On Humans

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 change(07:20) First humans(11:20) Fire(17:50) Fish(21:40) Rocks(24:00) Evolution vs Innovation(25:30) Brain growth (36:10) Children (39:50) Language(48:20) Why?As always, we finish with Dr Tattersall's reflections on humanity.LINKSWant to support the show? Checkout ⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠Want to read and not just listen? Get the newsletter on ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠MENTIONSNames: Richard Wrangham (see ep. 21), Susan Schaller, Ildefonso, Jane Goodall, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Yuval Noah Harari Books: Masters of the Planet (Tattersall), Man Without Words (Schaller), Sapiens (Harari)Technical terms: Oldowan tool culture (first stone tools, c. 2.5 million years ago), Acheulean hand axe (first major update in stone tools, c. 1.6 million years ago)Fossils: Lucy (3.2 million years old); Turkana Boy (aka. Nariokotome Boy, 1.6 million years old)Hominin species: Australopithecines, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens A note on hominin taxonomy: Homo habilis was traditionally considered the first human and the first maker of stone tools. Dr Tattersall is among the many critics of this old idea. According to him and many others, there is no separate tool-making species called Homo habilis. Rather, Australopithecines started making stone tools without any change in the biology of the species. Also, it is worth noting that Dr Tattersall rejects the traditional view which gives a big role for Homo erectus in the human story. In this traditional view, Turkana Boy’s species, Homo ergaster, is called an African Homo erectus. Dr Tattersall and many others argue that this is a historic hangover with little basis in the biological evidence.

In this enlightening discussion, Eva Jablonka, an eminent evolutionary biologist known for her work on epigenetic inheritance, delves into the evolution of consciousness. She explores the definition of consciousness and its links to evolution. The conversation raises questions about animal consciousness and the implications for AI. Jablonka highlights the complexity of conscious experiences across species, particularly during pivotal moments like the Cambrian explosion, and discusses the future challenges for consciousness in the age of technology.

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:(4:30) Why we love (12:50) Tools to cultivate love (24:30) Friendships with the ethnic "other” (31:30) Are we naturally xenophobic?MENTIONSNames: Elaine Aron, Helen Fisher, Stephen WrightArticles: For links to videos, articles, and the 36 Questions, see https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-35MORE LINKS Read the On Humans newsletter at OnHumans.Substack.com Support On Humans at Patreon.com/OnHumans

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.

Nikhil Chaudhary, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, shares his insights on parenting lessons from hunter-gatherer societies. He discusses how communal living and cooperative child-rearing in these cultures contrast with modern family dynamics, reducing parental stress. The conversation explores unique topics such as the roles of alloparents, the emotional complexities of parenting, and the intricate relationship between mental health and societal support. Chaudhary also reflects on how our understanding of family can evolve by looking at these traditional practices.

Helen Fisher, a Cultural Biology expert, discusses romantic love, monogamy, and maintaining passion in relationships. Topics include the evolution of romantic love, neuroscience behind relationships, animal pair bonding, and the impact of SSRIs on love. The conversation also explores mating systems, divorce patterns, and the historical significance of the plow in human society.

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 creature that was not quite human and not quite monkey. It was something in between. According to the local people, the lai ho'a live deep in the local rainforest. They are difficult to see. But people do see one occasionally. They are about a meter in height, just as Homo floresiensis. And they walk on two legs – a feature that separates humans from other mammals.So what should we make of all of this? Could Homo floresiensis, or its descendants, still be alive? Or is this just another fantasy in the realm of cryptozoology? And what would it be like to encounter a species that is half human, half ape? What rights would they get? How would it challenge our ideas about "humanity"?This is my attempt at making sense of this peculiar case. I hope you enjoy it!READ MORETo read the full story in detail, I highly recommend Forth’s thoughtful and non-sensetationalist book, ⁠Between an Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid. I am now publishing episode breakdowns, essays, and much more. Read online or sign up for the newsletter on ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠! SUPPORTPlease consider supporting the show on Patreon.com/OnHumans. MENTIONSEthnic groups: Lio People (on Flores), Southeast Asian “Pygmies” (i.e. indigenous people with very short stature)Hominin species: Homo floresiensis, Austrolopithecine, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisovans, Homo sapiens

