- Human life has changed so much in modern times. If someone could parachute in from, say, you know, 1800 to the modern day, it would be a bewildering experience in so many facets. Whether it's how we make our food, transportation, energy, disease, medicine, enormous transformation of how we live. And our lives have changed a lot by really gaining control over nature. If you consider nature, vulnerability to the elements, which includes things like drought and famine, which are gonna affect the abundance of food and water, infectious disease, wild animals, etc., almost all that has changed for most people on the planet. And so that's really changed, fundamentally, the quality and quantity of life. And central to a lot of these changes are, for example, the science of biology: by discovering more and more about how nature works. And that knowledge has been power. For example, we didn't know about viruses and bacteria

until the last 150 years, and we didn't know much about how to manage them until probably the last 70 to 75 years. In the 19th century, a very large percentage of Americans had TB. You know, now we would think about that disease as, you know, Where did that go? In the 1960s in the United States, there was a rubella outbreak. We don't hear the word rubella much because it's the R in the MMR vaccine. Smallpox, which killed tens and tens and tens of millions of people, not only has been controlled, it has been eradicated from the planet. From every nook and cranny of the planet, smallpox is gone. So the advent of vaccines, of antibiotics, of antivirals, and of better sanitation, has dramatically reduced what people deal with. And with respect to agriculture and food production, a remarkable statistic is that around 1900,

perhaps 40% of the United States labor force was involved in farming and agriculture in some way - that's now 2%. And that 2% is providing a lot more food for a lot more people than it ever did. And of course, exporting around the world. So the efficiency of agriculture, the productivity of agriculture is remarkably different. Some of that is due to automation, but a lot of that is due to discoveries about better seeds, better ways of nourishing crops, better ways to fight off plant diseases. You know, now we enjoy a much more secure food supply than we did a hundred years ago. So these are important biological impacts on us, but I often get the question, you know, And that, I don't have a really clear picture of that. If you go back in time, say 60,000 years ago, when humanity left Africa, when the first migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa happened,

and this was gonna lead to the settling, you know, of humans on five more continents. If we had sort of stayed as isolated populations, unconnected, not able to travel the seas, not able to go across land, bridges and things like this, then you would have essentially these sophisticated, you know, human populations in different places, but not sharing genes, not sharing culture. That sets up the situation for evolution. I mean, isolation is sort of, you know, evolution's laboratory. This is why the Galapagos finches are such an example of evolution is that isolation factor gives the opportunity for speciation to occur. But because now we are so connected as a species, sharing genes and culture across the globe, that's going to work against sort of whatever biological evolution might be underway because of how we've changed our food supply and changed our relationship to infectious diseases and things like that. And of course, you can see in certain human populations

that are specialized to high altitude or certainly across different latitudes in terms of how much sunlight they get. You know, obviously Northern Europeans and Equatorial Africans, we all look differently because those are actually local adaptations. But those aren't fundamentally, you know, speciation events happening. So anatomically and physiologically, I would say, I don't think we've evolved much. You know, cultural evolution can be very, very, very rapid, but our biological evolution is relatively slow. So there's a lot of mismatches, like our physiology, which was wired to seek out various nutrients that might have been very hard to get as a hunter-gatherer, but are now very easy to get at the grocery store, means that, you know, our diets are so radically different than what had evolved, you know, by 10,000 years ago- that's showing up as all sorts of, you know, syndromes in humanity.

And perhaps, that's one of the things that overwhelms us is that, you know, biology's not evolving as rapidly as culture. Hey Big Thinkers. One of the things discussed in the video we just watched is that humanity produces much more food than it did 100 years ago. But not all the food that we produced gets used. Food waste is still a huge problem. Relying on a single source limits your perspective on big issues such as this. Which is why I'd like to introduce you to Ground News, the sponsor of today's video, and a reliable source you can use to navigate the media landscape. Ground News is a website, an app that aggregates news sources from all over the world, in one place. It allows you to compare coverage from different news outlets and provides a visual breakdown of each news source's political bias, factualness, and ownership, as vetted by independent news monitoring organizations. Let me show you how it works.

Let's click into this story about the UN's Food Waste Index report for 2024. We can see the political bias breakdown of the over 100 news sources reporting this event. We can visually see on the bias distribution chart that 48% of the coverage is coming from the left, 35% coming from the center, and 17% from the right. We can also examine the factuality of these sources as ranked by Ground News. 25% of the sources for this story have a mixed factuality rating. We can also see the visual breakdown for ownership of the different news sources reporting this event. Here we see that media conglomerates own 42% of the sources, while only 9% are independent news sources. If you scroll down, you can see every article and also look at headlines side by side to see how news outlets frame the story differently. Seeing headlines side by side allows you to see

how different editorial outlets frame stories. Giving you a better sense of whether a particular article or outlet is prone to sensationalism. In addition to helping you understand the bias and factualness of a particular news or source, Ground News ‘My News Bias’ feature allows you to understand your individual news consumption. You can see if you lean toward certain sides of the political spectrum, the factuality, distribution of your news consumption, and much more. It's a great way to monitor your news diet and diversify your palate. I've been reading Ground News for years, and it's a big part of my regular news diet. It allows me to see a vast swath of stories all in one place. And it allows me to find stories that I wouldn't usually read. I recommend trying it out for yourself if you subscribe through our link, ground.news/bigthink, you'll receive 40% off unlimited access to the platform with the Vantage plan.

- Want to dive deeper? Become a Big Think member and join our members-only community, watch videos early, and unlock full interviews.

Everything about humanity is changing—except our bodies? | Sean B. Carroll

Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Head to bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics. ​Join Big Think+ to gain access to an immense library of content. It features insight from many of the most celebrated and intelligent individuals in the world today.

   - Subscribe for daily videos.
   - Business inquiries and fan suggestions welcome.