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 chimpanzees. We also discuss "allomothers", attachment theory, and the tragedy of infanticide. We finish w...
May 08, 2024•59 min•Season 1Ep. 40
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 people from a "meta-group" of 150 people — but not more. And so, 150 people is the "maxiimum" group s...
Apr 16, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 39
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 taught us about ourselves? To explore this topic, I am joined by philosopher Adrian W. Moore. Profe...
Mar 25, 2024•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 38
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 Natural History (New York). In this episode, Dr Tattersall and I discuss: (04.00) An ancient climate ch...
Mar 12, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 37
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 original work on the evolution of consciousness with her colleague, neuroscientist Simona Ginsburg. So i...
Feb 14, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 36
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. And many of his findings are ultimately hopeful. In this conversation, we discuss topics such as: (4:3...
Feb 01, 2024•39 min•Season 3Ep. 35
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.
Jan 23, 2024•14 min
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 condition? Or is the fault in our modern society? And how would we know the answer? To address these que...
Jan 15, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 34
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 with Helen Fisher, titled "A Cultural Biology of Sex, Love, and Monogamy". It was one of my favouri...
Jan 07, 2024•1 hr 38 min
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". In his own studies, Forth had been puzzling over a species the local people called lai ho'a , a cre...
Dec 24, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 33
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 American capitalism an era of rapidly decreasing inequality? Was this “Great Levelling” a natural p...
Dec 16, 2023•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 32
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, science and spirituality. My guest today is one of them. Donald Hoffman is a vision scientist, who has c...
Nov 28, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 31
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 disagree. According to these thinkers, we will never be able to explain mind in terms of matter. We will, i...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 30
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 veggies for dinner. But why exactly do we say this? Is this based on solid evidence? Or are we simpl...
Nov 09, 2023•1 hr 29 min
“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 humans to other apes and monkeys. My guest is the primatologist Sarah Brosnan. Her research is famous for...
Oct 18, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 28
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 animal kingdom (it is not), then what, if anything, makes it worth the hype? To discuss this topic, I am ...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 27
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 show notes are below. Enjoy! ____ SUPPORT THE SHOW Please consider becoming a supporter of On Humans. ...
Sep 18, 2023•40 min
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 relevant to our age of computers, robots, and AI? To discuss these themes, I am joined by MIT professo...
Sep 10, 2023•48 min•Season 1Ep. 28
To complete a trilogy on the anthropology of war, here is episode 8 from the archives. Enjoy! SUPPORT THE SHOW Please consider becoming a supporter of On Humans. Even small monthly donations can make a huge impact on the long-term sustainability of the program. Visit: Patreon.com/OnHumans Get in touch: [email protected] _______ Thomas Hobbes famously wrote that life in the state of nature was “nasty, brutish, and short”. Recently, various scholars have claimed that Hobbes was basica...
Aug 25, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Is war natural for humans? This question launched episode 8 of this podcast. In that episode, anthropologist Douglas Fry argued that war is a new phenomenon. Yes, history is full of wars. But war arrived on stage only 10-15 thousand years ago – or in many areas, much later. And while war is undoubtedly part of human capacity , it is hardly our hardwired inclination. But what about chimpanzees, I asked him. They wage war. And according to many chimpanzee experts, they gang up on strangers wheneve...
Aug 19, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 25
What does war do to the human psyche? It can traumatise. It can cause grief. It can normalise violence and make demons out of the enemy. But difficult times can also elevate our care and compassion. And while much of the new solidarity is focused on those on “our side”, the helping hand does not always stop at the border. Or so argues anthropologist Greta Uehling, the author of Everyday War (2023). Building on over 150 interviews with Ukrainian civilians and ex-combatants, Uehling’s work brings ...
Aug 14, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Humans are odd in many ways. But perhaps the oddest of our features is our upright posture. We walk on two legs. And we are the only mammal to do so. So why do we walk upright? And why does it matter? Jeremy DeSilva is a fossil expert and a professor of paleoanthropology at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of a remarkable book, aptly titled First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human [An audio version of First Steps is now offered to you for free from Audible! See links and eligibilit...
Jul 17, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Here is a common view on human development: In the beginning, children can only think about themselves. Slowly, they learn to care about others — or more cynically, they learn to pretend that they care about others. Variations of this view have been promoted by thinkers from Sigmund Freud to Richard Dawkins. This view has then been used to make predictable conclusions about ethics: human morality is either a social construct — fearfully internalized — or a clever tactic, used by selfish individu...
Jul 02, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 24
What would a Neanderthal think about our species? What about a chimpanzee? When compared to our cousins, how friendly or violent are we? Richard Wrangham is a chimpanzee expert and professor of human biology at Harvard. He is one of the most important evolutionary anthropologists alive and truly one of the dream guests for this podcast. It was a great honour to have him on the show. We discuss topics such as: What makes studying chimpanzees interesting Why you could not put 100 chimps on a plane...
Jun 18, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Season 2 is out this Saturday, 17th of June! In this final highlight from season 1, anthropologist Vivek Venkataraman talks to Ilari about living with Batek hunter-gatherers. The Batek live in the rainforests of Malaysia and are famous for being one of the most egalitarian society ever studied: things are shared, decisions are made together, and men don't dominate over women. The Batek lifestyle was inspirational in many ways, Dr Venkataraman tells, but one of their norms was particularly diffic...
Jun 13, 2023•8 min
Season 2 is kicking off on the 17th of June! In the meanwhile, we have time for a couple of more highlights. This one is from episode 18 with economic historian Brad Delong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia.
May 31, 2023•13 min
In this highlight from season 1, Ilari talks with economist Oded Galor about how factors such as soil quality can explain cultural differences, such as variations in the level of patriarchy. For the full episode and show notes, see episode 13. For the first episode with Galor, see episode 12. Season 2 is out in June! Do consider subscribing to stay updated.
May 17, 2023•24 min
In this highlight from season 1, Helen Fisher discusses her research with couples deeply in love after 20 years of marriage. The clip also includes Fisher's 7 science-based tips for fostering romantic relationships, and a cautionary note on SSRI (not SNRI) antidepressants. Dig deeper To read more about the possible effects of SSRIs on sex drive and romantic love, see Tocco and Brumbaugh (2019) . Below is a short list of some possible alternatives and/or complements to SSRIs (please consult w...
May 02, 2023•14 min
In this highlight from season 1, Kristen Hawkes presents an intriguing hypothesis about the human past. According to Hawkes, ancient climate changes pushed our ancestors away from the rainforests. On the savannas, teamwork was finally rewarded. For more notes and links, see the original episode 6 (Are Grandmothers the Key to Our Evolutionary Success).
Apr 28, 2023•7 min
Season 1 is over. Season 2 is coming. In the meanwhile, please enjoy some highlights from the archives. This highlight revisits episode four, where Ilari talks with psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gregory Berns about his recent book, Self Delusion . In this flashback, Berns explains why he thinks psychiatry has been led astray by "medicine envy" and why we misunderstand many of the root causes of mental illness. For more show notes and links, see the original episode....
Apr 15, 2023•12 min
