Origin Stories is The Leakey Foundation’s monthly podcast that explores human evolution one story at a time. This award-winning show blends storytelling with science that will change your understanding of what it means to be human.
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Episode 19: Being Human – Born and Evolved to Run
Humans and our recent ancestors have been accomplished endurance runners for more than a million years. Our evolutionary history as runners partly accounts for why aerobic exercise is such a key component of human health. In this talk, recorded in…
Episode 18: Empathy
Empathy has long been considered a uniquely human trait, but it’s an ability that has also been observed in apes and other animals. Primatologist Frans de Waal says that examples of empathy in non-human primates and other mammals suggest that…
Episode 04: How to Document a Society (Re-release)
Every day for 55 years a dedicated group of researchers, students, and field assistants have spent their days crawling through thorns and vines as they follow chimpanzees to observe their behavior. They write everything down in notes and on maps and…
Episode 17: Being Human – Speaking of Sex
Humans are very verbal compared to other animals. We talk constantly, and our voices can signal many things beyond the meaning of our words. The human voice is also highly differentiated between the sexes.  In this live recording of our…
Episode 16: Neanderthals
People have been fascinated with Neanderthals since they were first discovered in the mid-1800s. For a long time, they have been seen as dumb, brutish cavemen. As more discoveries have been made in the past few decades, our picture of who Neanderthals…