On Humans

Ilari Mäkelä

Where do we come from? How did we get here? And what kinds of creatures are we? On Humans offers conversations with leading scientists, historians, and philosophers, making new research about the human story more accessible to everyone — and more relevant to the big questions about who we are. In addition to regular episodes, the show now includes longer series on some of the greatest arcs in the journey of our species, covering everything from the evolution of apes to the making of the modern economy. https://onhumans.substack.com/about

  1. 2d ago

    Beyond Paleo: A Culinary History of Humanity ~ Daniel Lieberman

    “What do you think of the paleo diet?” To my surprise, this has become the most common question I get after telling people that I cover human evolution. I’ve long struggled to answer. Yes, the idea makes a lot of sense: humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, so our bodies should do well when we eat like hunter-gatherers. But what exactly do hunter-gatherers eat? Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman wanted to find out. After reviewing the evidence we have on the diets of hunter-gatherers, he came to a surprising conclusion. “Not a single one of them eats the paleo diet”, he says. Some hunter-gatherers eat more meat than the paleo diet prescribes; most eat much less. Plenty of them eat legumes and cereals, both of which are banned by paleo cookbooks. “There is no one paleo diet,” Lieberman concludes. “The unique thing about humans is that we evolved to eat almost everything.” Instead of fixating on a single “true” diet, Lieberman’s new book, Fed Up, offers a tour of the dietary history of humanity, discussing what lessons we can learn along the way. In this episode, we cover the sweeping story of food and cooking, from the first chefs who processed food with stone tools to the explosion of ultra-processed foods during Lieberman’s own lifetime. Along the way, Lieberman offers insightful comparisons between humans and chimpanzees and discusses the many ways in which farming has — and has not — affected the human condition. He also explains why humans have always been “a very fat ape”, and what his experience of racing against horses tells us about the quirks of human evolution. Towards the end of the episode, we also evaluate the pros and the cons of the modern food system. We finish with Lieberman’s deeply compassionate advice to all who would like to find a healthier lifestyle amidst the many challenges of industrial modernity. Enjoy! FACT-CHECKING No factual errors have been detected yet. If you find a factual error, please leave a comment in the extended show notes (link below) LINKS Full show notes with references: https://OnHumans.Substack.com/p/Beyond-Paleo-a-Culinary-History-of Support: Patreon.com/OnHumans KEYWORDS Ethnic groups & technical terms The Hadza | Inuit | Agta | Homo erectus | Australopithecines | Lucy | Olduvai Hominid OH 8 | Oldowan stone tools | the Nandi Hills Topics covered Human evolution | evolutionary anthropology | human origins | big history | palaeoanthropology | paleo diet | hunter-gatherer studies | meat eating | persistence hunting | endurance running | sweating | human body fat | origins of cooking | origins of food processing | agriculture | neolithic revolution | peasant diets | famines | infectious disease | Mediterranean diet | ultra-processed foods | fibre | saturated and unsaturated fats | obesity | insulin resistance | type 2 diabetes | GLUT4 transporters | exercise | weight maintenance | Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.

  2. Jul 25

    When Did Globalisation Really Begin? ~ Valerie Hansen

    We can decide to stay home, but even then, the wider world is always close to our skin. From global trade to ideas that travel across continents, the wider world is always woven into our modern life. Since when has this been the case? There is a modern story about globalisation — a story about telecommunications and aeroplanes and such — but this is the climax of a long process, not its beginning. To find the deeper roots of globalisation, we should turn our gaze to the medieval world, and specifically to events around the year 1000. Or so argues historian Valerie Hansen. In this episode, we discuss the various curious developments around the year 1000 that began to connect the world into an interconnected web. From Viking explorers to the Silk Roads in Africa, Hansen offers many fascinating windows into the surprising connections that were already beginning to link the medieval world together. We also discuss the spread of inventions and world religions, as well as the deeper forces that Hansen thinks have long been driving world history. Enjoy! FACT-CHECKING No errors have been detected in this conversation. If you notice one, please get in touch via Substack or the form below. LINKS Hansen's books: The Silk Road: A New History ⁠and ⁠The Year 1000. Support: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠ Articles & newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠⁠⁠ KEYWORDS Names: Erik the Red | Bjarni Herjólfsson | Jacques Cartier | Vladimir the Great | Mansa Musa | William Dalrymple | Kenneth Pomeranz | Andrés Moreno-Estrada | Michael Coe | Mary Miller | Ralph Austen | Richard Davis | Paul Freedman | Thor Heyerdahl Historical places: L’Anse aux Meadows | Greenland | Newfoundland | Chichén Itzá | the Yucatán Peninsula | the Baltic Sea | the Song dynasty | the Liao dynasty | the Abbasid Caliphate | Baghdad | the Indian Ocean | the Swahili Coast | Mali | Kaifeng | Hagia Sophia Topics covered: Global history | macrohistory | economic history | medieval history | early global trade | long-distance trade | Silk Roads | Indian Ocean trade | trans-Saharan trade | maritime trade networks | Viking / Norse exploration | Polynesian migrations | population genetics | pre-Columbian contact | Viking–Maya contact hypothesis | Polynesian–Native American contact hypothesis | Song dynasty | Liao dynasty | Abbasid Caliphate | medieval Africa | Swahili Coast trade | medieval slavery | trans-Saharan slave trade | slavery and serfdom | slavery in China | spread of world religions | Christianisation of Europe | spread of Islam | Buddhism in Asia | diffusion of technology | history of inventions | paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass | Indian numerals and zero | Maya mathematics | history of food Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.

