On Humans

Ilari Mäkelä

Where do we come from? How did we get here? And what kinds of creatures are we? On Humans features conversations with leading scholars about the human story, making new research about humanity more accessible to everyone and more meaningful 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. 14 may

    The Big Picture: Measuring the Origins of the Modern World ~ Bishnupriya Gupta & Stephen Broadberry

    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

    47 min

  2. 7 may

    A View From the East: China, Japan, and the Other Paths to Prosperity ~ Debin Ma

    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

    47 min

  3. 29 abr

    Why Did the Industrial Revolution Happen in Britain? ~ Robert Allen

    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

    59 min

  4. 22 abr

    Why Did So Many Inventions Come from Europe? ~ Joel Mokyr

    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

    48 min

  5. 16 abr

    Why the West? Colonies, Fossil Fuels, and Lessons from China ~ Kenneth Pomeranz

    Why did Western Europe become the richest region of the early modern world? Was the rise of the West powered by colonization, inventions, or something else entirely? And what happened to the medieval might of China and India? The term “great divergence” is increasingly used by historians who want to study this immense question, but who want to do it carefully, without falling into traditional East-West clichés.  This episode marks the beginning of a five-episode series exploring the state of this research, produced by the University of Warwick’s CAGE Research Centre in collaboration with the On Humans Podcast. In this opening episode, we meet Kenneth Pomeranz, the historian of China who coined the term "great divergence" in a field-defining book of the same name. We begin by discussing Pomeranz’s groundbreaking approach and the surprising answers that he arrived at. In the second half of the episode, we zoom out and place the rise of the West into the broader story about the history of humanity – a story Pomeranz divides into four parts, with the fifth one beginning right now. Enjoy! LINKS AND REFERENCES Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find summary essays, bibliographies, and much more 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 | Brad DeLong | Arthur Wigley | Jan De Vries | Robert Allen | Simon Schama | Isaac Newton | Vasco da Gama | Jonathan Spence| Anthony Wrigley | Thomas Malthus | Nate Hagens | Charles Lockyer | Marshall Hodgson | Aristotle | Plato | Jared Diamond | Adam Smith |  KEYWORDS  Economics | History | Global Economic History | Malthusian Economics | Fossil Fuel Economics | Economics of Colonialism | Rise of the West | European Miracle | California School of Economics | Atlantic Trade | Industrial Revolution | Second Industrial Revolution | Historic living standards INFO Guest: Kenneth Pomeranz (⁠⁠University of Chicago⁠⁠) Host: Ilari Mäkelä Contact: ⁠⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com⁠⁠ Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠⁠⁠via Pixabay.⁠⁠

    54 min

  6. 4 abr ·  Contenido extra

    Encore: Walking Towards the Human Condition (with Jeremy De Silva)

    Something big is coming soon. Stay tuned! Whilst waiting, you can enjoy one of my all-time favourites from the archives. A lot of the recent episodes have mentioned the impact of bipedalism in the human story, but the remarks have hardly done justice to the depth of the matter. Jeremy DeSilva did it justice. Enjoy!  ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES Humans are odd in many ways. But perhaps the oddest of our features is our upright posture. We walk on two legs. And we are the only mammal to do so.  So why do we walk upright? And why does it matter?  Jeremy DeSilva is a fossil expert and a professor of paleoanthropology at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of a remarkable book, aptly titled First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human DeSilva’s treatment of the subject is sweeping: while tracing the journey of human posture, he draws remarkable links between bipedalism and many facets of the human condition, from difficult births to complex language and from lower back pains to the beauty of friendships. In this episode, we talk about questions such as: What Darwin got right and wrong about the role of walking in human evolution When and why did we start walking upright?Why the common picture of human evolution is wrong - and what would be a better pictureWhy walking makes us fragileHow our ancestors survived bone fractures - and why this is a big deal Why is human birth so difficultWhy walking is so good for us: introducing the “myokines”What studying the human journey has taught DeSilva about our species_________ Please consider becoming a supporter of On Humans. Even small monthly donations can make a huge impact on the long-term sustainability of the program. Visit: ⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans ⁠⁠ _________ Names mentioned Charles Darwin / Ian Tattersall / Donald Johanson / Mary Leakey / Sherwood Washburn / Richard Wrangham (ep 21) / Kristen Hawkes (ep 6) / Holly Dunsworth / Daniel Lieberman  Mentioned hominin species Sahelanthropus / Ardipithecus / Australopithecus (e.g. Lucy) / Homo habilis / Homo erectus / Homo sapiens Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠

    1 h 23 min

  7. 7 mar

    Where Did Humans Evolve? Gazing at the Changing Nature of the Garden of Eden ~ Denise Su

