Is the story we learned about people crossing a land bridge to the Americas all wrong?

Jennifer Raff will be here to talk about her bestselling book, Origin, A Genetic History

of the Americas.

How is the practice of surgery changed over time?

Irohretco will join us to talk about his latest book, Empire of the Scalpel.

Alexander Altar will be here to talk about what's going on in the publishing world.

Plus, my colleagues and I will talk about what we're reading.

This is the Bookerview Podcasts from the New York Times.

It's March 11th.

I'm Camila Paul.

Jennifer Raff joins us now from Lawrence Kansas.

She is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas and her new book

is called Origin, A Genetic History of the Americas.

Jennifer, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me on.

So this is a book that challenges the prevailing theory about how people first came to and

settled in the Americas.

I think many of us have a kind of vague notion that there was a land bridge between Siberia

and Alaska and that people crossed it a thousand years ago and not much more than that.

So if you could give a backdrop about what exactly the prevailing theory has been and then

we can talk about why it is possibly or probably wrong.

So the story that you may have learned in school, at least if you're my age or older,

...