Month: May 2022

Adam Rutherford explores how other species can help us understand our own. The world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal has spent decades observing the behaviours of chimps and bonobos. In Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender he looks at, and questions, the interplay of biology and culture. Using his knowledge of apes he challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity and assumptions about authority, power, cooperation and sexual behaviour.

Nichola Raihani’s research focuses on the evolution of social behaviour in humans and non-human species. In her book, The Social Instinct, she looks at the science of cooperation and how humans have evolved socially and built, and fought over, hugely complex communities. But she also suggests we might have something to learn from the pied babblers of the Kalahari, and the cleaner fish of the Great Barrier Reef – two of the most fascinating and extraordinarily successful species on the planet.

While ants and honey bees are often held up as exemplars of social cohesion, the entomologist Seirian Sumner wants to rehabilitate the much-maligned thug of the insect world, the wasp. In Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps she shows how wasps are older, cleverer and more diverse than their evolutionary new-comer the bee. And she makes the case that they hold hidden treasures of relevance to human culture, survival and health, and one species even taught us how to make paper.

Producer: Katy Hickman

COVID-19 variants are evolving around the world, impacting the trajectory of the pandemic and our ability to fight it. Andy speaks with microbiologist Katherine Wu, who’s been writing for the Atlantic about how surges in North Korea, China, and South Africa will affect the U.S. and what we can do about it. She expresses cautious optimism about variant-specific vaccines, worry over zero-COVID policies in parts of Asia, and insight into what the virus will do next.

Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt.

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• America's psychiatric emergency systems are struggling to assist those in dire need of help. The Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity, a subsidiary of the Satcher Health Leadership at Morehouse School of Medicine, is partnering with Beacon Health Options to establish critical guidelines for dismantling inequity through its new research and policy initiative. You can join the movement too by attending their upcoming virtual summit. Go to kennedysatcher.org to register today.
• Beacon Health Options has also published a new white paper online called Reimagining Behavioral Health Crisis Systems of Care. Download it today at beaconlens.com/white-papers.
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Check out these resources from today’s episode: 

• Read Katherine Wu’s Atlantic article about how to adjust vaccine recipes as the virus quickly mutates: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/05/covid-vaccine-recipe-omicron-protection/629846/
• Find vaccines, masks, testing, treatments, and other resources in your community: https://www.covid.gov/
• Order Andy’s book, “Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response”: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165 

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