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 product of capitalist development, as theorised by Simon Kuznets? Or was it a historical anomaly resulting from the two world wars and political interventions, as argued by Thomas Piketty?Yet more questions emerge if we take a more global outlook. Was the Great Levelling within rich countries but a veil behind which they plundered the Global South, making capitalism an inherent engine of global inequality? If so, why has global inequality reduced during the recent era of globalised capitalism?There are very few people who can judge these questions with the same nuance and understanding as Branko Milanović. Milanović is a leading scholar of global inequality. But he is also a particularly sensitive commentator on capitalism. Born in communist Yugoslavia, Milanović has a rare ability to look at capitalism from an arms-length, without indoctrinated faith but also with a deep appreciation of the limits of its alternatives. I hope you enjoy our conversation!VISUAL DATA We discuss a lot of numbers in this episode. You can find a lot of relevant graphs in my Substack post: https://onhumans.substack.com/p/the-evolution-of-inequality-underTo follow Milanović's own work, and get a lot of more graphs, see his many books and his blog "Global Inequality" at https://branko2f7.substack.com/SUPPORTI hope you enjoy the conversation. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠. MENTIONSNames: Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, Brad DeLong (see episode 18 & season 1 highlights), Simon Kuznets, Arthur Berns, Thomas Piketty,  Gabriel Zucman, Emmanuel Saez, Jason Hickel, François Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Vilfredo ParetoNames: Gini coefficient, Kuznets-curve, Mondragon (a Spanish cooperative), homoploutia (when the rich both own capital and work for an income) Books: Visions of Inequality (Milanovic), Capital (Marx), Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), Global Inequality (Milanovic), Capitalism, Alone (Milanovic)

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 come to the dramatic conclusion that space and time are not fundamental. They are, according to him, just parts and parcels of our perception. Therefore objects, molecules, and atoms are not fundamental. Consciousness is.We explored the scientific case for Hoffman's theory in episode 30. In this 2nd part, we explore its relationship with spirituality.What if Hoffman is right? Should we live our lives any differently? What is the meaning of life in a world without space or time? Do we find God behind Hoffman's mathematics? You can enjoy this conversation without listening to the previous one.ESSAYS AND NEWSLETTERYou can now find breakdowns and analyses of new conversations from ⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠. SUPPORTI hope you enjoy the conversation. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on ⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠. MENTIONSNames: Albert Einstein, Rupert Spira, Dalai Lama (H.H. the 14th), Joseph DweckTerms: Canor's hierarchy, entropy

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, instead, explain matter in terms of mind. I explored this position in some detail in episode 17.But hold on, you might say. Is this not contradicted by the success of natural sciences? How could a mind-first philosophy ever explain the success of particle physics? Or more generally, wouldn't any scientist laugh at the idea that mind is more fundamental than matter?No — not all of them laugh. Some take it very seriously. Donald Hoffman is one such scientist. Originally working with computer vision at MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hoffman started asking a simple question: What does it mean to "see" the world? His answer starts from a simple idea: perception simplifies the world – a lot. But what is the real world like? What is “there” before our perception simplifies the world? Nothing familiar, Hoffman claims. No matter. No objects. Not even a three-dimensional space. And no time. There is just consciousness. This is a wild idea. But it is a surprisingly precise idea. It is so precise, in fact, that Hoffman’s team can derive basic findings in particle physics from their theory. A fascinating conversation was guaranteed. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, consider becoming a supporter of On Humans on ⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠. ESSAYS AND NEWSLETTERYou can now find breakdowns and analyses of new conversations from ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠. Subscribe to the newsletter to get every new piece to fresh from the shelf.MENTIONSNames: David Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Edward Whitten, Nathan Seiberg, Andrew Strominger, Edwin Abbott, Nick Bostrom, Giulio Tononi, Keith Frankish, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Roger Penrose, Sean Carroll,  Swapan ChattopadhyayTerms (Physics and Maths): quantum fields, string theory, gluon, scattering amplitude, amplituhedron, decorated permutations, bosons, leptons, quarks, Planck scale, twistor theory, M-theory, multiverse, recurrent communicating classes, Cantor’s hierarchy (relating to different sizes of infinity... If this sounds weird, stay tuned for full episode on infinity. It will come out in a month or two.)Terms (Philosophy and Psychology): Kant’s phenomena and noumena, integrated information theory, global workspace theory, orchestrated objective reduction theory, attention schema theoryBooks: Case Against Reality by Hoffman, Enlightenment Now by Steven PinkerArticles etc.: For links to articles, courses, and more, see https://onhumans.substack.com/p/links-for-episode-30