Explore human evolution one story at a time. This award-winning show blends storytelling with science that will change your understanding of who we are.
https://www.leakeyfoundation.org/originstories
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 1 day 15 hours 3 minutes
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episode 29: Rising Star - Homo naledi
It's not every day you see a Facebook post that changes your life, but that's exactly what happened to Leakey Foundation grantee Alia Gurtov. Gurtov was checking her Facebook feed one morning and saw a post from paleoanthropologist Lee Berger. He was...
episode 28: Stones and How to Use Them
The paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey described stone tools as “fossilized human behavior.” These rocks, shaped by our human ancestors and found in archaeological sites around the world, can give us clues about how ancient people lived....
episode 27: Ancestor
Just recently, the news media announced the discovery of a 13 million-year-old fossil ape called Alesi. This remarkable fossil was found in Kenya, and it’s from a time period where there’s a big blank spot in the fossil record of our family tree....
episode 26: Season Two Preview
Our new season of Origin Stories is coming soon! This is a sneak preview of the first episode.
episode 25: The Past, Present, and Future of Violence - LIVE
Why do humans engage in violence? Why do we cooperate in peace? How has violence changed over the course of human history?
episode 24: Altruism
Why do people risk their own lives to save a stranger? Why do we share food or give money to charity? The human capacity for altruism has been a puzzle for scientists since Darwin. In this episode of Origin Stories, primatologist Joan Silk explores...
episode 23: Follow the Leader?
Every animal that lives in groups has to make decisions as a group. Even a seemingly simple decision like "where should we go for dinner?" can be complicated to negotiate. Is there a simple rule behind how humans and other animals make...
episode 22: Did Cooking Make Us Human (Re-release)
Humans have evolved very differently from other primates. Is there one thing responsible for humans becoming human? Some evolutionary biologists think that the way we process our food, namely cooking it, could explain why our species developed so...
episode 21: The Power Paradox
The Power Paradox What is power? Where does social power come from? What happens in our bodies and with our behavior when we have power and when we don't? What can we learn about lasting social power from small-scale hunter-gatherer societies?...