We were apes before we were humans. But humans were the onetime apes who ultimately mastered fire and cooked.

Primatologist and anthropologist Richard Wrangham says that in evolutionary terms, that made all the difference. And not just because it put flambé on the menu.

Fire meant proto-humans could cook. Cooking, he says, meant they could get dense, empowering nourishment. Then came bigger brains, a different body and — voila! — homo sapiens. Complete, he says, with a social structure built around that fire.

This hour, On Point: Fire, cooking, and human evolution.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Richard Wrangham joins us from Seattle, Wash. He’s professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University and a primatologist who has spent four decades studying chimpanzee behavior and what it tells us about human evolution. His new book is “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.”

You can read an excerpt from “Catching Fire” at NYTimes.com.

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Everybody’s talking evolution these days. Way beyond biology and into evolutionary psychology — how human behavior has grown out of prehistoric imperatives.

Philosopher Denis Dutton is taking another step. He’s reaching out to link evolution and art.

Dutton makes the case that art has been elemental to the ascent of humankind — linking cave drawings, natural selection, and Picasso. Mating habits, sexual selection and Pavarotti. Art, he argues, is not just sublime. It’s instinct, from cave to concert hall.

This hour, On Point: Philosopher Denis Dutton on evolution and the art instinct.

You can join the conversation. Does it ring true to you? Art as essential to human evolution? As elemental as our opposable thumb? Would we have been humans without it?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Denis Dutton, professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and founding editor of the Journal of Philosophy and Literature. He is also the founder and editor of the website Arts & Letters Daily. His new book is “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution.”

Photo by Monkeyc.net/Flickr

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Pigeons aren’t in line to win many popularity contests. Dismissed as drab pests with few redeeming qualities, the ubiquitous birds have earned the nasty nickname “rats with wings.”

Not fair, says Courtney Humphries, author of the new book, “Superdove.”

Pigeons, she says, were the first bird to be domesticated. They brought Noah the good news, inspired Charles Darwin, and have served bravely in war. What’s more, we humans have made them what they are today.

This hour, a new book reassesses the humble pigeon.

- Jane Clayson, guest host

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Guests:

Joining us in our studio is Courtney Humphries, author of “Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan… and the World.” She’s also a science writer who has written for numerous publications, including Newsweek, Harvard Magazine, and Technology Review.

Joining us from Gilroy, California is John Heppner, president of the National Pigeon Association. He has been breeding pigeons for over fifty years and has won “Master Breeder” awards for six breeds of pigeon

Joining us from Bella Vista, Arkansas is Laura Dodson, president of the Argyle Civic Association in Hollywood, California. She has led the effort to control the pigeon population in Hollywood through the use of birth control.

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Read an excerpt from “Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan … And the World.”

Mike Huckabee may not believe in evolution, but Neil Shubin does. He’s been there and seen it in the fossil record of hundreds of millions of years, from the Arctic to rural Pennsylvania.

Now the University of Chicago paleontologist wants to introduce you to the ancestors: worms and reptiles, and, above all, the fish whose prehistoric forms still shape your ears and nose and knees and even hiccups today.

This hour On Point: our evolutionary journey from the seas to stand-up primate, and getting to know you inner fish, with paleontologist Neil Shubin.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Neil Shubin, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, he is the author of “Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.”