Nature has a few things to teach us about self-organizing, leaderless teams. Turns out, honeybees have developed an effective algorithm for making decisions without deferring to authority. If you find this podcast interesting, Seeley has also written a book, Honeybee Democracy, with more details about his research.

Over millions of years, honeybees have evolved to act as a collective. Together, they identify and deliberate new nest locations and then navigate there as a swarm. Thomas Seeley loves honey bees, and he knows a lot about them. But there's one thing that remains a mystery to him: how do bees know when to swarm? As he searches for the answer, Seeley's learning what these insects can teach humans about making decisions.