Today Razib talks to Kyle Harper, a historian, professor of classics and letters at the University of Oklahoma, and a member of the Fractal Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute whose work integrates the natural sciences into the study of the human past. A native of Norman, Oklahoma, he earned his bachelor's degree in letters from the University of Oklahoma before completing his MA and PhD at Harvard University. Harper's research spans late antiquity, the Roman Empire, environmental history, and the historical impact of infectious diseases and climate change on human societies. His authored books include Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (2011), From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013), The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire (2017) and Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History (2021). Today Razib and Harper talk about his latest book, The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth from the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction (2026).
In their discussion of The Last Animal, Razib and Harper explored the profound history of human-animal relationships and our ongoing influence on global biodiversity. Harper detailed how human activities—from early megafauna hunting and livestock domestication to modern industrial land use—have historically driven mass extinction events and fundamentally reshaped terrestrial and marine ecosystems. While dismissing de-extinction as an unscalable novelty, he emphasized that the future of conservation depends on practical re-wilding efforts and deliberate policy choices that protect natural habitats while balancing complex human needs.
