The Insight

The Insight

By Insitome: Your guide to the story of youScienceHistoryNatural Sciences
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The Insight episodes

  • Paradise Lost

    This week Spencer and Razib discuss the three great "Pleistocene Paradises" lost to rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age: Doggerland, Beringia and Sundaland.

    47 min
  • Cheddar: More Than A Cheese

    This week, Spencer and Razib do a deep dive into the early history of the British Isles, focusing specifically on the famous "Cheddar Man." Who were the first Brits, and what did they really look like?

    41 min
  • Journey of Man Redux

    15 years after the premiere of the PBS/National Geographic documentary 'Journey of Man' and the publication of Spencer's book, Spencer and Razib talk about the impact they have had on the public's understanding of genetics and human prehistory. This episode is an hour-long journey through the development of human population genetics, the startling insights provided by the Y-chromosome, and which 2003 population genetic 'certainties' have - and haven't - held up to more recent scrutiny. Destined to be a classic.

    1 hr 4 min
  • Ancestry Deconvoluted

    Spencer and Razib discuss how geneticists infer ancestry from genomic data, with guest Joe Pickrell - geneticist, founder & CEO of consumer genomics startup Gencove. Find out why telling you you're 6% Greek is harder than it seems…

    42 min
  • The Indo-European Enigma

    Razib and Spencer discuss the genetic evidence for the migration of Bronze Age Indo-Aryan steppe nomads across Eurasia, including the political issues surrounding their impact on the Indian subcontinent.

    28 min
  • Neander-Me Part 2

    Today, humans are the only species of hominin in the world. 50,000 years ago, however, we were not alone - our cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, walked the Earth with us. Their legacy lives on in our genomes today. Razib and Spencer take us on a tour of how we became a few percent Neanderthal, including an interview with anthropologist John Hawks. (Part 2 of 2)

    41 min
  • Neander-Me, Part 1

    Today, humans are the only species of hominin in the world. 50,000 years ago, however, we were not alone - our cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, walked the Earth with us. Their legacy lives on in our genomes today. Razib and Spencer take us on a tour of how we became a few percent Neanderthal, including an interview with anthropologist John Hawks.

    43 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,…