Evolution Talk
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Why Water?
16 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Without water there would be no life. We are lucky. Extremely lucky that it is here at all. Especially in its liquid form. It doesn't need to be. In f...
Misconceptions About Evolution & Natural Selection
09 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of 'Evolution Talk' I am joined by a very special guest - Stephanie Keep from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Among ...
An Explosion of Cambrian Proportions
02 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the era known as the Cambrian, an era which kicked off 541 million years ago, life exploded. Natural Selection began to produce new creatures, one ...
An Appendix
26 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For years the appendix has been considered a vestigial organ. In 2007 researchers at Duke University began to take another look at the appendix. While...
Radiation and DNA
19 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What does radiation do to us exactly and why do we care? The American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller worried about it back in the 1920s.
Mendel and His Peas
12 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1865 Gregor Mendel pulled together his work on heredity in peas and produced a paper which he read to a group of his peers. Unfortunately for Mende...
Our Unique Species
05 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the last episode I asked the question 'Are we unique?' and then set about showing why it is we are not by looking at the animal kingdom. From tool ...
Are We Unique?
28 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In what ways are we special or unique? Is it because we can think, like Rene Descartes said? Or is thinking just a chemical process that directs our a...
Hairless Apes
21 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
If chimps are our closest relative why aren't we hairy like they are? The answer lies somewhere in the far distant past. Imagine how hot it must have ...
Master Switches
14 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nestled comfortably within our DNA are a set of switches. Like the light switches you casually flip on and off in your home, they are responsible for ...
The Predictive Power of Evolution
07 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
We can make broad predictive strokes when it comes to how an organism will evolve. But that's all we can do. What those changes will look like, if the...
The Strange Case of Richard Owen
31 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Every good story needs a villain. And there has been quite a few in the history of evolution theory. History has not been kind to Richard Owen. But ju...
Epigenetics
24 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 2005 biologist Michael Skinner witnessed something that shouldn't have happened. His mice were exposed to a toxin. A toxin which caused the childre...
99%
17 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever wondered why mice have been, and continue to be, science's favorite research tools it's becaus we are a lot a like. Yes, that little fo...
The Hobbits of Flores
10 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003 something was found in a large limestone cave located in Liang Bua, Flores. It was a small skull which was at first identified as being that o...
Evolutionary Psychology
03 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain why we feel the way we do in certain situations. It also looks to understand what psychological adaptations w...
The Missing Link
27 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Darwin himself never used the term 'missing link'. He wasn't concerned with a missing link but he was concerned with gaps in the fossil record. It was...
Self-Directed Evolution
20 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Mankind has only just begun to unlock the secrets hidden within our DNA. As we move from gene to gene we will begin to see how it all ties together, a...
Mitochondrial Eve
13 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from your mother. Everyone alive on earth today can trace their lineage back to Mitochondrial Eve. We know this be...
The Anthropocene
06 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Cretaceous period ended 65 million years ago as did the reign of the dinosaurs. According to the International Union of Geological Sciences, we ar...
Having a Laugh
29 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
It's probably safe to say that everyone enjoys a good laugh. But where did it come from? What is it about laughter that gave us an advantage over our ...
Punctuated Equilibrium
22 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge published a paper that immediately went viral among biologists. Gould and Eldridge pointed out, using the...
The Piltdown Man
15 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 19th century, Europe was having a grand old time when it came to fossils of ancient hominids. The problem was - nothing was being discover...
Darwin's Bulldog
08 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
On June 30, 1860 a great debate took place at the Oxford University Museum. This debate helped to launch Thomas Huxley's career as 'Darwin's Bulldog".
Neanderthalis Extinctus
01 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the last episode we came face to face with the Neanderthal. What happened to the Neanderthal? Did they die on the battlefield or did they live out ...
The Neanderthal
25 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the Neander valley, limestone miners found something which shocked them. They had found bones which they first thought belonged to a bear. Once Pro...
Genetic Drift
18 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Frog populations remained pretty much the same in Podville until the Great Fire of 2015. After the fire the population of blue frogs increased. Welcom...
Non-Overlapping Magisteria
11 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997 Professor Stephen Jay Gould published an essay in Natural History which also appeared in his book Rocks of Ages. This essay was titled 'Non-Ov...
Altruism
04 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Where does altruism come from? How did it evolve in a world ruled by 'selfish genes'?
Survival of the Fittest?
27 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The term 'Survival of the Fittest' was unleashed on the world in 1864 by Herbert Spencer when he published his work Principles of Biology. It was late...
Putting the Selection in Sex
20 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For Charles Darwin, the idea of sexual selection explained a lot of what he saw in the animal kingdom. He gave sexual selection just as much importanc...
Warm Blooded Dinosaurs
13 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986 Professor Robert Bakker, a paleontologist, published 'The Dinosaur Heresies'. According to Professor Bakker there have been waves of extinctio...
