea from the book: reality can be understood through two broad sciences. The first is physics. The second is the science of evolvable systems. We explore this distinction in detail.

We then turn to the concept of generalized evolutionary theory and discuss why it is important to communicate this broader framework to a wider audience. In this context, we also touch on the argument that the strong emphasis on Darwin can sometimes be a distraction from the larger evolutionary perspective.

Next, we examine several examples that illustrate how generalized evolutionary processes allow different artifacts and systems to evolve over time. We then discuss a framework presented in the book that explains how generalized evolution operates. This framework is described using the metaphor of a soundboard, where each knob represents a distinct variable in the evolutionary process. We explore this “Evolutionary Soundboard” in detail.

Our conversation then turns to the role of randomness and the ways systems can improve over time through deliberate design. We also discuss the importance of diversity, which enables and sustains evolutionary processes.

Overall, the discussion is both engaging and informative, raising a number of thought-provoking ideas.

Complement this discussion with “The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, from Viruses to Brains” with Professor Christoph Adami and then listen to “The Network of Life: A New View of Evolution” with Professor David Mindell.

By |March 15th, 2026|Biology, Knowledge, Research, Technology|
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“Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer” with Professor Michael Gurven

Our ability to live for many decades is often viewed as a modern luxury made possible by clean water, improved living conditions, and advances in medicine. Yet, human longevity is actually part of our deep evolutionary history. The long-standing belief that life in the past was “nasty, brutish, and short” is a widespread misconception—one rooted in misleading averages and often repeated in textbooks and popular media.

In his book “Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer”, anthropologist Professor Michael Gurven challenges this myth. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, he presents compelling evidence that the capacity for long life first emerged among our hunting and gathering ancestors and argues that the human body is fundamentally designed to function for roughly seven decades. Combining vivid storytelling with rigorous science, Gurven shares insights from years of research among Indigenous societies whose diets and traditional ways of living more closely resemble how humans lived before industrialization. These communities, he shows, experience far lower rates of chronic diseases of aging—such as heart disease, dementia, and diabetes—than populations in industrialized nations.

In this episode of Bridging the Gaps, I speak with Professor Michael Gurven, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For more than twenty years, he has worked closely with Indigenous groups in South America to better understand how traditional lifestyles can shed light on the evolution of human behavior, health, and psychology. His research uses an evolutionary framework to help explain modern health challenges and the origins of chronic diseases.

Our conversation offers a detailed exploration of the book and the science behind it. We begin by examining the myth that ancient people rarely reached old age, discussing how misleading averages have shaped this false narrative and why it is important to correct it. We then talk about a central idea in the book: that each stage of human life has an evolutionary purpose, and our bodies and minds have been shaped accordingly.

Another major theme is the evolutionary significance of post-reproductive life. While some biologists have argued that life after reproduction has no adaptive function, Gurven’s work shows that midlife and elderhood evolved for meaningful reasons and contribute to group survival.

At this point, the discussion turns to his fieldwork—what it is like to work with Indigenous communities, the unique challenges of this research, and how these challenges are addressed in study design and implementation. We then explore key findings from his work, including results that challenge assumptions in modern medicine. Gurven explains what these insights can teach us about improving healthcare and rethinking aging in contemporary societies.

Finally, we discuss the book’s broader message: that by understanding our evolutionary past, we can gain powerful new perspectives on aging, health, and what it means to live a long, meaningful, and productive life.

This conversation is wide-ranging, thorough, and deeply informative.

Complement this discussion with “The Human Journey From Ape to Agriculture” with Professor Peter Bellwood and then listen to The Evolution of Knowledge and Rethinking Science for The Anthropocene with Professor Jürgen Renn.

By |November 23rd, 2025|Biology, History, Knowledge, Research, Social Science|
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