Bonus Episode: Short and Sweat
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about the evolution of our extraordinary ability to cool ourselves down. Biological anthropologist Andrew Best discusses the past, present, and future of sweat in this special bonus episode.
About our guest
Dr. Andrew Best is a biological anthropologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who studies metabolism, endurance, and the evolution of sweat. Visit his website to learn more about him and his research.
Click here for a one-minute video about his Leakey Foundation-supported research project on the evolution of sweat glands.
Episode Transcript
Links to more sweaty science
Open access research papers of interest
- Human Locomotion and Heat Loss: An Evolutionary Perspective
- Repeated mutation of a developmental enhancer
contributed to human thermoregulatory evolution
Credits
This episode was produced by Ray Pang. To keep up with and learn more about his work, follow Ray at @PangRay on Twitter.
Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Meredith Johnson is the host and executive producer of Origin Stories.
Music by Henry Nagle and Lee Roservere.
Send us your questions!
Have a question about human evolution? Something you've always wondered about? We will find a scientist to answer it on a special episode of Origin Stories!
There are three ways to submit your question:
- Leave a voicemail at +1(707) 788-8582
- Visit speakpipe.com/originstories and leave a message
- Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at originstories@leakeyfoundation.org
The Leakey Foundation
Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.
All donations to support the podcast will be quadruple-matched thanks to Jeanne Newman and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. Visit leakeyfoundation.org/donate and use the notes field to let us know your donation is in support of Origin Stories.
Lunch Break Science
Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's web series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes stream live on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Sign up for event reminders and watch past episodes at leakeyfoundation.org/live!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Meredith Johnson. |
| 0:12.0 | I don't know how the weather is where you are, but here in California, it's late September |
| 0:17.0 | and it still feels like summer. |
| 0:20.0 | As bad as the heat is here, we humans do have one unique adaptation to help us cool down. |
| 0:26.7 | We sweat, and it's a bodily function that researchers are still working to figure out. |
| 0:32.7 | For today's bonus episode, our guest is Andrew Best. |
| 0:36.7 | He's a biological anthropologist at the Massachusetts |
| 0:39.3 | College of Liberal Arts, and he's a leaky foundation grantee who studies human endurance and the |
| 0:44.8 | evolution of sweat. He's also an endurance athlete who spends a lot of his time running and biking |
| 0:51.6 | and sweating. I think it's fair to call him a sweat enthusiast. His PhD |
| 0:57.6 | research focused on the evolution of sweat glands and the differences in sweating between people who |
| 1:02.8 | are raised in different climates. Andrew, thank you for being on the show. Thanks for having me. |
| 1:08.7 | I love everything leaking, so this is very cool. So I invited you |
| 1:15.2 | on the show today because I wanted to ask you about sweat and the evolution of human sweating. |
| 1:21.5 | A lot of people don't know much about sweat beyond the fact that we all do it. Is there this whole |
| 1:27.0 | world of sweat information that |
| 1:28.5 | experts know about? So I was really surprised in doing my dissertation project to find that there |
| 1:36.9 | are big questions about sweating, especially the evolution of sweating that we just don't know. |
| 1:41.5 | Like before I was a scientist, I was a high school teacher for 15 years. And I |
| 1:45.7 | always thought science has a lot of answers. And we've really got the world conquered in terms of |
| 1:50.6 | understanding things. And as soon as I dug into one topic, which is what a PhD is, you realize that |
... |
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