Where Are the Dinosaurs?
06 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
What killed off the dinosaurs? There are many competing theories yet there is no 'smoking gun'. There is evidence however, and with each bit of eviden...
A Whale of a Tale
30 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode of Evolution Talk is brought to you by all of those animals out there who exhibit vestigial features (which is pretty much every anima...
An Interview With Charles Darwin
23 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
To mark the occasion of Evolution Talk's 30th episode, Rick Coste steps into the past to interview Charles Darwin.
Mistakes Were Made
16 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the X-Men movies the X-Men are mutants. Mistakes were made during DNA replications that brought out features and abilities which were not present i...
Is Everything Related?
09 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Human genome project took 13 years to complete. Hundreds of scientists from all over the world were involved. What's just as amazing as the comple...
Fossil Dating
02 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
How do we date fossils? There are a few ways and in this episode we will look at a couple.
Robert Chambers
23 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Chambers' masterpiece was titled 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'. In it he explained how everything evolved. Everything from simp...
The Case of Patrick Matthew
16 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Matthew published 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture' in 1831. There were a few positive reviews but they were somewhat tepid in their praise....
The Work of WC Wells
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
William Charles Wells, in no uncertain terms, pointed out that mankind is not immune to nature's ability to modify an organism's features over time.
Unlucky Lamarck
02 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jean Baptiste Lamarck's mechanism for evolution was wrong, as history shows, and that fact has haunted his memory ever since. But ideas and theories h...
Erasmus Darwin
26 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Erasmus was a country physician. He believed that women should have access to the same education that men did, and that slavery should be abolished. H...
Hutton's Hypothesis
19 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
James Hutton saw the power of natural selection, but he didn't see how it could eventually, over vast spans of time, mold an animal into something com...
Diderot's Dream – Updated
12 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Diderot devoured the written word. It was food for his mind and he couldn't get enough of it. He was ravenous when it came to ideas. Especially when t...
Of Mermaids and Men
05 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Benoit de Maillet believed that life, all life, came from the sea. And not only did it come from the sea, but it continued to evolve into different sp...
Lucretius – Evolution's Poet
29 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the first century BC the Roman poet Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things. A poem with 7400 lines of verse that covered everything from the tinie...
The Father of Zoology
22 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Aristotle actually came close to explaining natural selection, 2200 years before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace did.
Darwin and God
15 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Darwin questioned everything when it came to the origin of species and the evolution of life here on earth. That questioning led him into some...
Darwin or Design
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As a young man, the more Charles Darwin learned about nature the more he began to question things. If species were immutable, meaning they never chang...
Darwin's Doubts
01 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout his life Charles Darwin suffered bouts of anxiety and often went off alone by himself to think. His work afforded him the perfect escape an...
The Beginning: Out of the Sea
24 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The sea was full of life a half a billion years ago. Arthropods fought to survive and there were some interesting things happening on land as well. We...
The Beginning: An Arms Race
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As predators evolved to better catch their prey, their prey evolved unique and efficient ways to avoid being eaten. It was because of this sudden arms...
The Beginning: Multicellularity Rules
10 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The reason natural selection had such a grand old-time with multicellular organisms is because it gave it something to select for. These organisms inc...
The Beginning: Sexual Reproduction
03 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
One day, millions of years ago, something occurred between two unsuspecting eukaryotes. When they bumped into one another something magical happened. ...
The Beginning: Cyanobacteria
27 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
3.5 billion years ago microbial organisms appeared on the earth. These organisms combined, split, and combined some more, until the formation of micro...
The Beginning: Life
20 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the beginning the Earth wasn't exactly a hospitable place. It was hot, volcanic, and oxygen was a rare commodity. So the question now is how did li...
Only A Theory
13 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Darwin had a hypothesis was that animals evolved due to a process he called natural selection. He strengthened his hypothesis with tests and o...
Alfred Russel Wallace
06 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 1858, Charles Darwin received a paper authored by a young naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace. In it, Darwin found that the young man had reache...
Why Darwin Matters
29 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last 150 plus years there is one subject which has caused its advocates and detractors to butt heads, often with incredulity at their opponen...
On the Origin of Species
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On November 24, 1859, "On the Origin of Species" was published. To say that it made a splash would be an understatement. It changed the world.
Darwin: The Calm Before the Storm
15 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following his return from his voyage on the Beagle, Charles settled into a life as a naturalist. On all fronts, both personal and profess...
Darwin On The HMS Beagle
08 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Darwin, at 22, had never sailed before. With his notebooks, gear, rifles, and trunks loaded, he stood on the deck of the HMS Beagle to bid Eng...
Darwin Before the Beagle
03 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Darwin will be forever known as the man who came up with the brilliant, and magnificent, idea that life evolved on this planet from a common a...
Introducing Evolution Talk!
31 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever wondered what all of the fuss was about, or how evolution works, then you've come to the right place. Over the next few weeks, months, ...