On Humans

How old is war? Does it stretch deep into human origins, or did warfare become common only as growing populations settled down?  In Part II of this conversation with Douglas P. Fry, we return to the long-running debate about the origins of war. Fry revisits his argument that aggression is ancient, but war is not. I put that claim to the test, raising some of the strongest objections from archaeolo...

History is full of wars. Why? Is war driven by fear? Greed? Revenge? Ambitious leaders? Is it rooted deep in human nature—or does it emerge only under particular social conditions? And what do we learn if we change the angle from wars to non-wars? What lessons emerge from a study of all the periods and regions where war did not take place?  My guest in this two-part mini-series is Douglas P. Fry,...

Was India once an affluent empire, later impoverished by British colonisation? Or was India never rich to begin with? More generally, what does historical data on wages and other economic indicators tell us about the broader story of the making of the modern world – a world with great affluence, but where much of the riches are still concentrated in the Western world. For over 20 years now, Stephe...

The tech gap between China and the West is closing fast. But why did the land that invented paper and gunpowder ever fall behind? Debin Ma is the world’s leading economic historian of East Asia. In this fourth episode of our Great Divergence series, he approaches the making of the modern world from an eastern perspective. We discuss why China fell behind, why Japan modernised early, and why East A...

Why was industrial modernity born in Europe and not, say, China? This is one of the most consequential questions about the origins of the modern world. Yet asking “why Europe” can mislead. The Industrial Revolution was not a European event. It was a British event. So why was the steam engine invented in Britain, and not France or Italy? Oxford professor Robert Allen has worked for decades trying t...

Several inventions mark the progress towards modernity - the Gutenberg printing press, the Galileo telescope, the Watt steam engine. But why was Europe the birthplace of so many of these?  Joel Mokyr, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, thinks the cause was culture. For decades he has asked economists to take intellectual history more seriously. Economies are shaped by new inventions, Mok...

Why did Western Europe become the richest region of the early modern world? Was the rise of the West powered by colonization, inventions, or something else entirely? And what happened to the medieval might of China and India? The term “great divergence” is increasingly used by historians who want to study this immense question, but who want to do it carefully, without falling into traditional East...

Something big is coming soon. Stay tuned! Whilst waiting, you can enjoy one of my all-time favourites from the archives. A lot of the recent episodes have mentioned the impact of bipedalism in the human story, but the remarks have hardly done justice to the depth of the matter. Jeremy DeSilva did it justice. Enjoy!  ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES Humans are odd in many ways. But perhaps the oddest of our fea...

Imagine a group of ancient humans, crafting stone tools at the dawn of humankind. What did these creatures look like?  To find out, we can stare at the skulls in museums or glance at reconstructions made by paleo-artists. Not a bad start. But what if we move the lens and zoom into their surroundings? What was the scientific “Garden of Eden” like? Was it a lush forest, a dry savanna, or an icy cave...

What was life like before farming? Was it nasty, brutish, and short? Or did our hunter-gatherer ancestors live lives that were relatively free, affluent, and ecologically stable? In the lack of a time machine, many anthropologists have sought answers from studying the few hunter-gatherer communities that still exist today. In 1966, several leading names in the field were invited to present their r...

The world is full of religions, but none as timeless as shamanism. And whilst many modern religions have shed their shamanic skins, the shaman is rarely as far away as we have been told. Or so argues anthropologist Manvir Singh in his book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion.   Singh’s work is fascinating in its capacity to link the exocit with the familiar, showing how rainforest rituals are not so...

Happy 2026! On Humans has typically marked the coming of January by revisiting the previous year’s most popular episode. This time, the New Year special packs the five-hour-long "Origins of Humankind" series into one fast-paced dive through deep time. By mixing highlights from the original interviews with fresh narration, this episode offers a captivating journey through many of the grea...

“The podcast is great, but one thing hasn’t been covered yet: humour. It’s an essential part of our human condition, and would certainly be worth an episode.” This listener feedback was easy to agree with. From standup comedy to nervous laughter, our lives are filled with chuckles and giggles. Why? Why do adults laugh at witty jokes whilst children laugh at the simple pleasures of peek-a-boo? And...

