Aye Write! Adam Rutherford

ADAM RUTHERFORD: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is a story about you.

It is the history of who you are and how you came to be. But it is also our collective story, because in every one of our genomes we each carry the history of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration and a lot of sex.

Since scientists first read the human genome in 2001 it has been subject to all sorts of claims, counterclaims and myths. In fact, as Adam explains, our genomes should be read not as instruction manuals, but as epic poems. From redheads to race, dead kings to plague, evolution to epigenetics, this is a demystifying and illuminating new portrait of who we are and how we came to be. Chaired by Professor Kevin O’Dell.