Rationally Speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.

For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.

Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galeff, and I'm pleased to introduce this episode's guest, Susanna Herculano

Uzzell.

She is a professor of biomedical science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil,

and soon in a month or so will be professor of psychology and biological sciences at Vanderbilt University. She's written

eight books now on science for the general public, and we're going to be talking about her most

recent book and her first book in the English language, The Human Advantage, which

addresses the question, it covers her own original research, and the question she's focused on

is what makes humans special? Essentially, what is it about the human brain relative to the brains

of other species that gives us the huge cognitive

advantage, the many cognitive abilities we have that other animals don't have.

What is it about our brain that gives us that?

Susanna, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Julie.

It's a pleasure to speak to you.

So I thought we could start by putting this

question in a historical context. I know generations of scientists of people throughout the ages

have wondered what it is that makes humans special. What are some of the previous approaches

people have taken to this question? What are some of the previous theories people have had about what makes humans special? Well, I think the original and simplest idea was ever since

people realized that it is the brain that produces all our mental capacities, that whoever had

...