  3. Jun 21

    The Why of War and the How of Peace, Part II: Lessons from Prehistory ~ Douglas P. Fry

    How old is war? Does it stretch deep into human origins, or did warfare become common only as growing populations settled down?  In Part II of this conversation with Douglas P. Fry, we return to the long-running debate about the origins of war. Fry revisits his argument that aggression is ancient, but war is not. I put that claim to the test, raising some of the strongest objections from archaeology and the study of modern hunter-gatherers. We discuss Jebel Sahaba, nomadic and settled foragers, food storage, marine resources, population growth, and the archaeological sequences through which warfare seems to emerge in different parts of the world. Is war an ancient adaptation—or a more recent cultural development? And is the answer relevant to our modern quest for a more peaceful world? Enjoy! FACT-CHECKING No errors have been detected in this conversation. If you notice one, please get in touch via Substack or the form below. LINKS Fry's 2026 book: ⁠Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution⁠ Support: ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠ Articles & newsletter: ⁠⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠⁠ Get in touch: ⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠ Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay. NAMES MENTIONED Douglas P. Fry | Luke Glowacki | Richard Wrangham | Brian Ferguson | Christopher Boehm | Richard B. Lee | Donald E. Brown ETHNIC GROUPS AND HISTORICAL REGIONS Northwestern Alaska | Valley of Oaxaca | Jebel Sahaba  | Monte Albán | Zapotec Empire | Calusa people | Batek people | Orang Asli | Juǀ’hoansi, !Kung | Mbuti  KEY WORDS Origins of war | prehistory of war | history of warfare | causes of war | why humans go to war | anthropology of war | anthropology of peace | peace studies | conflict studies | war studies | peace and conflict studies | evolutionary anthropology | human evolution | human nature and war | hunter-gatherer warfare | hunter-gatherers | nomadic hunter-gatherers | mobile foragers | complex hunter-gatherers | prehistoric violence | interpersonal violence | coalitionary aggression | coalitionary killing | lethal aggression | human aggression | conflict resolution | restraint of aggression | archaeological evidence of war | archaeology of warfare | archaeological record | Pleistocene | Holocene | Neolithic warfare | origins of social complexity | sedentism | permanent settlements | food storage | population growth | population density | resource competition | resource intensification | marine resources | aquatic resources | Neolithic revolution | human universals | evolutionary psychology | chimpanzee warfare

  4. Jun 19

    The Why of War and the How of Peace, Part I: Lessons from the Modern World ~ Douglas P. Fry

    History is full of wars. Why? Is war driven by fear? Greed? Revenge? Ambitious leaders? Is it rooted deep in human nature—or does it emerge only under particular social conditions? And what do we learn if we change the angle from wars to non-wars? What lessons emerge from a study of all the periods and regions where war did not take place?  My guest in this two-part mini-series is Douglas P. Fry, an anthropologist who has spent decades studying these questions. He is also a returning guest, and one of the first scholars ever to appear on this podcast. In Part II of our conversation, we will return to the topic of our episode from years back: the origins of war in prehistory. In this first part, however, we take a very different approach. We discuss lessons from modernity, with our topics ranging from the quest for peace after WWII to the societies in the Brazilian Amazon and Indigenous North America. What makes former enemies trust one another? What roles are played by equality, trade, or a new shared enemy? And how can cycles of fear, retaliation, and revenge be reversed without simply surrendering to aggression? At a time when war once again dominates the news, these questions could hardly be more urgent. But they also point towards a part of the human story that is too easily forgotten: our capacity not only to make war, but to understand it—and to build peace that lasts. Enjoy! FACT-CHECKING My wording on Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for "security guarantees" is slightly stronger than the formal language of the Budapest Memorandum, which talked of “security assurances” rather than legally binding security guarantees. If you notice a factual error in this conversation, please get in touch via Substack or the form below. LINKS Fry's 2026 book: Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution Support: ⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠ Articles & newsletter: ⁠OnHumans.Substack.com⁠ Get in touch: ⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠ Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay. NAMES MENTIONED Douglas P. Fry | Geneviève Souillac | Jean Monnet | Konrad Adenauer | Mahatma Gandhi | Edward Westermarck | Charles E. Osgood | Brian Ferguson | Eleanor Roosevelt | Vladimir Putin  KEY WORDS Douglas P. Fry | peace studies | conflict studies | war studies | peace and conflict studies | anthropology of war | anthropology of peace | war and peace | causes of war | origins of war | human nature and war | peacebuilding | conflict resolution | peace systems | lasting peace | international cooperation | nonviolence | revenge | reciprocity | negative reciprocity | deterrence | security dilemma | arms race | nuclear weapons | nuclear disarmament | Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons | TPNW | Budapest Memorandum | United Nations | UN peacekeeping | Blue Helmets | UN Security Council | international law | global governance | World War II | Second World War | post-war peace | European integration | Jean Monnet | European Coal and Steel Community | Switzerland | Nordic peace | Åland Islands dispute | League of Nations | Upper Xingu peace system | Indigenous peace systems | Haudenosaunee Confederacy | Iroquois Confederacy | Great League of Peace | GRIT strategy | Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction | Charles E. Osgood | Edward Westermarck | Ukraine war | Russia–Ukraine war

