Stick nestles Saturday's test appears to be another message to the u.s. By the North which is seeking further concessions from Washington ahead of a December 31st deadline set by North Korea's leader Kim Jong un denuclearization talks essentially stalled after the failed summit between President Trump and Kim in Vietnam in February for n.p.r. News I'm Michael Sullivan in Chiang Rai tens of thousands of turned out peacefully in Hong Kong reports today that maybe N.P.R.'s Emily thing reports that today's demonstration comes as protesters in Beijing locked in a stalemate over reforms Many marchers dressed in black the chosen color of protest as they streamed into Hong Kong's commercial district by the thousands the March is the 1st organized demonstration in nearly 2 months protests of grown increasingly scattered and violent in previous weeks as frustration with police aggression and the city's leaders grill this is n.p.r. News. House Democrats are preparing for what could be the final week of their impeachment investigation they are meeting this weekend to draft articles of impeachment yesterday they released a 55 page report laying out the legal arguments against President Trump a floor vote by the full House could come before Christmas to Mark has passed its 1st ever climate change legislation pledging to become a carbon neutral country by the year 2050 to Rachel's reports this comes amid the young going un climate talks in Madrid and as the European Union gears up for a climate centric summit on the way to their goal of reaching carbon neutrality Danish lawmakers voted to reduce the country's c o 2 output by 2 thirds by the year 2030 measured by 990 levels it will be a 2025 target set to make sure things are on the right track and annual reviews where authorities must report what they're doing to reach the targets while ambitious Denmark is not a leader among its Nordic neighbors Sweden has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2045 Finland by 2035 and Norway by 23rd. 30 European Union leaders will meet in Brussels Thursday where they'll consider whether to adopt an e.u. Wide commitment to have net 0 emissions like Denmark by 2050 the Czech Republic Hungary and Poland have not yet come onboard for n.p.r. News I'm Terry Schultz in Brussels on a capsule carrying tons of supplies as arrived at the International Space Station so says the capsule launched by the private company Space x. On Thursday was successfully captured by the station's robotic arm about an hour ago this is Space X.'s 19th supply run to the orbiting outpost I'm trials later n.p.r. News support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Andrew w. Mellon foundation guided by the belief that the arts and humanities are essential to the well being of diverse and democratic societies learn more at Melun dot org and the n.e.a. Casey Foundation. It's the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. I'm Guy Raz a couple weeks ago I got a small package in the mail and inside there was a kit it was a couple of plastic test tubes over a few plastic scrapers some Ziploc bags and my instructions were to scrape the inside of my cheeks up and down for about 30 seconds and how was that for you I was great. And then send those sticks back to this guy my name is Dr Spencer Wells in a card carrying Explorer at the National Geographic Society and I'm the director of the Geographic project there the Geographic project at National Geographic has collected cheek swabs from about 700000 people around the world. Embedded in the d.n.a. There's a story. So what you find. Come From Well I'm looking at your results right now Ok And so we're analyzing several pieces of your genome on your mother's side your type is t one b 3 it's mostly found in south eastern Europe in the Middle East and your subtype is more common in Turkey than elsewhere wound in your dad's side you also have a group that's more common in the Middle East so your particular combination is closest to Lebanese and remain Ians that's amazing So again pointing to kind of the region around Turkey so your ancestors would have encountered the Neanderthals in the Middle East between 45 and 50000 years ago. And they bred with you today are carrying 2.7 percent Neanderthal d.n.a. Just slightly higher than average. Averages about 2 point one percent you know it's funny you say that because I think I do have some characteristics that I think. We're all curious about our roots right and personal but Spencer is chasing a much bigger story story there. Every. To a common origin you know this is one of those basic human questions you know. I want to know the thoughts of God is detail this is one of those deep human questions that I feel like we as a species should be. The only species that in the history of the universe as far as we know that has ever evolve the capacity to answer these sorts of questions. We need to be trying to. Show today how it all began stories and ideas. Came before us and. Explain how in a very short period of time we left Africa out across the planet but 1st my name is David Christian and since 1900. The universe and the place of humans inside that story. Is. His idea big history is really about our