Sep 25, 2026 · 28 min
Grass reshaped Earth, diets, and human evolution
Grass Apes
The episode reframes an overlooked plant as a force that helped shape planetary ecosystems, staple foods, animal life, and human bodies.
- 1Grasses adapted to cooler, drier climates and became major ecological forces across the planet.
- 2Humans rely on grass seeds for staples including wheat, rice, corn, oats, and sugarcane.
- 3Grasslands may have influenced bipedalism while still shaping human sensory and microbial experience.
Don't miss
David George Haskell connects the ordinary act of lying in grass with softened sound, calming aromas, soil microbes, and fungi.
The brief
Grass is easy to overlook, yet biologist and writer David George Haskell argues that its spread across cooler, drier landscapes transformed the planet.
Its defenses make leaves difficult for humans to digest, but the nutrient-rich seeds of grasses became the basis of wheat, rice, corn, oats, and sugarcane.
The episode connects grasslands to human evolution, exploring whether open habitats favored bipedalism, freed hands, and more efficient walking.
Haskell’s most intimate turn comes in the grass itself: its softened sounds, calming aromas, soil microbes, and fungi make lying down biologically meaningful.
The result is a portrait of grass not as scenery, but as an ecological and evolutionary force still embedded in human life.
Featuring
David George Haskell
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