Penny Sarchet

speaker

1,050 appearances 18 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5d ago

Penny Sarchet’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.

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The World, the Universe and Us · Wildfires Changed Human Evolution - Is It Happening Again? · 17 Aug 2026 podcast

A reconstruction of the environment in East Africa 1.75 million years ago.

That's during a a key period when human ancestors were emerging.

A reconstruction suggests that wildfires then may have shaped human evolution.

So that's what we're getting into in this episode of The World, the Universe and Us.

I'm Dr.

Penny Sachet.

And I'm

So then ever since the nineteen sixties we've come to see East Africa as this cradle of humanity.

Um but there has been sort of more of a revision recently where the other work has been showing sort of human evolution and early humans all over Africa.

So why then have so many of these sort of key events, key ancestors, key steps in

uh technology been discovered in in this place in East Africa.

Is it 'cause we've looked there better than er anywhere else or is it 'cause it was also a special site?

So then this week we've reported on a study with evidence that supports this idea.

Um so what are the details of the the new findings?

It makes me think a little bit um Michael LePage is here too.

Michael, it reminds me a bit of some of these lab experiments where people try to see um like the mechanics of evolution.

If you're doing a thousand years dry, a thousand years wet, it's a little bit like some of these experiments, classic ones that people have done with like yeast or E.

coli in the lab, where you're kind of constantly switching back between conditions and seeing things evolve.

function of the other.

it's very circumstantial, isn't it?

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