place in the universe and how small our part of the story actually is. Exist around this. This planet you are a member of this species and these knowing what you. Get to say. Those stories we need we also need this big story. We don't have to speak stories can be very hard I think for us to understand. This story David tells 13800000000 years ago pitch black darkness Here's David on the stage. There's nothing. There's not even time or space imagine. This thing you can and cube it a gazillion times that's where we are and then suddenly. The universe appears an entire universe and we've. The universe is tiny it's smaller than an atom It's incredibly hot it contains everything that's in today's universe it's busting. And it's expanding at an incredible speed. And at 1st it's just a blue but very quickly distinct things begin to appear in that. Within the 1st 2nd energy itself shatters into distinct including electromagnetism and gravity. And energy does something else quite magical it. Will create protons and. Electrons and all of that happens. Now we move forward 380000. That's twice as long as humans have been on this planet and now it's simple atoms appear. And helium. Gravity is more powerful. Stuff so when you get slightly denser areas gravity starts compact of hydrogen and helium atoms so we can imagine the early universe breaking up into a 1000000000 clouds. And each compacted gravity gets more powerful as density increases the temperature begins to rise of the center of each cloud and then at the center of each cloud the temperature crosses the threshold temperature of $10000000.00 degree protons Staal to fuse. There's a huge release of energy as. From about 200000000 is off to the big. I can to appear all through the universe billions of them and the universe is not significantly more interesting and more complex. All of that wasn't even half a 1000000000 years after the Big Bang it would take another 8 or 9000000000 years for our solar system and our planet to form and nearly another 1000000000 before the 1st signs of life for most of that time of life living organisms have been relatively simple single cells but they had great diversity and great complexity then from about 600 to 800000000 years ago multi-celled organisms appear. You get fish you get plums you get I'm feeling reptiles and then of course you get the dinosaurs. And occasionally they would dissolve. 65000000 years ago an asteroid landed on earth near the Yucatan Peninsula creating conditions equivalent to those of a nuclear war and the dinosaurs were wiped out terrible news for the Dyna souls but great news for mammalian ancestors who flourished in the knishes left empty by the dinosaurs and we human beings of that creative evolutionary pulse that began 65000000 years ago with the landing of an asteroid. What do you think we need to know the story why do we need to know about origins Well if I turn the question around and say why do we need to know about American history what would the be I think it would be that we need to be able to place all self in a story isn't that right one of the one example. This one wonderful example about this is my friend Walter Alvarez the geologist he's the person who more or less proved that it was an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs Now if that asteroid had been on a trajectory 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later. It would have wiped out the dinosaurs and the dinosaurs would almost certainly still rule the planet and we wouldn't be here it's a simple as that so it's a story that in one sense makes us feel very small and very little we inhabit a obscure planet in an obscure will galaxy around it obscure. But on the other hand modern human society represents one of the most complex things we know and that's the only side of the story that makes us look pretty interesting humans appeared about 200000 years ago and what makes humans different is human language we are blessed with a language a system of communication so powerful and so precise that we can share what we've learned with such precision that it can accumulate in the collective memory and that means it can outlast the individuals who learnt that information and it could accumulate from generation to generation and that's why as a species we are so creative and so powerful and that's why we have a history we seem to be the only species in 4000000000 years to have this gift. And no I know it sounds like a little bit new agey but I mean it is a mystery where where we come from is a mystery we really don't entirely know if it's a wonderful new it is a mystery indeed bought Having said that the astonishing thing is that modern science can open many doors on that mistreat not all of them there are still dogs we can do we don't know what to do with consciousness for example we don't know. What happened before the Big Bang but we can tell a remarkably good story about many parts of that mystery and that stories go better and better and better in the last 50 is so I hope you agree this is a powerful story and it's a story in which humans play an astonishing and creative role but it also contains warning it's. Very vividly as a child growing up in England