Safeguarding Sound Science
Safeguarding Sound Science's Mat Kaplan talks to scientists, science communicators, and other experts to explore who's behind some of the more insidious efforts to sow distrust in science, how those efforts filter down to schools and classrooms, and what is being done to ensure that everyone — especially students — is exposed to accurate science.
Episode 10: Human Evolution: Uncovering our Origins
October 8, 2025
You know the t-shirt, right? The one that shows the progression from a monkey to a human? In this episode of Safeguarding Sound Science, we talk with two renowned paleoanthropologists, Jeremy DeSilva and Briana Pobiner, to find out why that image is in fact a viral misconception. DeSilva and Pobiner study the real ancestry of homo sapiens, a story that continues to unfold in Africa and elsewhere around the world. It’s a story that’s as dramatic, as exciting, and as complex as the very best detective novels. DeSilva, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth University, studies the locomotion of the very first apes and our own, earliest human ancestors, known as hominins. Pobiner is a Research Scientist and Museum Educator in the Human Origins Program, part of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Together, they share their understanding of how we came to be who we are today.
Additional Info:
- First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, by Jeremy DeSilva
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Human Origins Program