The Secret History in Our DNA: Adam Rutherford Meets David Olusoga (Part One)

**Mia Sorrenti** (0:00)
Hello, Intelligence Squared members, senior producer Mia Sorrenti here. Today's members' episode is the full recording of our recent live event with science broadcaster and author Adam Rutherford and award-winning historian David Olusoga. Rutherford and Olusoga joined us to discuss how genetics can transform our understanding of human history. Marking the 10th anniversary of Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, they explore what a decade of discoveries of genetics has revealed about our ancestors. From the Neanderthals and the Plague to race, ancestry and the legacy of the Human Genome Project, they examine what our genes can tell us about the past and challenge some of the myths that we still tell about human difference.
A content warning before we begin, this conversation contains some mature language. Let's join the discussion now live at Union Chapel.

**David Olusoga** (0:58)
Welcome to Union Chapel and to this special event with Dr. Adam Rutherford, exploring the history of our DNA.
So, an introduction. Adam is one of our great scientists, committed among other things to the public understanding of science, as well as teaching students at University College London, where Adam is, as of tomorrow, Professor of Genetics and Society.

**Adam Rutherford** (1:23)
That's...

**David Olusoga** (1:25)
A world exclusive.

**Adam Rutherford** (1:28)
Yeah, that's not in the public domain yet, so if you could just not tell anyone...

**David Olusoga** (1:32)
If you see anyone from UCL Press Office, that I didn't say that.
Of course, Adam is also a prolific broadcaster on radio and television, but he is an equally prolific author. His books include Creation, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize, The Book of Humans, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. He's also the author of The Brilliant and, I'm afraid, sadly more relevant than ever, How to Argue with a Racist from 2020 And more recently, there was Control, Adam's book on the strange and the disturbing history of the pseudoscience of eugenics. But we are here tonight to discuss another book. This is where I'll pick up the copy I've just left behind and wave it, let me wave this one instead.
This book, unlike the one which I left behind in the green room, we're here to discuss A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. It is a big book and it paints an expansive panorama of the scientific revolution in human genetics. And it's revealed when it was published a decade ago, how far that science, how that revolution had progressed. But 10 years is a very long time in the world of human genetic science. And the pace of change in the year since has been astonishing, which is why this new edition, updated edition has been published, and that's the focus of tonight's discussion. So the plan is that Adam and I, there we go, that Adam and I will speak for about an hour, and then we've got 30 minutes for questions from you, the audience. So please do formulate your questions as we go, and we'll try to get through as many questions as we can. Just to preempt, we've got roving mics, and if you could please keep your questions short and make them actual questions, even if... not naming any names, but you know who you are.
Adam, back in 2016, when you were finishing the first edition of this book, you wrote that genetics was then riding on a huge wave of discovery. There had been, for example, a series of new and unprecedented studies of ancient DNA. Tell us about that earlier wave that first inspired this book. I mean, that was the age in which you became a scientist. That was what was happening when you were first studying and doing your first degrees. Tell us about how that inspired you to write this book in the first place.

**Adam Rutherford** (4:06)
Yeah, well, thank you. And thank you, everyone, for coming tonight. The only time I've ever been in this room before was to see Björk.
And I can't guarantee it's going to be as good as that.

**David Olusoga** (4:16)
Well, you haven't got the vocal range. I have to be clear.

**Adam Rutherford** (4:19)
All right.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:20)
Rude. Accurate.

**Adam Rutherford** (4:23)
Yeah, so I think there was quite a lot of serendipity in my career in terms of I started my first degree in genetics in 1993, which was the year that the Human Genome Project started. And that was those two things were unrelated.
And then I started my PhD. I finished my PhD in genetics at Grey Ormond Street, the year the Human Genome Project finished, also unrelated.
And then I did various jobs in and around science communication, but always gravitated back to genetics and evolutionary. I'm really an evolutionary biologist, but one who uses genetics in order to tell that story. And it was just luck that I happened to be doing this at a time where this genuine, I really, really don't like the concept of revolutions in history and particularly in the history of science, unless they occur over four days and many people get killed. The scientific revolution did not include that and the genetic revolution did not include that either.