We’ve all descended from a common ancestor, but, as Homo sapiens, we no longer brachiate through trees and have long abandoned our stone tools for Blackberrys and iPods. Evolution has shaped us into the big-brained, bipedal, text-messaging specimens we are today. But it didn’t happened without a lot of pressure. SETI Radio takes a look at some of the forces that have driven human evolution - from the snake-phobia that sharpened our eyesight, to the anger-management that was a prerequisite for civilization.

Also, how your Blackberry may be changing the brains of future generations.
And, are we engineering our own successors through robotics?

Guests:

• Lynne Isbell - anthropologist, University of California,      Davis
• Timothy Taylor - archeologist, the University of Bradford in the U.K.
• Nicholas Wade - science writer, New York Times, author of Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
• Lee Gutkind - author of Almost Human: Making Robots Think

Listen:

• mp3 - Higher Quality
• wma - Faster Download

 

DOWNLOAD/LISTEN/VIEW:

http://podcast.seti.org/media/AWA_07-08-13.mp3