Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life

For all the selfishness of genes, they team up to survive. The history of life is in fact a story of cooperation. Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it’s hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, this cooperative history digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, and to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, there would be no life.