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The Good Fight

Oren Harman on the Magic of Metamorphosis

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.6907 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To listen to the full episode and support the podcast, please subscribe today! Oren Harman is a Senior Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and teaches at the Graduate Program in Science Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University. His latest book is Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History. In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Oren Harman explore the evolutionary benefits of altruism, metamorphosis in the world around us, and how it impacts our perception of human growth. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following ⁠⁠this link on your phone⁠⁠. Email: [email protected] Podcast production by Jack Shields and Leonora Barclay. Connect with us! ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Apple⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Google⁠⁠ X: ⁠⁠@Yascha_Mounk⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠@JoinPersuasion⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠Yascha Mounk⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Persuasion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.4

I think that this question boils down to being able to discern when a danger is truly a danger

0:36.9

and when a danger is really a bias and when a danger is really a bias.

0:39.9

When a danger is a cultural bias, when a danger is down to, you know, views that we have that we should unpack and try to contextualize and try to be better about it.

0:52.8

Be better people.

0:55.5

And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.

1:04.8

There are some very basic puzzles about human nature and about the biological world

1:10.7

that seem to challenge in some ways

1:13.0

what you might expect on the basis of the theory of evolution.

1:19.2

Why is it, for example, that we are capable of great altruism, that some animals,

1:26.1

like bees, are even more altruistic sacrificing themselves

1:30.1

for the queen bee with no realistic prospect of ever reproducing when that should lead

1:37.5

to those kind of characteristics dying out since they are not fit they do not make it likely that we will pass on our genes to the next

1:47.8

generation. More broadly, why is it that we have so many animals, apparently up to two-thirds of

1:56.3

all animal species, that undergo some form of metamorphosis? If nature wanted to create a butterfly, why start

2:03.1

with a caterpillar? Well, my guest today is answering those questions in beautiful, really

2:11.6

interesting books. Orrin Harmon is a philosopher of science who has written very interesting books like

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