On Humans

How do hunter-gatherers live? Do they wage war? Are they egalitarian? Do they really work for less? These are fascinating questions. I’ve tried my best at covering them on the show. (You can see a list of episodes below).  But since 2023, the most controversial question has been on the role of women. Is it true that men hunt and women gather? Or is this theory, nicknamed “Man the Hunter”, a myth t...

Agriculture changed everything. Traditionally, this “Neolithic Revolution” was celebrated for opening the gates of civilisation. Recently, it has been compared to the original sin. But whatever our take on agriculture, we should be puzzled by one thing: Why did our ancestors start to farm in the first place? It's not like early farmers had improved lives. Quite the opposite, they worked harder and...

You are driving a car. The brakes stop working. To your horror, you are approaching a busy street market. Many people might be killed if you run into them. The only way to prevent a catastrophe is by turning fast to the right. Unfortunately, a lonely pedestrian might be killed if you do so.  Should you turn? Many people say you should. After all, killing one is better than killing many. But follow...

The Industrial Revolution played in the hands of the rich. A century after James Watt revealed his steam engine in 1776, the richest 1% owned a whopping 70% of British wealth. Then things changed. Across rich countries, inequality plummeted for decades.  Join Branko Milanovic on this quest to understand the evolution of inequality during the building of modern prosperity. Our conversation ranges f...

The Industrial Revolution did not create modern prosperity. Indeed, the British workers saw little or no improvements in their wages between 1750 and 1850. They did, however, experience ever-worsening working conditions. Then things changed. Britain became a democracy. And with democracy, the economy changed, too. Or so argues Daron Acemoglu, one of the most influential economists alive. You can e...

For millenia, patriarchy, population growth, and extractive elites made the world a bleak place for most humans. But there are good news, too: everything changed around 1870. And the changed happened due to the taming of the genius of people like Nikolai Tesla. So runs the argument my guest today, Brad DeLong. I will let him explain it to you. You can either listen to the episode here, or read som...

We live longer and grow taller than ever before. We are healthier and wealthier. Our ancestors could hardly have imagined a life of such prosperity. A future archaeologist would be equally puzzled. How did we become so rich so fast? What changes could have been so dramatic as to literally change the height of our species? Our modern prosperity is not the outcome of slow and steady progress. For mo...

Over half a century, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has challenged many of our myths about parenting, attachment, and "human nature". In this conversation, we dive into her remarkable career, culminating in her new book, Father Time. [You can now order Father Time via Amazon or Princeton Uni Press ] We discuss a variety of topics, from hunter-gatherer parenting to the limitations of comparing humans to chimpa...

Modern cities are unique. Never before have so many people lived so close to each other. But just how unique is our modern cosmopolitanism? Completely unique, says a traditional theory. Humans evolved in tiny groups. These groups were not only smaller than modern cities. They were smaller than medieval towns. Indeed, hunter-gatherers often move in bands of 25 people or so. These bands might draw p...

Infinity is a puzzling idea. Even young children ponder its various manifestations: What is the biggest number? Does the universe have an edge? Does time have a beginning? Philosophers have tried to answer these questions since time immemorial. More recently, they have been joined by scientists and mathematicians. So what have we learned? Can we finally understand infinity? And what has this quest...

Why are we furless? Why do we cook our food and use spoken language? And how does climate change, sashimi, or the banks of Central America relate to human origins?  Human evolution is a deeply puzzling topic. But behind this dense mist lies many keys to our self-understanding. To guide us through the foggy territory, I am joined by Dr Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Na...

We are conscious creatures. But why? Why did consciousness evolve? Can we use biology to explain the origins of feeling and meaning? Or will consciousness forever escape the grip of the scientific method?  Eva Jablonka has thought hard about these issues. An eminent evolutionary biologist, she became famous for her pioneering work on epigenetic inheritance. More recently, she has produced very ori...

