"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

In December, as part of its Voices Off programme, The Old Vic  and Mishcon de Reya explored The Science of Generosity at a panel event hosted at The Old Vic. The Voices Off Programme, conceived in September 2015 at the start of Matthew Warchus' inaugural season as Artistic Director, is a series of talks, conversations, debates and workshops examining the themes raised by the productions on the main stage – in this case, A Christmas Carol. 

The panel, chaired by Mishcon de Reya's Executive Partner James Libson, comprised Dr Oliver Scott Curry, Director of the Oxford Morals Project; Dr Nichola Raihani, Professor of Evolution and Behaviour at UCL; Giles Fraser, Guardian columnist, Church of England priest and panellist on The Moral Maze; and Dr Michael Muthukrishna, Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology at LSE and Research Associate in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. The debate was lively, touching on why our evolution might influence the way we work together, how we may benefit from generosity and if, in trying to dissect the motivations behind our generosity, we risk undermining it completely.

A Christmas Carol, directed by Matthew Warchus and featuring Rhys Ifans as Ebenezer Scrooge, will be at The Old Vic until 20 January.

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