Here’s a highlight from our latest conversation with Dr. Michael Muthukrishna! The full episode drops this Friday — don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell to be notified when it goes live!

Is innovation really the work of lone geniuses like Darwin and Newton? LSE/NYU psychologist Michael Muthukrishna argues it’s a collective process. It's ideas recombined across many minds. He shows how discoveries often emerge simultaneously around the world.

Dr. Michael Muthukrishna is joint Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Professor of Psychology at NYU (from January 2026). At LSE, he is also Affiliate of the Data Science Institute and STICERD Developmental Economics Group. Michael is co-founder and Technical Director of The Database of Religious History (religiondatabase.org), founder of the LSE Culturalytik project (culturalytik.com), London School of Artificial Intelligence (lsai.org.uk), and Center for Human Progress (humanprogress.center), Research Lead of Cities, Culture, and Technology at the African School of Economics’ Africa Urban Lab (aul.city), and Scientific Advisor at the AI startup Electric Twin (electrictwin.com).

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To learn more about Michael’s work, you can find him at: https://www.michael.muthukrishna.com/

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This episode is sponsored by the Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

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