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…
Episode 15: The Grandmother Hypothesis
When Kristen Hawkes first started to research the foraging habits of the Hadza hunter-gatherers, she noticed that the older women in the society were spending their time collecting food and sharing it with their grandchildren. She started to wonder if…
Episode 14: Being Human – Why Do We Laugh?
Laughter is a universal human behavior. Have you ever wondered why we laugh or what it really means when we do? Greg Bryant of UCLA studies the evolution of communication and vocal behavior, especially of spontaneous vocal expressions such as…
Episode 13: Evolutionary Arms Race
In this episode we take a closer
look at the evolutionary arms race between humans and the microbes
that make us sick. What does each side bring to the fight? Dr.
Pardis Sabeti of Harvard University is a computational biologist
who uses math and…