It's been more than 30 years since I first read a book called The Evolution of Cooperation

by Robert Axelrod.

The only reason I even read the book was that it was a signed reading for an economic

course I was taking and I was a diligent student.

So I always did the signed reading.

But I was never inspired by the material until that is, I read the Evolution of Cooperation.

It's a book about game theory, specifically something called The Prisoner's Dilemma

and it captured my imagination.

It changed the way I thought about the world.

It made me think for the first time, wow, maybe I should do academic research.

I'm so excited today to be talking to its author, political scientist Robert Axelrod

for the very first time.

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levin.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of those things that seems really simple when you first

hear about it, but there's much, much more to it than most people realize.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Prisoner's Dilemma has become a guiding principle

for the way I live my life.

But I know from trying to teach it to my students that it's actually a really hard idea to

wrap your head around.

It's very counterintuitive.

I'm hoping that with more than three decades of experience, Robert Axelrod will be way

better than me explaining it.

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