    Imagine a group of ancient humans, crafting stone tools at the dawn of humankind. What did these creatures look like?  To find out, we can stare at the skulls in museums or glance at reconstructions made by paleo-artists. Not a bad start. But what if we move the lens and zoom into their surroundings? What was the scientific “Garden of Eden” like? Was it a lush forest, a dry savanna, or an icy cave? And what can the answer tell us about human nature more broadly? Denise Su is a world-leading expert on these questions. A paleoecologist at Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins, she uses ever-more imaginative ways to get a glimpse into the nature and the weather that set the stage for the human story. In this episode, we focus on two kinds of “changes” in the ecology of human evolution: both the actual climate change that drummed the beat of human origins, and the theoretical changes in the views of scientists thinking about these topics. Indeed, this episode digs deep into one of the hotly contested questions about the reasons why humans evolved: "the savanna hypothesis". According to the savanna hypothesis, our naked, upright species evolved because African forests were shrinking and dry savannas emerged instead. Other apes stayed in the shrinking forests, but our brave ancestors took the shot, conquering the vast flatlands. As they did so, they started standing upright to better walk on the savanna and lost their fur, to sweat away the heat of the scorching sun. I have told versions of this story on the show, and so have many senior guests. Yet even a brief Google search will give you plenty of critics telling that the savanna hypothesis is nothing but a convenient myth.⁠ Articles by Denise Su⁠ are often included in the evidence. So what’s going on? Listen to the episode to find out! TIMELINE  Last common ancestor with humans and chimpanzees: 6–7 million years ago Ardipithecus ramidus: 4.5–4.2 million years ago Australopithecus anamnesis: 4.2–3.8 million years ago Austrolopithecus afarensis (e.g. Lucy): 3.9–2.9 million years ago Australopithecus deyiremeda: 3.5–3.3 million years ago Earliest Homo: about 2.8 million years ago Homo erectus: 1.9 million–112,000 years ago Homo sapiens: 300,000 years ago till present  FACT-CHECKING No factual errors have been detected so far. However, timing estimates and species names are still debated. Furthermore, the “hours” in the metaphorical clock can shift a fair amount based on the “midnight”: our last common ancestor with chimpanzees lived 6 to 7 million years ago, with some estimates pushing the date as far as 8 million. In the episode, our clock is tuned to 6 million years ago.  If you see an error, you can get in touch using the form below. LINKS Support: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Articles & newsletter: OnHumans/Substack.com Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠⁠⁠ Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠ KEY WORDS anthropology | archaeology | paleontology | human origins | human behavioural ecology | savanna hypothesis | paleolithic | paleoecology | hominid fossils | carbon isotopes C3/C4 | human evolution | human biology | climate change | human futures

    54 min

  8. 10 feb

    The Original Affluent Society? Lessons from 60-Years of "Man the Hunter" Research ~ Richard B. Lee

    What was life like before farming? Was it nasty, brutish, and short? Or did our hunter-gatherer ancestors live lives that were relatively free, affluent, and ecologically stable? In the lack of a time machine, many anthropologists have sought answers from studying the few hunter-gatherer communities that still exist today. In 1966, several leading names in the field were invited to present their results at a symposium at the University of Chicago. This “Man the Hunter” conference became a landmark event, but what exactly were the results? And have they stood the test of time?  To mark the 60th anniversary of the "Man the Hunter" symposium, On Humans is glad to share the first-ever long-form podcast with the legendary anthropologist and co-organiser of the symposium, Richard B. Lee. We discuss the legacy of the conference, Lee’s own experiences living with hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari, and his reflections on what we do and do not know about the ancient lifeways of hunter-gatherers. As we do so, we also discuss various controversies and mysteries, from women's roles to Native American farmers, and from archaeological black holes toThe Dawn of Everything. Enjoy! FACT-CHECKING No factual errors have been detected so far. If you see an error, you can get in touch using the form below. LINKS Support: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/h5wcmefuwvD6asos8⁠⁠⁠ Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) ⁠via Pixabay.⁠ MENTIONS The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (Jared Diamond) https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race-12157 The Original Affluent Society (Marshall Sahlins) https://www.uvm.edu/~jdericks/EE/Sahlins-Original_Affluent_Society.pdf For my previous coverage on “woman the hunter” controversies, see “Is Man the Hunter Dead” and my interviews with Cara Ocobock and Katie Starkweather, all available here: ⁠https://onhumans.substack.com/p/is-man-the-hunter-dead⁠ For Richard Lee's own comments on the controversy, see his interview with Vivek Venkataraman ⁠https://osf.io/x7ar3_v1/ Names: Richard B. Lee | James Suzman | Marshall Sahlins | David Graeber | David Wengrow | Jared Diamond | Sarah Blaffer Hrdy | Jerome Lewis | Colin Turnbull | James Woodburn | Eleanor Leacock | Louis Henry Morgan | Karl Marx | George Armelagos | Irvin DeVore | Sherwood Washburn | Jay Desmond Clark | Harriet Rosenberg | Lawrence K. Marshall | Elizabeth Marshall | John Marshall | Greta Thunberg | Vivek Venkataraman Ethnic groups: San | Ju/’hoansi | !Kung | Khoisan | Khoikhoi | “Bushmen” | “Hottentots” | First Nations | Tlingit | Haida | Inuit | Australian Aboriginal peoples | Bayaka| Batek | Huron-Wendat | Iroquois | Six Nations | Plains Indians | Hopi | Navajo | Cherokee KEY WORDS anthropology | archaeology | ethnography | human origins | human behavioural ecology | hunter-gatherers | paleolithic | neolithic transition | original affluent society | Kalahari Desert | Botswana | Namibia | paleogenetics | gathering vs hunting | gender roles | women hunting | egalitarianism | origins of hierarchy | surplus | food storage | salmon economies | Northwest Coast hunter-gatherers | archaeology of early farmers | bioarchaeology | stature/height decline | teeth health | disease burden | zoonoses | cross-species infection | Neolithic fertility increase | population pressure and “intensification” | chiefdoms | states | empires | ecology vs culture debate | materialist vs idealist | concentration–dispersion | colonialism | exploitation | land rights | climate change | human futures

    59 min
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Where do we come from? How did we get here? And what kinds of creatures are we? On Humans features conversations with leading scholars about the human story, making new research about humanity more accessible to everyone and more meaningful 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

Ficha técnica

  • Creado por
    Ilari Mäkelä
  • Años en activo
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodios
    108
  • Clasificación
    Apto
  • Derechos de autor
    © Ilari Mäkelä
  • Sitio web del podcast
    On Humans

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