Episode 09: Did Cooking Make Us Human? (Re-release)
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2016
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Humans have evolved very differently from other primates. Is there one thing responsible for humans becoming human? Some evolutionary biologists think that the way we process our food, namely cooking it, could explain why our species developed so differently from others. Did cooking make us human? Dr. Richard Wrangham of Harvard University and Dr. Rachel Carmody of UCSF and Harvard discuss the impact that cooked food has had on human evolution.
This episode of Origin Stories was produced by Briana Breen and edited by Audrey Quinn. Music by Henry Nagle.
Thanks to Richard Wrangham and Rachel Carmody for sharing their work.
Being Human
This re-released episode includes a new Being Human bonus segment. Being Human was a joint initiative of The Baumann Foundation and The Leakey Foundation, dedicated to understanding modern life from an evolutionary perspective.
Special thanks to Lily Mazzarella of Farmacopia for talking with us about her work for the Being Human segment.
Episode Links
Richard Wrangham's Harvard University Website
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Smithsonian Magazine "Why Fire Made Us Human"
Rachel Carmody's Nature article: Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome
The Leakey Foundation
Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation. The Leakey Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to human origins research and outreach. Learn more at leakeyfoundation.org.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, this episode is a rebroadcast of our story about how cooking made us human. |
| 0:06.2 | Keep listening after the credits for a brand new Being Human segment about how hard it can be to figure out what we should be eating today. This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. |
| 0:28.7 | I'm Meredith Johnson. |
| 0:31.9 | We modern humans have evolved in ways that are clearly different from the other living |
| 0:36.2 | great apes. |
| 0:37.6 | We have these big, complex brains, small teeth and jaws, and much smaller guts. |
| 0:43.6 | Some evolutionary biologists think the key to these differences might be found in something |
| 0:48.0 | that we all do every day. |
| 0:50.3 | Reporter Brianna Breen takes a look at the origins of cooking. |
| 0:53.7 | Mr. Theo, did you have a good nap? |
| 0:57.8 | Did you? |
| 1:00.5 | I know it's almost time for you to eat. |
| 1:03.7 | This is Rachel Carmody and her son, Theo. |
| 1:06.6 | Rachel spends a lot of time thinking about food, but not in the way you and I probably do. |
| 1:12.2 | What? Are you hungry? |
| 1:15.5 | I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF in microbiology, but I'm also a visiting fellow in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. |
| 1:26.3 | Aw. |
| 1:27.7 | I think you're making sad sounds because you're hungry. |
| 1:32.0 | This is my son, Theo. |
| 1:34.5 | He is 12 weeks old, and he will be weaned on to cook food because of all the benefits that |
| 1:43.0 | it provides in terms of softening the food |
| 1:45.3 | and being easily digestible. But right now you don't have any teeth at all, so you're just |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meredith Johnson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Meredith Johnson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.