Origin Stories

It's not every day you see a Facebook post that changes your life, but that's exactly what happened to Leakey Foundation grantee Alia Gurtov. Gurtov was checking her Facebook feed one morning and saw ...

14 Sep 201739min

The paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey described stone tools as "fossilized human behavior." These rocks, shaped by our human ancestors and found in archaeological sites around the world, can give us cl...

7 Sep 201723min

Just recently, the news media announced the discovery of a 13 million-year-old fossil ape called Alesi. This remarkable fossil was found in Kenya, and it's from a time period where there's a big blank...

31 Aug 201725min

Our new season of Origin Stories is coming soon! This is a sneak preview of the first episode.

11 Aug 20172min

Why do people risk their own lives to save a stranger? Why do we share food or give money to charity? The human capacity for altruism has been a puzzle for scientists since Darwin. In this episode of ...

7 Apr 201721min

Every animal that lives in groups has to make decisions as a group. Even a seemingly simple decision like "where should we go for dinner?" can be complicated to negotiate. Is there a simple rule be...

7 Mars 201720min

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 cooking ...

31 Dec 201625min

The Power Paradox What is power? Where does social power come from? What happens in our bodies and with our behavior when we have power and when we don't? What can we learn about lasting social power ...

8 Nov 201641min