We are a movable species. In less than 50 thousand years, Homo sapiens has penetrated practically all corners of the earth. This is an episode about those epic migrations, with a focus on the two furthest edges of the human migratory map: the Americas in the West and the Polynesian islands in the East. In the end, we discuss emerging evidence that those branches met each other -- work coming direc...

European thinkers once divided humanity into distinct "races". The idea stuck, even if the science moved on. The shape of humanity, it turned out, is far messier than the old race theorists ever imagined. This much is well known. Still , genetics does study different human "populations". Biological differences between these populations are reported every day. So have we simply changed words? Has a...

Genetics is rewriting the human story. This week, On Humans takes you behind the scenes of this rapidly evolving frontier via three live-recordings, captured at the Salk Institute's CARTA symposium on ancient DNA. The first episode explores the differences between us and the Neanderthals. For centuries, we tried to understand Neanderthals through stones and bones alone. Now genetics is offering a...

The science of human origins keeps producing new theories. But are we any closer to telling a true story of human origins? Or are we simply drowning in data?  Earlier this November, the chair of UCSD’s Department of Anthropology invited me to explore this question in a campus talk. My optimistic claim was that underneath many of the field’s important debates, a powerful story has been emerging. At...

You decided to start reading this. But could you have chosen otherwise? In this short epilogue to this fall's brain science -series , Oxford biologist Tim Coulson gives his defense of free will. (The episode is an unheard clip from the conversation with Tim Coulson, originally recorded as part of the Origins of Humankind -series in March 2025. ) LINKS For highlights, longer quotes, and referen...

Science has learned much about the brain. But how well do we understand this organ of the mind? Are we even close to cracking the neural code? Is a groundbreaking theory of consciousness just around the corner? In this final episode of the brain science -series, Matthew Cobb takes us on a tour of the story of neuroscience. We meet many colourful characters, but this is not just a history for histo...

Dopamine. Serotonin. Endorphins. We have all heard these terms. And these are not just scientific curiosities. Few are those who have never wondered if their brain chemicals are "just off balance". So how accurate are the popular theories about these mythic molecules? To guide us through the topic, I'm joined by Judy Grisel—an ex-addict and a world-leading neuroscientist of addiction. We will disc...

Our brains can feel remote and abstract. Hidden behind Latin names and textbook diagrams, they rarely feel as personal to us as our hearts and stomachs. In this episode, neurologist and author Pria Anand helps us get a little more intimate with that grey, wrinkly seat of our consciousness. Together we explore both the structural architecture and the musical synchronies of the brain. We travel acro...

Here is a simple story about the origins of the human brain: All primate brains are dense with neurons—they are the supercomputers of the animal world. What's more, the human brain is just what you’d expect from a primate of our size: big, packed with neurons, but no more special than that. It's the chimps and gorillas who are special: without cooked food, their brains lacked the fuel to keep up w...

I'm excited to announce that On Humans is launching a new series this fall! This one will explore the wonders of the human brain. The new episodes will drop throughout September and early October. To set the stage, we will revisit a conversation with neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel , newly re-edited and remastered. It’s the simplest and most elegant story I’ve heard about how our brains...

Why did the great powers of Asia stagnate whilst Europe was rising? This question—often called the Great Divergence—is one of the most defining questions of modern history. Few case studies illuminate this question as well as the contrast between Britain and India. Did colonialism make Britain rich and India poor? Or was Britain’s rise already underway before conquest? And what does all this tell...

Climate. Weathers. History. Here's an encore episode to wrap up the mini-series on these themes! This episode on the puzzling origins of farming is one of my all-time favourites on the show. I thought it was a good time to put it out again. You can also read my essay on the topic ⁠here⁠ . Enjoy! ~ ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES Agriculture changed everything. Traditionally, this “Neolithic Revolution” wa...