Why do we love? What brings us together? How to heal ethnic hatred? According to my guest, the answer to all these questions lies in the human desire to grow ourselves through connecting with others. Arthur Aron is a psychologist who studies human bonding in all its forms. A pioneer in the field, he has studied topics from connecting with strangers to maintaining romance in life-long marriages. An...

Can evolution shed light on our mental health? Nikhil Chaudhary thinks so. He is an anthropologist at the University of Cambridge who specialises in the links between evolution and psychiatry. In this clip, Dr Chaudhary explores the evolutionary origins of ADHD, depression, and anxiety. For our longer conversation on parenting and family life, see episode 34 of the On Humans Podcast.

We expect a lot from parents, especially from mothers. “Maternal instincts” are such, we are told, that mothers should gain almost literal superpowers from the joy of parenting.  Unfortunately, many parents face a different reality. Having children can be one of the most stressful times of life, amplified by feelings of guilt and inadequacy.  Why is this? Is this an inevitable part of the human co...

Happy New Year 2024! To celebrate the new year, Spotify sent me a bunch of data points about 2023. I was particularly interested in one question: which conversation moved people the most? I already knew which episode people played the most. (That's episode 17 with Bernardo Kastrup.) But to listen is one thing. To share with friends and family is another. The most shared episode was my conversation...

This is the final episode of 2023. And it is a very odd episode. My guest is Gregory Forth. He is an anthropologist who specializes in the biological theories of indigenous peoples. Forth was doing this work on the Flores Island, Indonesia, during the 2003 discovery of a new hominin species: Homo floresiensis . This was an exciting discovery for many. But Forth was, in his own words, "gobsmacked"....

Capitalism can cause massive economic inequalities. Indeed, a century after Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations , the richest 1% owned a record-breaking 70% of England’s wealth. Not surprisingly, this era saw the rise of a very different economic theorist: Karl Marx. [You can see this and many other graphs here .] But does capitalism have to increase inequality? If so, why was the golden age of...

The tension between science and religion is perhaps the greatest tension of our age. Is the world fundamentally made of atoms, quarks, and quantum fields? Or is the material world but a secondary realm, lesser in meaning to the kingdom of God? There are many iterations of this tension. But there are also bridge-builders; thinkers who want to bridge science and religion — or at the very least, scie...

The world is governed by objective laws of physics. They explain the movements of planets, oceans, and cells in our bodies. But can they ever explain the feelings and meanings of our mental lives? This problem, called the hard problem of consciousness, runs very deep. No satisfactory explanation exists. But many think that there must, in principle, be an explanation. A minority of thinkers disagre...

How natural is a sexual division of labour? Very natural, claims a popular theory. Indeed, it was the secret to our success: men evolved to hunt, women to forage. This allowed women to focus on childcare while staying economically productive; after all, one can gather food with children. Men, on the other hand, could focus on high-risk hunting. At the end of the day, everyone could have steak and...

“Why do we care about equality? Is it an invention of the European Enlightenment? Or is it something rooted in human nature?” These questions launched episode 15 with philosopher Elizabeth Anderson. Titled “A Deep History of Equality”, our conversation ranged from Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to Chinese communism.  Today’s episode continues the quest. But this time, we go further and contrast huma...

The human brain is sometimes called the " most complex thing in the universe ”. It allows us to study ourselves, other animals, and the cosmos itself. Indeed, we often think of our brain as the pinnacle of animal evolution. But what do we actually know about the human brain? How different is it from the brain of an elephant? A chimpanzee? A raccoon? And if our brain is not the biggest in the anima...

How literally can we be in "synch" with someone? Very literally, said my guest in episode 3. Originally titled “A Musical Biology of Love”, this was a fascinating episode with jazz musician and neuroscientist Ruth Feldman. We recorded the episode one year ago, almost to the day. I have thought a lot about it ever since. So here it is again, with remastered audio and a new introduction. Original sh...

Machines allow us to do more work with less effort. They sound like an obviously good thing. But there is a tension here. New gadgets and new technologies - new simple “machines” - have been invented throughout history. But it looks like the living standard of the average person did not change for most of that time. So what happened to all the extra output from new technologies? And how is this re...