8 Sept 2026
In which John explores the question of historical life expectancy, and how sometimes a misleading narrative is corrected by … a misleading narrative.
If you want to understand historical and present life expectancy in granular detail, I recommend these Our World in Data articles, where I got most of the information in this video:
How Does the Risk of Death Change as We Age? https://ourworldindata.org/how-do-the…
Life Expectancy Has Increased at All Ages: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expec…
It’s Not Just about Child Mortality: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-ju…
[…]
5 Sept 2024
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This video was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in association with IMI. https://sloan.org/
https://www.theimi.co/
WELCOME TO HOWTOWN! Our small but mighty team of two (Joss Fong and Adam Cole) digs into the evidence behind commonly held facts and claims in the news.
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KEY SOURCES:
A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…
Identifying and Interpreting Apparent Neanderthal Ancestry in African Individuals
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32004…
Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35138…
FULL SOURCE LIST:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h…
BOOKS!
“The Naked Neanderthal” by Ludovic Slimak
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/45466…
“Who We Are and How We Got Here” by David Reich
https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/why-i-w…
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In this episode of Howtown, we explore how scientists discovered that modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA, and what that reveals about human evolution, ancient interbreeding, and our shared ancestry. The episode traces the story from the first Neanderthal fossils and the old misconceptions surrounding them, through the rise of ancient DNA research, contamination challenges, and the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, to the genetic evidence showing that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens mixed tens of thousands of years ago. We also examine newer research suggesting that all modern human populations, including Africans, may carry some Neanderthal ancestry, plus a remarkable archaeological discovery in France that may capture one of the closest known encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans. If you’ve ever wondered how scientists know Neanderthals interbred with humans, how ancient DNA is recovered, or whether Neanderthals are really part of our family tree, this episode breaks down the evidence.
Chapters:
00:00 intro
01:06 discovering Neanderthals
03:00 why it’s not easy
04:35 extracting DNA
06:34 assembling the genome
08:00 proving they did it
09:57 the species problem
11:01 Neanderthal DNA in Africa
12:08 a new mystery
15:34 dating problems
16:36 fossilized smoke
18:34 conclusion
19:48 ground news
[…]
