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Encore | The Mindbending Conversation That Topped 2024 (with Donald Hoffman)
Happy New Year 2025! To celebrate, here is an encore of what proved to be the most popular episode of 2024.
This rerun combines episodes 30 and 31 i…
1 year, 5 months ago
Live from London | Yasheng Huang on the Origins of Modern China
This was fun!
Last Wednesday saw the first-ever live recording of On Humans. The event was held at the London Business School, courtesy of the LBS's …
1 year, 5 months ago
A New Theory on the Broadest Patterns of History ~ Ideen Ali Riahi
Season 3 Episode 10
Persians. Romans. Chinese. Guptas. Abbasids. Mongols. British.
The list of the world’s largest empires is a list of different peoples of Eurasia. With…
1 year, 6 months ago
Is War Inevitable? Lessons from East Asia ~ David C. Kang
Season 3 Episode 9
Why do wars begin? How can we avoid them? Do countries wage wars whenever it suits their own goals? Or are wars a product of failed understanding and…
1 year, 7 months ago
Is War Natural After All? Revisiting the Debate ~ Luke Glowacki
Season 3 Episode 8
Our ancestors did not wage war. Warfare emerged only when humans started settling down and storing food. Indeed, some modern hunter-gatherers still e…
1 year, 7 months ago
Nobel-Prize Special | Daron Acemoglu on Why We Should Celebrate Humanity
Daron Acemoglu has been awarded the 2024 Nobel-prize for Economic Science. This is a great testament to his impressive career. But the award was give…
1 year, 8 months ago
This Might Be The Nicest Thing About Human Nature ~ Lara Aknin
Season 3 Episode 7
You are given 20 dollars in cash. You can use it as you wish, but with one condition: you have to use it to treat yourself.
Now imagine getting anothe…
1 year, 8 months ago
What About China? Part III: A Brief History of China’s Future ~ Yasheng Huang
Season 3 Episode 6
Where is China today? Will its rise continue to benefit the vast majority of its population? Or is Xi Jinping's increasingly repressive government co…
1 year, 9 months ago
What About China? Part II: Explaining the Chinese Miracle ~ Yasheng Huang
Season 3 Episode 5
China's rise has shook the world. It has changed the lives of over a billion people in China. It has flooded humanity with cheap goods, from single-u…
1 year, 9 months ago
What About China? Part I: The Deep Currents of Chinese History ~ Yasheng Huang
Season 3 Episode 4
The West has ruled history — at least the way history has been written. This is a shame. To tell the story of humans, we must tell the story of us al…
1 year, 9 months ago