The History of Wellness and Wellbeing | The Early Years | 1
Legacy
Original Legacy Productions
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
New Year, new you — but where did the idea of “wellness” actually come from? Peter and Afua travel back 10,000 years to hunter-gatherers, early medicine, ancient diets, and the surprising origins of how humans learned to be “healthy”.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Well, happy new year, Afwa. Here we go. 2026. Peter, are you a New Year's resolution person? |
| 0:07.8 | I start with so many good intentions. I rarely make it through 24 hours, if I'm honest. How about you? Are you a new year, new you? What have we got to look forward to for 2026 for Afwa? |
| 0:18.6 | Actually, last year, one of the changes I implemented in my life was the 12-week year. So I don't do New Year's resolutions anymore. I do a new year every 12 weeks, which I found is a much more manageable time frame to keep a resolution. Okay. What about one week? Do you think about 12 works to get to God, preach to me after? |
| 0:38.7 | I want to learn. |
| 0:39.3 | I want to be a new me this year. |
| 0:40.7 | Well, you know, Peter, I'm a big advocate that if you want to do something, |
| 0:44.5 | you need to know the history of the idea. |
| 0:46.9 | So I think this series might really help you because I think the thing about wellness |
| 0:51.7 | and resolutions and personal development and self-improvement |
| 0:54.8 | is there are some really legitimate ideas mixed up in a load of really problematic baggage. |
| 1:02.6 | And I think it's going to be really fun to explore where some of that baggage has come from |
| 1:07.0 | and how we can maybe separate the gems from the trash. Well, I just spent a bit of time |
| 1:12.9 | over Christmas, after a way, between short walks and over-indulging, wondering why it is that, |
| 1:19.2 | you know, in Lent, you give things up, and I sort of understand what the purpose of that is, |
| 1:23.5 | but why it is when you get to the turn of the year, why January is that time when you concentrate on yourself and you try to turn over a new leaf? It's kind of curious about why that's |
| 1:31.8 | the case. So like you said, I think it's very interesting to see where these ideas all come from. |
| 1:37.6 | And when we talked about doing a mega series on wellness and well-being, you know, I suppose it's not surprising we've gone back 30,000 years rather than going back to the beginning of the kind of modern age. But, you know, there you go. That's why you listen to Legacy, I guess. I love how that happens with you, Peter. I'm like, let's explore the history of something, thinking about the Victorians. And you're like, yes, well, 30,000 years ago is the |
| 2:01.1 | perfect place to start. Well, I think it would be really interesting to think about the role of gender, |
| 2:06.8 | the role of the body, how people have thought about the mind, and also to kind of always with |
| 2:11.7 | these things to realize that although we think that, you know, wellness gurus on Instagram are new, you know, people |
| 2:19.3 | have been talking about similar kinds of things, not just for hundreds of years, but in fact, |
| 2:23.3 | for thousands of years. So I think it's going to be fascinating to go through a whole multi-episode |
... |
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