Includes bibliographic references.

How might the origins of our species inform the way we think about our planet? At a point of unparalleled crisis, can human ingenuity save us from ourselves? Much-loved writer and broadcaster Ramona Koval travels the globe in a quest to answer these difficult questions and more. She speaks with an eminent paleo-archeologist in the Republic of Georgia, meets the next generation of robots in Berlin, attends a transhumanist conference in California, and explores a cave in southern France before talking with the world's leading authority on cave art. And throughout, she returns to her quick-witted, ever-engaging youngest granddaughter, Layla, whose development in infancy spurs Koval to find out what makes us human, what separates us from the other apes.