living through the Cuban missile crisis for a few days the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction and the same weapons are still here and there still and if we avoid that trap others are waiting for us we burning fossil fuels at such a rate that we seem to be undermining the Goldilocks conditions that made it possible for human civilizations to flourish over the last 10000 years so what big history can do is show us the nature of complexity and fragility and the dangers that faces but it can also show us up our with collective learning. When you think about our origins and you think about this idea of a unified history of the universe it places like our whole very brief history and to a context in which I can't help but think God not only are we less relevant than we think but but we've wasted so much time focusing on ourselves and our differences when in fact we are a tiny piece of this. I agree and that's one of the reasons why I think the story is so powerful because it makes the differences between humans seem rather irrelevant in schools we keep teaching history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history we teaching kids. Are divided into tribes we've. Failing to teach them that we also as human beings share limbs we need to work together because. They were Christian teaches a course called Big History to find out more about it and to see David's entire talk about the story of us go to Ted dot com. Or show today how it all began our origins I'm Guy Raz And this is the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. . Support for the Ted Radio Hour comes from Dana Farber Cancer Institute developing ways to use the p.d.-l one pathway in immunotherapy to treat cancer committed to making contributions in cancer treatment for 72 years Dana Farber dot org slash everywhere. From the estate of Joan b. Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help n.p.r. Be the model for high quality journalism in the 21st century. And from listeners like you who donate to this n.p.r. Station. It's the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. I'm Guy Raz in the show today how it all began ideas our origins and the things that came before us so think back to your own recent origins when you were a kid. You probably had a favorite dinosaur right. The ranks and. Tried this question out on some kids at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum here in Washington d.c. And we found some striking uniformity. Here and. These kids were between 5 and 12 and when you try to pin them down why why of the T.-Rex is their favorite. If you make 55. Pounds. 2 to. Put it down. So what is it about these creatures who lived so long before we did speak to us. They're very different from anything. This is Jack Horner. At the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman Montana. Is like other scientists who are trying to piece together parts of our past some of them simulate the big bang inside massive particle colliders others look into space telescopes to see the past . He's also on a quest to bring some of that distant past literally back to life. And it all started. With dresses. The Toronto source Rex they made the 1st move it was just incredibly real looking Jacqueline advisor on the film he was even the inspiration for one of the main characters. Absolutely Dr Alan Grant's 1st list. Yes The fortunate thing about that is that he didn't get it. And it was seeing the T.-Rex so lifelike on the big screen that reignited something in Jack that was one of the things that sparked my interest in. Actually trying to make a dinosaur. Just like in the movie Jack Horner wants to make a real life a dinosaur foot one a little friendlier than the T.-Rex one he says you could actually have as a pet. What would you have wanted had about. A chicken a saurus Actually it's not that different from what Jack's character did seriously interested part well maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present day birds than they do is in this scene Dr Alan Grant is examining a velocity Raptor fossil for the pubic bone turned back just like a bird look at the vertebrae. Section of hollows just like a bird and even the word Raptor means bird of prey and even if we can't make a dinosaur like they did in giraffes a park a bird could shake in get us closer Here's Jack corners big idea from the Ted stage the theme of this story is building a dinosaur and so we come to that part of drastic part this is Michael Crighton really was one of the 1st people to talk about bringing dinosaurs back to life. If you want dinosaur d.n.a. I say go to the dinosaur. Back in 1903 when the movie came out we actually had a grant from the National Science Foundation to attempt to extract d.n.a. From a dinosaur but we have discovered that dinosaur d.n.a. And all that d.n.a. Just breaks down too fast we're just not going to be able to do what they did in drastic park we're not going to be able to make a dinosaur based on. A dinosaur but birds are dinosaurs birds are living dinosaurs so we don't have to make a dinosaur already have. I know you're bad as the 6th graders right. The 6th graders look at and they say you know. You can call it you can