While the Third Way series is centered on entrepreneurship, it is equally valid for all forms of positive social change. The vision statement is the starting point for all of the conversations listed below.

In the late 19^th century, a tiny group of intellectuals who called themselves Pragmatists were to have an outsized influence on the nation and the world. They were inspired by Darwin and included well-known figures such as William James and John Dewey. Trygve Throntveit, a distinguished historian of the period, helps me tell the story of how the Pragmatists discovered the Third Way.

Socialism and Capitalism will be among the hot words thrown around during the 2020 US presidential elections. Geoffrey Hodgson, a great scholar of economics and the social sciences, helps me explain how both forms of national governance fail in their pure forms but how they can be—and even have already been– blended together into the Third Way.

The economics profession includes many schools of thought–some that emphasize laissez faire, others that emphasize centralized planning, with many admixtures in between. David Colander, an acute observer of economics who is sometimes described as the profession’s court jester, helps me identify the economic schools of thought that best exemplify the Third Way.

The economic and political school of thought known as Libertarianism is most closely associated with laissez faire as a public policy prescription. George Mason University’s Mercatus (which means “market” in Latin) Center might seem like a bastion of Libertarianism, but think again. My conversation with Peter Boettke, who directs the center’s F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, provides a far more nuanced view that is consilient with the Third Way.

Urban planning represents one kind of positive change effort that has suffered from excessive reliance on laissez-faire in some instances and centralized planning in other instances. The Smart Cities movement is a new breed of urban planning that makes use of technology. Daniel T. Obrien, who directs the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), helps me explain how the Smart Cities Movement can avoid the mistakes of the past by traveling the Third Way.

Modern life has been transformed by electronic communication, starting with the telegraph and now in full force with the Internet Age. There are many blessings but also many curses associate with the Internet Age. Can the thesis of the Third Way explain both and forge a path to an electronically connected future designed for the common good? Tim O’Reilly, Internet pioneer and founder of O’Reilly Media, is our perfect guide.

The word “development” describes another kind of positive change effort that usually includes a strong element of government involvement. Can its successes and failures be explained by the thesis of the Third Way? Our guide to this subject is Scott Peters, Professor of Developmental Sociology at Cornell University.

Up to now, the scope of the Third Way series might seem panoramic, but my conversation with Peter Turchin expands the view still further to include the genetic evolution of our species and the last 10,000 years of human cultural evolution. Peter is the founder of Cliodynamics, an approach to the study of history that is both quantitative and rooted in evolutionary theory.

Again and again—including some of the previous episodes—the Nordic countries are identified as exemplars of good governance and the Third Way. In this episode, we hear directly about the so-called Nordic model from Nina Witoszek, Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment, and Atle Midttun, a professor of Norway’s largest Business School, BI. Nina and Atle have become thoroughly familiar with viewing Norway through an evolutionary lens as participants of the Evolution Institute’s Norway Project.

Since the Third Way series is centered on entrepreneurship, even though it also applies to all forms of positive social change, it is only fitting for the capstone episode to be a conversation with Victor Hwang. Victor developed an evolutionary and ecosystem approach to entrepreneurship in his private consulting practice and served as Vice President for Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation between 2016-2019. Few people have played a larger role or have a more comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurship in the 21^st century and the need for it to follow the Third Way.

If you’re an engineer charged with managing complex systems, it goes without saying that the whole system can’t be optimized by separately optimizing the parts (laissez faire) or by creating and implementing a grand plan without extensive experimentation (centralized planning). Yet, most systems engineers don’t explicitly think about their work as a managed process of cultural evolution. Perhaps they should and their methods can provide guidance for others who do not think of their work in engineering terms. I explore this territory with Guru Madhavan, Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering.