Gaia Vince on Transcendence - How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time. Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and her writing has featured in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, The Times and Scientific American. She also writes and presents science programmes for radio and television. Her research takes her across the world: she has visited more than 60 countries, lived in three and is currently based in London. In 2015, she became the first woman to win the Royal Society Science Book of the Year Prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made.

Transcendence is her new book, the follow up to the prize-winning Adventures in the Anthropocene. It tells the astonishing story of how culture enabled us to become the most successful species on Earth. Humans are the most successful species on Earth; a planet-altering force of nature. Meanwhile, our closest living relatives, the now-endangered chimpanzees, continue to live as they have for millions of years. Yet we evolved through the same process. What are we then? And now we have remade the world, what are we becoming?


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Transcendence - How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty and Time - Gaia Vince

"A pleasingly simple concept... one of the best things I've come upon in the last six months" (The Telegraph - 'Best Podcasts')

5 speakers, 15 minutes each. Script free and against a less-than-precise clock, some of the world's leading figures in the arts and sciences deliver talks about their enduring achievements, wildest moments or deepest passions. It's inspiring, informative, provoking, and above all, entertaining. Based in London but making forays to Sydney, New York and Milan, 5x15 has featured Joanna Lumley, Brian Eno, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jung Chang, Ruby Wax and Alain de Botton.