call it a dinosaur but look at the velociraptor they've lost the rafters cool. The chicken is not I picked the chicken. So we have a number of of ways that we actually can fix the chicken. With biological modification tools we have selection and we know. We started out with a creature and we end up with. A modification . We also have to. Take a genius. You take a gene. Jellyfish and stick it in a. Big. Guess we could make. But I don't think. It's. Buried deep in the. Chicken for every chicken while it is still an embryo actually has a 3 fingered hand but at some point a gene switches and it triggers. There are genes that have fused fingers together basically. The way. That if scientists could figure out a way to stop. With the 3. And the same goes for the tails we know that in embryo. Developing it actually. But. The tail gets rid of it so that's the other gene we're looking for we want to stop that. So what we're trying to do really is take our check and modify it and make a chicken to us. Can just imagine a chicken if it had a long ponytail and a 3 fingered hand instead of wings it would be a long ways to looking like a velocity Raptor even then wow check you are freaking me out a little bit. You know when I explain this sort of thing to people and people do get kind of weirded out I try to take them back to dogs for example you know yeah I was a They've basically bred for an animal that looks like the embryonic walls. Down so you know if you can be happy with that yeah I surely don't understand why a bird was a tail is going to freak anybody out Oh don't get me wrong I will be the 1st in line to see the chicken a saurus. Even though a living breathing chicken a source is still a long way off Jack says even just the idea of one is one way to get kids closer to our collective past. And it also you know teaches them about evolution and one of the cool things I think about dinosaurs is the lousy You know kids get interested and. They just soak up all lists information about dinosaurs and early on they know more than their parents and so they really fuel the imagination of kids and even as a paleontologist I have imagined them fighting I imagine them roaming around they still fuel my imagination when you think about the time periods we're talking about such a long time has passed since then to studying that kind of put you know the human era into perspective for you as almost like a a blip in time. Well let me give you a different perspective just you know take any group of dinosaurs like dinosaurs the amount of time that dinosaurs were on Earth and the amount of time they had to evolve was greater than the period of time since they've gone extinct to now so trying to put you know the blip of time into perspective I mean we have had 0 time as far as humans go. You can find his talk at Ted at npr dot org By the way when we talk to Jack last year he was advising the filmmakers behind the latest partly the world I've been on the set you know so can you tell us. It's a great story and it's got a really really scary new dinosaur kind. Of really. So this whole story about all the things that came before us and how we got here it's pretty hard to wrap your head around because the scale is so huge so how do you explain it I like to use a roll of toilet paper. And by the way this is the renowned paleontologist Louise leaky if you lay out a toilet roll which is 400 sheets in length. And you. Think about where the dinosaurs which everybody is familiar with comes in on the 19th sheet from the end and they go extinct. On the 5th from the end there are. Sheets of that. At that point. And our. Only came into being in the very last millimeter of that. 100. Millimeter of the $400.00 sheet on a roll of toilet paper that's the whole history of our species and until very recently we didn't even know that much and what we do know about our origins is thanks in large part to family their story in Africa all started with her great grandparents they were missionaries who settled in Kenya Highlands and that's where my grandfather was born and he really grew up speaking. And finding small little Obsidian flakes child which I think really instilled within him. And I think that really was convinced he was going to find the answer. Rather than outside of Africa which is what the conventional thinking was at that time. Up until READY really the late 1940 s. Most serious paleontologists believed in something called the out of. That our species developed in Asia and the fossil record at the time seemed to confirm it but Louis Leakey was an outlier he was absolutely convinced that humans came from Africa and he became obsessed with proving it even though most self respecting fossil hunters were digging in Asia they had finds from Indonesia from China to to have a. Imagine that you could have found fossils in Africa didn't seem right what they didn't know was the fossils that were found outside of Africa were all much younger than the fossils that they would then go on to find in Africa cause the conventional thinking was that it was looking in quite the wrong place. But Louis Leakey and his wife Mary persisted they spent decades digging for clues in Tanzania in a remote area known