Letters and Politics

How Humans Shaped the World In 50,000 Years

Guest: Beth Shapiro is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where her work has centered on the analysis of ancient DNA.  She is the author of How to Clone a Mammoth, which won the AAAS science writing award, and her latest, Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined—and Redefined—Nature.