I was thinking about this the other day, if I go back to my badminton club, which might reopen in a few weeks. The sort of finishing a game or a match and not shaking their hand is feels wrong. Why does it feel like that? It is psychologically there's three particular handshakes in business, in sport, and in politics. And for me, that handshake at the end is about sports, personships, sports, women's ships, sportsmanship.
Friends do it, strangers do it and so do chimpanzees - and it's not just deeply embedded in our history and culture, it may even be written in our DNA. The humble handshake, it turns out, has a rich and surprising history. In this week's episode palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to science broadcaster Helen Czerski about a funny and fascinating voyage of discovery - from the handshake's origins (at least seven million years ago) all the way to its sudden disappearance in March 2020.
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