as old by gorge. Right away. This is Louis Leakey from an old National Geographic documentary and it was at Olduvai Gorge where the Leakey's would up the entire field of paleoanthropology in 1909 when my grandmother Mary found the skull of Syngenta posts now the skull of this was one of the most significant hominid fossils found up to that point it was 1750000 years old far older than other fossils found in China and Indonesia and it proved that our ancestors came from in a fall in Africa. So that find really put then Africa on the map and made people then turn to Africa it changed our entire understanding of where we came from and that find launched a family dynasty of paleontologists their sons Richard and Jonathan and eventually their granddaughter Louise who explained her ideas on the Ted stage. Are we in that is the big question and essentially we are just an upright walking big brain super intelligent 8 we belong to the family called the honeybee we are the species called Homo South Korean's sun. Since we are one species of about 5 and a half 1000 mammalian species that exist on planet earth today and that's a step tiny fraction of all species that have ever lived on the planet in past times where one species out of approximately was let's say at least 16 upright walking apes that have existed over the past 68000000 years but as far as we know we're the only upright walking ape that exists on planet earth today and it's important to remember that in terms of our place in the world today and our future on planet earth in fact if you go back in time it is the norm that there are multiple species of hominids or of human ancestors that co-exist at any one time we've only been around for the past 200000 years as a species yet we've reached a population of more than 6 and a half 1000000000 people but what's happened is our technology has removed the checks and balances on our population growth my father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for us or vital as a species can we hold it together it's important to remember that we all evolved in Africa we all have an African origin. We have a common past and we share a common future evolutionary speaking we're just a blip we're sitting on the edge of a precipice and we have. The technology at our hand to communicate what needs to be done to hold it together today. Will we do that. Will we just let nature take its course. What you do by looking into the past it's almost like a window into the future well that that subsidy right I think when you work on fossils and you realize that a species is there. And it's abundant for quite a long period of time and then at some point it's no longer there and so when you look at that bigger picture yes you realize that. Either you change in an adapter or as a species you go extinct I mean you think about Neanderthals who lasted for half a 1000000 years right and and we've been around for 200000. I mean let's just talk about 5000 years from now do you think it's likely that we will be here in 5000 years. I couldn't answer that question I really I stop and think about it quite often I. As a species yes we probably could be here but in what numbers and possibly far fewer if if we're really going to sustain ourselves on the planet but every species becomes extinct at some point we will go extinct the question is as homo sapien are we going to be able to adapt to the change that we're actually part of where we're causing such dramatic changes to the planet so yes you do stop and think I wonder where we're headed. Louis Leakey is a 3rd generation paleontologist from the legendary Leakey family you can check out her full talk at Ted at npr dot org. Our show today how it all began ideas have that our collective past I'm Guy Raz And you're listening to the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. . But taser is a weapon designed to stun a suspect it's the most complicated thing a cop has on his or her belt but in police departments across America tasers aren't always living up to their problems is so certainly watching this guy being teased in 40 towards us for your nice fat ass out shopping the next reveal. Monday afternoon at 3 here on case the way x. . Support for the Ted Radio Hour comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists putting rigorous independent science to work for a healthy planet and a safer world more it you see yes USA dot org from c 3 dot a i c 3 dot AI's software enables organizations to use artificial intelligence at enterprise scale solving previously unsolvable business problems learn more at c 3 dot Ai and from listeners like you who donate to this n.p.r. Station. It's the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. I'm Guy Raz In a show today how it all began ideas about our origins. So if you'd been hanging out in say the town of white horse which is in Canada's Yukon Territory this past week this is what you'd have heard on the radio 96 point one the rush. Hour just market. Turning around the same time around 6000 miles to the southeast where you would have heard this. A 1000 miles northeast. This was. A practitioner and more than 3000 miles south of this in Kenya. So earlier in the show David explained