One of the most thought-provoking books I’ve ever read is On Human Nature, by Edward O. Wilson. He’s the father of sociobiology–at Harvard, his views got him into a heap of trouble with campus leftists such as Stephen Jay Gould, who wanted to deny that genetics had anything to do with the shaping of human culture. Wilson is also the world’s leading expert on ants. On today’s Between the Covers podcast, we discuss his new book, The Superorganism (co-authored by Bert Holldobler), plus the important matter of whether ants are nature’s perfect little Commies (his excellent answer: Marx was right, but he had the wrong species).