The Big Picture: From the Origin of Life to the Rise of Humans ~ Tim Coulson
The Big Picture: From the Origin of Life to the Rise of Humans ~ Tim Coulson  
Podcast: On Humans
Published On: Tue Mar 25 2025
Description: Welcome to the first episode of the Origins of Humankind! In this sweeping pilot, we cover the entire planetary backstory of human existence – from the origins of life to the climate change that kickstarted human evolution. Our expert guide on this journey is Tim Coulson, the Head of Biology at the University of Oxford and the author of A Universal History of Us. The episode explores questions such as:What is "life”? How did it begin?The surprising role of meteors (even before dinosaurs)Why animals? “Ediacaran Garden” and the dawn of predatorsBlood, bones, and the dawn of “terrestrial fish” (yup, that’s us!)Our ancestors amongst the dinosaursFruits and snakes in primate evolutionThe climate change that made humanity The rise and spread of humans As always, we finish with the guest’s reflections on humanity.THE ORIGINS OF HUMANKINDThis episode is part of The Origins of Humankind series, produced in collaboration with CARTA, a research centre at UC San Diego. Together, we have prepared a five-part series that tells you the whole epic origin story of humanity, with cutting-edge science as our guide.1 | The Big Picture: From the Origin of Life to the Rise of Humans (Tim Coulson, University of Oxford)2 | An Unusual Ape: The Deep Origins of Our Human Oddities (Dean Falk, University of Florida)3 | Why Humans? The New Science of the Genus Homo (Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum, London)4 | A Human Like No Other: The Rise of Homo Sapiens (Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology)5 | The Rest is History: From the Origins of Farming to the Dawn of Modernity (Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology)⁠OnHumans.Substack.com/Origins⁠MORE LINKSSupport the show: ⁠Patreon.com/OnHumans⁠Free lectures on human origins: ⁠CARTA⁠Tim Coulson’s book: ⁠A Universal History of Us⁠KEYWORDSEvolution | Human evolution | Human origins | Origin of life | Emergence of life | Abiogenesis | Natural history | History of life | Meteors | Organic chemistry | Vertebrate evolution | Tetrapods | Dinosaurs | Pleistocene | Predators | Early humans | Austrolopithecins | Lucy | Homo erectus | Homo ergaster | Homo sapiens | Megafauna extinction | Humanity | Carl Sagan | Ediacaran Garden | Cambrian Explosion | Mesozoic | Jurassic | Triassic | Cretaceous | The Great Oxigenation Event | Sauropsids | Synapsids |