Nasty, brutish and short or the Garden of Eden? We explore the Return to Monke meme and ask whether we are right to yearn for a more primitive lifestyle.

In this podcast, we examine our origins as hunter-gatherers and explore whether things were better or worse before we became civilised. We look at food scarcity, environmental damage, child mortality rates and a whole host of other fun stuff. We also address the morality of primitivism and consider what would actually happen if we all tried to Return to Monke.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

- Know Your Meme: Return to Monke
- The Unabomber manifesto: Industrial society and its future
- Life expectancy in hunter-gatherers
- Are hunter-gatherers the happiest humans to inhabit earth?
- Uncontacted tribes: What do we know about the world's 100 hidden communities?
- Holocene calendar

To get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com