that it was a language that gave us an edge as a species more than $6000.00 languages are spoken around the world so how did that happen how did we come to look and sound so different Let's what Spencer Wells has been trying to figure out when I spend my life traveling visiting places like Chad and Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea and pull out Spencer Wells You might remember is the geneticist who analyzed my d.n.a. Earlier in the show he's also an explorer for National Geographic and he told us that one of the things he really likes to do when he travels is to look at faces. You see people who seem to be so different from each other and kind of the underlying theme of our work is Will how different are they really turns out not much and while Louise Leakey and her family proved that through prehistoric bones and fossils Spencer Wells looks for the evidence of our common origins in living breathing human beings. The tools of molecular genetics to figure out when the human populations began to migrate from Africa and spread out across the globe more on that a minute but 1st let's go back to the beginning so we are about 200000 years old right. The way human beings that we would recognize as young like us if they were sitting here in the state 200000 years ago where we're living and we sort of look like we are living as a very small group of hunter gatherers Savannah's of likely Eastern Africa present day Ethiopia Kenya Tanzania and it was in that kind of crucible of East African 100 gatherer societies that all of the modern human characteristics arose to 200000 years ago were all dark skin is darker were a species of hairless primate and we evolved in the tropics and there was no s.p.f. 5200000 years ago we had to have some sort of natural sunscreen and that was Melanie it's amazing to think that the age of our universe 200000 years is nothing like a blip in time it's like it's not even a 2nd on the 24 hour clock exactly and it would tell you 1000 human generations so we're talking about a huge change in the way we we look. At absolutely so why can't why that's one of the big unsolved mysteries. We know that there's been adaptation so we started off in the tropics in Africa and my ancestors for instance who came from Northern Europe very white guy my buddy Skip Gates who does all of the p.b.s. Shows African-American Lives and so on filming with. Spencer you know takes the whitest man in the world to tell. The story from the. Recently do we share this ancestry was it millions of years ago which we might suspect by looking at all this incredible variation around the world you know the d.n.a. Tells. A story that's very clear within the last 200000 years we all share an ancestor a single person Mitochondrial Eve You might have heard about her. In Africa an African woman who gave rise to all the mitochondrial diversity in the world today but what's even more amazing is that if you look at the y. Chromosome side the male side of the story. The y. Chromosome Adam only lived around 60000 years ago that's only about 2000 human generations the blink of an eye in an evolutionary sense. That tells us we were all still living in Africa at that time this was an African man who gave rise to all the y. Chromosome diversity around the world it's only within the last 60000 years that we have started to generate this incredible diversity we see around the world. Such an amazing story we're all effectively part of an extended African family. And what happens when do they how do they how do they start to move out and where do they go well so the evidence is that there might have been a little brief foray into the Middle East in the Arabian Peninsula is really 120000 years ago but they didn't go very far beyond that but the big blast came out around 60000 years ago so that's 2000 human generations so the question of course is what happened why didn't start to leave Africa earlier than that well that's a big question these why questions particularly in genetics in the study of history when all else fails talk about the weather what was going on to the world's weather around 60000 years ago well we were going into the worst part of the last ice age the northern hemisphere had massive growing ice sheets New York City Chicago Seattle all under a sheet of ice most of Britain all of Scandinavia covered by ice several kilometers thick now Africa is the most tropical continent we weren't covered in ice in Africa rather Africa was drying out at that time the reason for that is that ice actually sucks moisture out of the atmosphere if you think about Antarctica it's technically a desert and Africa was turning to desert the Sahara was much bigger then than it is now and the human habitat was reduced to just a few small pockets compared to what we have today the evidence from genetic data is that the human population around this time roughly 70000 years ago crashed a fewer than 2000 individuals. READY READY READY we nearly went extinct we were hanging on by our fingernails. We're almost completely wiped out as a species and if that wasn't bad enough we had the eruption of a mega ball came the largest volcanic eruption in the last 20 to 30000000 years. And some