  5. May 14

    The Big Picture: Measuring the Origins of the Modern World ~ Bishnupriya Gupta & Stephen Broadberry (Great Divergence #5)

    Was India once an affluent empire, later impoverished by British colonisation? Or was India never rich to begin with? More generally, what does historical data on wages and other economic indicators tell us about the broader story of the making of the modern world – a world with great affluence, but where much of the riches are still concentrated in the Western world. For over 20 years now, Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta have worked to measure the evolution of global living standards from the medieval period onwards. In this episode, they begin by discussing a comparison between the historical economies of India and Britain. We then continue to a broader story of the living standards of the pre-industrial world. We also discuss different theories of the “Great Divergence” between the West and the rest of the world. We finish by turning our attention to the future, asking if the 21st century will be remembered as the Asian century. This episode concludes the five-part series on the making of the modern world, produced by CAGE Research Centre and On Humans.  LINKS AND REFERENCES Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠  NAMES MENTIONED Kenneth Pomeranz | Angus Maddison | Daron Acemoglu | James Robinson |  Nico Voigtländer | Hans-Joachim Voth | Debin Ma | Robert Allen | Joel Mokyr   KEYWORDS Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Indian history | Imperial history | East India Company | Emperor Akbar | Colonisation | Historical GDP estimates | Historical living standard estimates | Wage history | History of labour | Social history | Comparative development | State capacity | Malthusian trap | History of Technology  INFO Guests: Bishnupriya Gupta (University of Warwick) and Stephen Broadberry (University of Oxford)   ⁠⁠⁠ Contact: ⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com

  6. May 7

    A View From the East: China, Japan, and the Other Paths to Prosperity ~ Debin Ma (Great Divergence #4)

    The tech gap between China and the West is closing fast. But why did the land that invented paper and gunpowder ever fall behind? Debin Ma is the world’s leading economic historian of East Asia. In this fourth episode of our Great Divergence series, he approaches the making of the modern world from an eastern perspective. We discuss why China fell behind, why Japan modernised early, and why East Asia has experienced so many economic miracles. We also discuss China’s recent transformation – a transformation that Ma has witnessed firsthand.  LINKS AND REFERENCES Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠ GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology.  1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz) 2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (Joel Mokyr) 3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)   4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma) 5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry) NAMES MENTIONED Joseph Needham | Kenneth Pomeranz | Joel Mokyr | Robert Allen | Francis Fukuyama | Jared Rubin | Yin Weiwen | Kaiser Kuo | Deng Xiaoping | Yasheng Huang   KEYWORDS Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Chinese history | Japanese history | Developmental Economics | Needham Puzzle | Needham Question | Qianlong Emperor | Macartney embassy | Meiji Japan | Iwakura mission |  Age heaping | Comparative development | State capacity | Modern fiscal state | History of taxation | Industrial Policy | History of Technology | Human capital INFO Guest: Debin Ma (Fudan University and All Souls College, University of Oxford)   ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Ilari Mäkelä (⁠⁠⁠On Humans⁠⁠⁠) Contact: ⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com

  7. Apr 29

    Why Did the Industrial Revolution Happen in Britain? ~ Robert Allen (Great Divergence #3)

