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On Humans
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 Language: en Genres: Education Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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How Do Humans Fit into the Story of Life? ~ Jonathan Loh
Episode 10
Friday, 25 September, 2026
“What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction!” — Blaise Pascal.No moment in my teaching career has left a deeper impression on me than a biology class I gave in 2018. The topic was evolution and the tree of life. The pupils were ten-year-olds.“So teacher, are all the animals our cousins?” one student asked. I gave a few qualifications, but then conceded the youthful wisdom.“Yes. And so are all trees and flowers.”The bell rang but many students stayed in the classroom, wanting to hear more about the way we relate to monkeys, dogs, or the silver birches swaying in the schoolyard.I’ve taught the same theme many times since, and while doing so, I have developed a very visceral sense that, as Mary Midgley said, “we humans are not just rather like animals; we are animals.”At the same time, it is obvious that humans are a peculiar species, perhaps the most peculiar one alive. We speak in tongues, we travel to space, we wreck ecosystems.So how do we fit into the story of life?Jonathan Loh’s new book, Life Story, offered me a fresh way to think about this.Loh is a biologist, author, and an honorary fellow at the University of Sussex. His book is thoroughly biological, but it also takes human peculiarity seriously. In fact, Loh suggests that humans are extraordinarily weird precisely because we are the first life form to have copied many of the foundational tricks that life itself once developed. That central idea takes us from the origins of life and the great transitions of biological evolution all the way to agriculture, cities, and the technological world we inhabit today. We end with reflections on climate change, AI, and Alan Turing’s prophetic-sounding claim that our machines are “only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”Enjoy!FACT-CHECKINGNo factual errors have been detected yet. If you find a factual error, please leave a comment in the extended show notes (link below).LINKSFull show notes with a transcript.Support at Patreon.com/OnHumansKEYWORDSNamesLynn Margulis | Adam Smith | John Maynard Smith | Eörs Szathmáry | Eva Jablonka Technical terms Proto-Indo-European | LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) | hydrothermal vents | cyanobacteria | anoxygenic photosynthesis | oxygenic photosynthesis | Great Oxidation Event | banded iron formations | Snowball Earth | prokaryotes | eukaryotes | endosymbiosis | mitochondria | ATP | plastids | chloroplasts | Fertile Crescent | Uruk | Mesopotamia | The Major Transitions in Evolution | Kōjima macaques | Imo | Cambrian Explosion | Tiktaalik | Cretaceous mass extinction | Homo erectus | Homo sapiens | Australopithecus | Anthropic | Claude | IPCC | HoloceneTopics coveredhuman evolution | history of life | evolution of life | human origins | deep time | evolution explained | DNA | genetic code | evolution of language | animal cultures | evolution of intelligence | evolution of consciousness | photosynthesis | Great Oxidation Event | mitochondria | endosymbiosis | multicellular life | Cambrian Explosion | cultural evolution | social evolution | hunter-gatherers | origins of agriculture | domestication | origins of civilisation | origins of cities | origins of states | rise of complex societies | evolution of land animals | Tiktaalik | biodiversity | climate change | artificial intelligence | AI | future of humanity | technological evolution Music credit: Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.Get in touch: makela.ilari@outlook.com
