Your Own Health and Fitness, for February 16, 2010 - 1:00pm

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Is human nature basically selfish? Is our market-based culture a booming success because we found a way to harness human nature through the use of what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand” of each person seeking his or her own self-interest? Would you be surprised to know that Adam Smith thought that it was empathy and cooperation that marked the height of human achievement?

This week, Layna interviews primatologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy and Primates and Philosophers, about a human nature to which we are blind because of the dominant ideology of self-interest and market solutions.

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