Origin Stories

Tuberculosis is the world's leading cause of death by infectious disease, and it has been plaguing humanity for a very long time. In the first episode of a two-part series on infectious disease and hu...

25 Mar 201618min

The bad news is that everybody has face mites. The good news is that these tiny cousins of spiders and ticks seem to be harmless for the vast majority of us. In this episode, entomologist and evoluti...

25 Feb 201619min

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research focuses on how babies and young children learn about the worl...

19 Jan 201638min

We humans have evolved very differently from other primates. Is there one thing responsible for humans becoming human? Some evolutionary biologists think that the way we process our food, namely cooki...

29 Des 201518min

This episode of Origin Stories was recorded live in San Francisco as part of the Bay Area Science Festival. It was the first of The Leakey Foundation and the Baumann Foundation’s new “Being Human” eve...

5 Des 201538min

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin used a sketch of a tree of life to help describe his theory of evolution. In this metaphor, the branches of the tree represent the relationships between all...

24 Nov 201517min

For over 35 years Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth have been studying wild African primates in order to better understand the evolution of the human mind. In this episode they tell us about their lo...

27 Okt 201518min

Have you ever wondered what it's like to make a major fossil discovery? Arizona State University graduate student Chalachew Seyoum and professor Kaye Reed tell us their exciting story. Seyoum was wor...

26 Aug 201515min