Season Two Premiere: How Did We Get Here?

After a lot of work we're excited to bring you a special new episode of The Elephant that travels through space and time to ask one of the most fundamental questions you could ask of our rapidly changing world today - how did we end up here?

Look pretty much anywhere on our planet and it’s clear that human beings are having an outsized impact on the Earth. And it’s not just with climate change. There’s our enormous land footprint, our rapidly growing numbers, our thirst for resources, and the vast quantities of waste we produce every year.

But how did homo sapiens go from a species that had only minor numbers in parts of Africa, to one that is spread across the entire world with 7 billion people, and whose consumption patterns have become so voracious that we’re now threatening the very stability of the planet we depend on?

In this special episode of The Elephant we go on a journey from the dawn of Earth to the 21st century to find out: how did our species end up here? Listen above, or subscribe in iTunes. 

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Episode Guests: 

Jim Lovell - Apollo 8, and Apollo 13 Astronaut 
David Christian - Professor, Big History Historian
Tony Wrigley - Historian, Author of Energy and the English Industrial Revolution
Ben Russell - Curator at the Science Museum in London
Irene de Boo - Curator at the Black Country Living Museum 
Jeremy Black - Professor of History at University of Exeter 
Tim Flannery  - Scientist, Head of the Climate Council 
Rob Hopkins - Founder of the Transition Movement
Kevin Anderson - Professor of Energy and Climate Change 
Myles Allen - Leader of Climate Research Programme at Oxford University

Episode made possible with funding from Climate-KIC. Climate-KIC is Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on climate change, consisting of dynamic companies, the best academic institutions and the public sector.