of which today is Lake Toba and it blew its top and it's viewed all of this ash into the atmosphere and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and this had the effect of creating a global nuclear winter in effect and temperatures dropped by 15 or 20 degrees Celsius on average or lack the sun blocked out the sun basically and so the animals in the plants become sparser and so the human population becomes sparse we can also look at the genetic variation that we see today in humans have remarkably little genetic variation for a species of large ape were highly inbred and it's because the population size around the time of the eruption drop down to maybe a spew was 2000 how but then 506070000 years ago somewhere in that region all hell breaks loose art makes its appearance the stone tools become much more finely crafted the evidence is that humans began to specialize in particular prey species at particular times of the year the population size started to expand probably according to what many linguists believe fully modern language syntactic language subject verb object that we use to convey complex ideas like I'm doing now appeared around that time we became much more social the social networks expanded this change in behavior allowed us to survive these worsening conditions in Africa and they allowed us to start to expand around the world. What do we imagine that that migration was like. I think it was really just a question of people moving a little bit further in search of better food supplies or water supplies other might have been some wanderlust and so it wasn't it wasn't like hey let's go you know 10000 miles it was it was a very slow migration over thousands living a long journey starts with the stuff. And in this case people had no idea what was up there I mean there was nobody tweeting from Siberia saying come on up here there's lots of you know reindeer up here on the tundra they didn't know what they were going to encounter I mean it's really amazing if you think about it you're setting off on the biggest journey in the history of your species you have no idea where you're going but you are smart enough to be able to figure out solutions to all the problems that are going to be thrown in your way the reason you're alive today is because of those changes in our brains that took place in Africa around 6070000 years ago. Allowing us not only to survive in Africa but to expand out of Africa and early coastal migration along the south coast of Asia leaving Africa around 60000 years ago reaching Australia very rapidly by 50000 years ago slightly later migration up into the Middle East these would have been savanna hunters entering you're up around 35000 years ago and finally a small group migrating up through the worst weather and matching of all Siberia inside the Arctic Circle during the last Ice Age temperatures of minus 70 minus 80 even minus $100.00 perhaps migrating into the Americas ultimately reaching that final frontier an amazing story and it happens 1st in Africa the changes that allowed us to do that the evolution of this highly adaptable brain that we all carry around with us allowing us to create novel cultures allowing us to develop the diversity that we see on a whirlwind trip like the one I've just been on. Thank you very much. Spencer Wells is a geneticist and the director of the Geographic project at National Geographic you can check out his entire Ted talk at Ted npr dot org. Up until this point we've been talking about where we've come from but what about where we're going and what were evolving into. So one the last time we spoke you said that we are going to become yet another. Of hominids we're going to evolve into something different. I think it's becoming increasingly likely it will become various species. Futurist one and read. What is making it increasingly likely the state is used to things. New genetic technologies that allow you to alter code. And the 2nd the space travel which will create a need for various kinds of bodies haven't evolved to survive radiation or different gravity different structures. Back in 2014 and since then a lot has changed with Gene editing technology. Life Code revolution it's moving so quickly so within the last 60 days one of the things that we've seen those new research coming out that allows you to change not just blocks of genes but individual letters in the gene coat and so the pinpoint accuracy of being able to do that means that the likelihood of side effects are much lower and the effectiveness is much higher. Would you want to do those well one of the things about trailing spaces because you don't have the atmosphere you're far more exposed to radiation right and we don't. Some plants some animals are far more sense of radiation than others or. And in the measure that you understand why if some creatures are more or less vulnerable to radiation it may be possible to engineer a human genome almost like you do with a vaccine. Or will we become far more radiation resistant which would allow us to live on Mars. Which would allow us to live in a very different atmosphere which would allow us to travel much longer distances across space without coming down with terrible