You and Betty and the Nancy's and Bill's and Joes and Jane's will find in the study of science

a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome back to Inquiring Minds. I'm Andrey Viscontas. This is a podcast that explores the

space where science and society collide. We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover,

and why it matters.

Last week, we talked to Roy Meals, an orthopedic surgeon who told us all about the biology and chemistry

of our bones.

And this week we talked to Kermit Patterson.

He's a journalist who for 10 years has followed the story of the people who discovered

RD, arguably our oldest human ancestor.

He'll tell us about what bones can tell us, about what it means means to be human and how we evolved into the people

that we are today.

Kermit Paterson, welcome to Inquiring Minds.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be with you.

So this is the second episode in a two-part series we are doing about bones. Last week, we

interviewed Roy Meals, who's an

orthopedic surgeon who wrote a book about bones, and we talked about the composition and the

chemistry and the cellular construction and just the basic biology of bones, and it was really

fascinating. But we skipped out on the evolution and the cultural and historical significance. So I'm really

excited to cover that with you. Oh, well, I'm glad to be here. Yes, this is the deep history of

bones. Yeah. And essentially sort of how bones are the tools that scientists used to answer

arguably the most fundamental question of where we came from. So I want to start

...