Videos of the week

I’ve been sent two videos this week by several readers. I post them here together – I’ve never embedded video before, and after some experimentation I didn’t get it to load very well on the blog, so I’m just including links. My including them in one post is not a comment on either video! Just that, well that’s the media about human evolution this week.

1. The Daily Show does a bit where correspondent John Oliver interviews Jeff Schwartz and Todd Disotell about orangutan versus chimpanzees as our closest relatives.

This is really funny, lampooning both sides. There is some off-color commentary, language, and sexual references (for those readers who might care). And Oliver does make an unkind reference to Disotell’s mohawk.

1. Elaine Morgan at the TED conference describing the Aquatic Ape Theory

The Daily Show is the top-rated news broadcast among viewers 18-34. TEDGlobal is a conference with “elite” speakers for which people pay $6000 to attend the program. Which this year included aquatic apes.

OK, so they have one thing in common, these two videos – I won’t be showing either in class!

Many of the free TED talks are very useful for showing in classes, by the way – check out previous paleoanthropologists include Louise Leakey and Zeresenay Alemseged, also notable is Nina Jablonski on skin color.