Our Fight Against Death | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Humanity's struggle against death has been our most enduring fight. History has given us one weapon in this existential battle: we fight back with medicine. Tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors scavenged the natural world for remedies. Imagine the incredible leaps of faith we had to take in an effort to ease the pain, mend the broken, and revive the sick.

Medicine was a dark art, full of false starts and false gods. But when we struck upon some form of relief, it swept like wildfire through humankind. We built on every success until medicine became a form of science. That's when we discovered the real killers within us: microscopic armies hidden within our bodies, waging war on our species for thousands of years.

Medicine is our great weapon to fight back against invisible, unthinkable death. [Applause] From superstition to science, medicine has become one of humanity's most powerful tools. And with each new challenge, we may stumble, but we find a way to get stronger and smarter to beat back fatal diseases and extend our lifespans. We even crack open our genetic code.

This is the story of how our fight against death has determined our fate, how it became the driving force of our evolution, how our tireless pursuit of medicine has made us modern, and even made us superhuman. This is origins. [Music]

Rockhopper Penguins, Up Close: On Location | Hostile Planet

Digging the Scrap Heap | Port Protection

View All

The Paradoxes of Life

As kids, we believed a lot of different things: from thinking that the gifts under the Christmas tree were kept there by Santa to imagining a tiny fairy that came in at the dead of night to steal the loose tooth from underneath our pillows. Most of the th…

A Story of Community and Climate | Explorers Fest

Magic, you are in the tire desert of India. We climb down from the dune, and he shows me this well. It’s a hand-dug well that is giving water not even three feet under. And there’s water there. There are several such wells peppered along the dunes. This i…

The Second Amendment | The National Constitution Center | US government and civics | Khan Academy

[Kim] Hi, this is Kim, from Khan Academy, and today I’m learning about the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear ar…

Turning Hog Fat Into Candle Light | The Boonies

[Music] In the Ozark Mountains, Joe, Ray, and Leo have managed to trap a 200lb feral hog. They must work quickly to process the animal to ensure nothing goes to waste. “A lot of people might wonder why I’m not helping him. Sometimes it’s better with only…

An Interview with a Meth Dealer | Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller

Foreign [Music] [Music] Hi, I’m Mariana. How are you doing? Fantastic! How many people are you expecting to come tonight? You have a phone full of messages. Yes, tons of them—50 messages. [Music] And everyone there, they’re trying to buy drugs from you. I…

Is this the coolest office? pt 2

Is one of my favorites here, which is “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. She’s one of my favorite authors. Another book down here is from Tony Robbins. Moving on to this desk, it was at a secret office that one of the prime ministers used when they were in of…

Our Fight Against Death | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

More Articles