Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience.

It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.

Prosperity has brought complications. Our lives are busier, faster, more stressful. They're nostalgic for a simpler, slower time.

Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.

Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster toward a finish line that is merely the start of the next race

Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative.

Note even Jonathan Swift would dare to write a satire in which politicians argued that - in a world where species are vanishing and more than a billion people are barely able to afford to eat - it would somehow be good for the planet to clear rain-forests to grow palm oil, or give up food-crop land to grow biofuels, solely so that people could burn fuel derived from carbohydrate rather than hydrocarbons in their cars, thus driving up the price of food for the poor. Ludicrous is too weak a word for this heinous crime.