The Insight podcast

The Insight

Insitome: Your guide to the story of you

Where did we come from? One of humanity's most basic questions, the answer is fascinating. Weaving together insights from the fields of genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and paleoanthropology, hosts Spencer Wells and Razib Khan take us on a grand tour of human history. Scientific storytelling at its best.

100 Episodes

Brian Hare and Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity
9/15/2020
1:04:10
Razib discusses the new book Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity with one of the authors. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07ZC6XGGX/geneexpressio-20
Why Western Europeans are so WEIRD and why that matters!
9/8/2020
50:21
Razib talks to evolutionary anthropologist Joe Henrich about his new book, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B07RZFCPMD/geneexpressio-20
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Why much of science is fiction
9/3/2020
1:20:04
Razib talks to Stuart Ritchie about his new book, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1250222699/geneexpressio-20
Siberian paleohistory
8/6/2020
1:19:00
Razib and Spencer discuss the geography, prehistory, and genetics, of Siberia. Also, the time Spencer experienced a Siberian winter!
Sundaland: a human evolutionary hearth
7/31/2020
1:33:31
Razib and Spencer discuss why the geology and biogeography of Southeast Asia may explain why it is so important in the history of human evolution. Show notes: https://blog.insito.me/humanitys-second-cradle-in-southeast-asia-cbb26244f08a
Peopling the Americas 32,000 years ago
7/23/2020
41:55
Razib discusses revolutionary new work published in Nature that tells us that modern humans were present in the Americas 32,000 years ago with one of the authors, Lorena Becerra-Valdivia. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02190-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2509-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2509-0
Ghost in the machine
7/16/2020
53:42
Spencer and Razib talk about what we mean when we say "ghost population" in human genetics, and why it's so important to understand our origins. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842210/ https://www.genetics.org/content/192/3/1065.short
Native American admixture into Polynesia!
7/9/2020
44:45
Razib talks to Alex Ioannidis on the new paper which he is a first author of which argues that there is pre-Columbian Native American ancestry in Eastern Polynesia. Did the Polynesians bring them back from the mainland? Or did they voyage themselves? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2
Will to Power and the Holocene transition
6/26/2020
1:01:48
Razib and Spencer talk about what a new ancient DNA paper from Neolithic Ireland suggests about radical inequality and power differentials in early agricultural societies, and what that says about the transition from hunting and gathering more generally https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2378-6 (also, coronavirus update!)
Two cultures, humanities and science
6/18/2020
1:00:01
Spencer and Razib discuss what the humanities can offer to science with Kerim Yasar, professor of East Asian literature https://twitter.com/nihonkyo

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