cancers which may make it possible even to get to another solar system I mean when that happens right what we even look like like if we go back 300000 years right humans looked more or less the same right like we would recognize them today. But in this future that you're describing if we were still around what would we look like what parts of us would be potentially not need so if you lose an arm or if you lose a leg you're still you if you're a kidney transplant you're still you if you lose your brain then you're not you. You know you're fundamentals humanity has left right and so I think people tend to focus a lot what the body would look like. And that's an interesting question but that's not the question the question is. Going to evolve our brains are 2 percent of our body weight and about 20 percent of our energy consumption. And I suspect what's going to happen is as we're faced with more and more challenges and questions. Or brains are likely to get larger they will consume more energy which will probably start melding. Communicating Co processing with other brains. And probably creating a symbiotic relationship with machines. But what about like the rest of us accord about the rest of of our bodies what's probably going to happen is we're going to start remaking each of our body parts as they were. The limiting factor them to how long people lived it's not going to be your body parts because it's going to be like your old house that you know you redo the kitchen you redo the bathroom you swap out the album and put in a new fridge that's what's going to happen to our bodies with our body parts and then the limiting factor is the brain because we're a long way from understanding the brain we're a long way from being able to map the brain we're a long way from being able to reproduce the brain and we're a long way from being able to download memories from one brain to. If you do that. Then all bets are off as to how long a human being could live well. You know one of the questions that I've I've asked Futurists a lot over the years and something that. I think about in this episode is whether we will be around in a 1000 years or even 500 years and if you want to know my answer I think I think there will be humans on the planet in 500 years but far fewer And I think it sounds dark and pessimistic but I I can't imagine a world in 500 years where humans are thriving and growing What do you think I mean do you think that we will be thriving in 500 years on planet Earth. You know I tend to agree with you on most things this one I don't agree with. A great and that's good I don't want you to do that future. Though I mean look one of the things I love to ask all the answer is if you know we had a whale's safely putting you into a deep sleep for 300 years and you got a chance to wake up and see what's happened 300 years would you do it. And I would love to see what's here in 300 years I think. READY there's never been a better time to be alive READY. There's a whole lot of problems in the world and we have to recognize those compared to 100 years ago 500 years ago 1000 years ago. Things have gotten mostly better in most places. 300 years from now or I think. Kids are going to be doing stuff. With far less. Prosperous world in terms of. Space I would love to see will help. That's one and he's a Futurist and co-author of the book evolving ourselves. Are changing life on earth you can see all of his talks READY at com. Thanks for listening to the show this week how it all began on our production staff at n.p.r. Includes Rogers. And bridges with help from Daniel Newsom and Portia Robertson My guess. Is Amanda on the court our partners at Ted include Chris Anderson. Trish and Janet Leigh I'm Guy Raz And you've been listening to ideas worth spreading on the Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. . Support for the Ted Radio Hour comes from Dana Farber Cancer Institute developing ways to use the p.d.-l one pathway in immunotherapy to treat cancer committed to making contributions in cancer treatment for 72 years Dana Farber dot org slash everywhere from Heather start head gun. Supporting African Wildlife Foundation working to ensure the future of Africa's wildlife and wild lands learn more at a w.f. Dot org And from listeners like you who donate to this n.p.r. Station. We will just. Come up with new terminology continue doing what we're doing it would be. More. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington on Joyal Snyder defense secretary Mark esper has ordered a review of procedures for vetting foreign nationals on military installations after Friday's attack on the u.s. Naval Base in Florida a 21 year old student from Saudi Arabia killed 3 people before being shot to death N.P.R.'s Frank you were don't use reports the Pentagon chief said it's too early to call the shooting at a naval base in Pensacola Florida an act of terrorism by a Saudi national at the base training but he said he's asked for a review of safety precautions at u.s. Bases I also directed that we look at our voting procedures wouldn't it within deity for all the many foreign nationals to come for good reason to our country to train but asked for said it was import.