The Insight

The Insight

By Insitome: Your guide to the story of youScienceHistoryNatural Sciences
Download on the App Store

The Insight episodes

  • Why much of science is fiction

    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

    1 hr 21 min
  • Siberian paleohistory

    Razib and Spencer discuss the geography, prehistory, and genetics, of Siberia. Also, the time Spencer experienced a Siberian winter!

    1 hr 19 min
  • Sundaland: a human evolutionary hearth

    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

    1 hr 34 min
  • Peopling the Americas 32,000 years ago

    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

    42 min
  • Ghost in the machine

    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

    54 min
  • Native American admixture into Polynesia!

    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

    45 min
  • Will to Power and the Holocene transition

    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!)

    1 hr 2 min

About The Insight

From the publisher's feed

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,…