    Why was industrial modernity born in Europe and not, say, China? This is one of the most consequential questions about the origins of the modern world. Yet asking “why Europe” can mislead. The Industrial Revolution was not a European event. It was a British event. So why was the steam engine invented in Britain, and not France or Italy? Oxford professor Robert Allen has worked for decades trying to understand this question. Allen believes that to understand the path to modernity, we must forget grand generalisations about the West. Instead, he asks us to zoom in on two very specific dynamics that shaped the British economy in the 1700s: cheap fuel and expensive workers. Together, they jolted Britain into a path where ever more work was streamlined with the help of machines and fossil fuels — a path that we are still walking on, with AI and robotics simply the latest sightings on this long march of modernity. In this episode, we discuss the surprising revelations that led Allen to his theory. We discuss the reasons that British wages were high, and we discuss recent scholarship suggesting that this wasn’t the case–or at least, was not the cause for the Industrial Revolution. We also discuss the more humane side of wages, tracing the history of worker wellbeing from the Black Death to today.  As always in this series, we finish with our guests’ reflections on the future. LINKS AND REFERENCES Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page:⁠ ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠⁠ GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology.  1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz) 2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (with Joel Mokyr) 3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)   4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma) 5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry) NAMES MENTIONED James E. Thorold Rogers | Kenneth Pomeranz | Joel Mokyr | Jane Humphries | Daniel Defoe | Bradford J. (Brad) DeLong | Branko Milanovic | Daron Acemoglu | Oded Galor KEYWORDS Economics | History | Global Economic History | Industrial Revolution | Age of Inventions | Steam engine| European Miracle | British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective | Wage history | History of labour | Social history | Comparative development | Meiji Japan | Spinning Jenny | Industrial Policy | History of Technology | History of Inventions  EPISODE INFO Guest: Robert C. Allen (Nuffield College, University of Oxford and NYU Abu Dhabi)   ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Ilari Mäkelä Contact: ⁠⁠⁠⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠⁠via Pixabay⁠

  8. Apr 22

    Why Did So Many Inventions Come from Europe? ~ Joel Mokyr (Great Divergence #2)

    Several inventions mark the progress towards modernity - the Gutenberg printing press, the Galileo telescope, the Watt steam engine. But why was Europe the birthplace of so many of these?  Joel Mokyr, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, thinks the cause was culture. For decades he has asked economists to take intellectual history more seriously. Economies are shaped by new inventions, Mokyr argues, and inventions can only be understood when we understand the culture that gives rise to them.  But how much did Europe's culture shape its economy? And how to square early modern Europe's progressive culture with it's colonial legacy? Mokyr answers these and other questions in this episodes, finishing with his reflections on the future of technological progress. Enjoy! LINKS AND REFERENCES Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find⁠ a summarised essay ⁠of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page: ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/ GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD This episode is part of a series produced by Warwick University’s⁠⁠ ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠⁠⁠ in collaboration with⁠⁠ ⁠On Humans⁠⁠, searching for explanations to why Western Europe and North America emerged as the most affluent and technologically advanced regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology.  1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz) 2 | Why did so many inventions come from Europe? (with Joel Mokyr) 3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)   4 | A view from the East: China, Japan, and the other paths to prosperity (Debin Ma) 5 | The big picture: Measuring the origins of the modern world (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry) NAMES MENTIONED Joel Mokyr | Robert Lucas | David Hume | Isaac Newton | Antoine Lavoisier | Joseph Black | James Watt | John Robison | Josiah Wedgwood | Sadi Carnot | Margaret Jacob | Evangelista Torricelli | Galileo Galilei | Blaise Pascal | Otto von Guericke | Aristotle | Denis Diderot | William Harvey | Song Yingxing | Marco Polo | Zheng He | Louis XIV | Avner Greif | Guido Tabellini | Kenneth Pomeranz | Adam Smith | Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot | Montesquieu | Voltaire | Confucius | al-Ghazali | Ptolemy | Euclid | David Ricardo | Karl Marx | Hippocrates | Galen | Xi Jinping | Joseph Needham | Nigel Farage | Joseph Stalin | Trofim Lysenko | Robert Allen KEYWORDS Economics | History | Global Economic History | Intellectual History | Age of Inventions | Rise of the West | European Miracle | Enlightened Economy | Culture of Growth | Gift of Athena |Industrial Revolution | History of technology | History of inventions   INFO Guest: Joel Mokyr (⁠⁠⁠Northwestern University)⁠⁠⁠ Host: Ilari Mäkelä Contact: ⁠⁠⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠ Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠via Pixabay

See All (112)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Where do we come from? How did we get here? And what kinds of creatures are we? On Humans offers conversations with leading scientists, historians, and philosophers, making new research about the human story more accessible to everyone — and more relevant to the big questions about who we are. In addition to regular episodes, the show now includes longer series on some of the greatest arcs in the journey of our species, covering everything from the evolution of apes to the making of the modern economy. https://onhumans.substack.com/about

Information

  • Creator
    Ilari Mäkelä
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    112
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ilari Mäkelä
  • Show Website
    On Humans

You Might Also Like