Evolution Talk

Informações:

Sinopsis

Voice artists, music, and effects bring Charles Darwin and others to life in this educational introduction to the oldest story ever told. Brought to you by Rick Coste Productions.

Episodios

  • Cladistics

    11/01/2016 Duración: 12min

    A cladogram will show those animals that share similar form and structures. It’s not about animals which have evolved from one another. In this episode we are going to look at clades and cladistics. We will also create a cladogram... an audio cladogram.

  • An Interview With Jonathan Tweet

    04/01/2016 Duración: 16min

    Jonathan Tweet has authored a very remarkable book for children. He wasn’t just trying to make evolution and its concepts easier to understand for kids in elementary school, Jonathan was shooting for an even younger audience. The result is the book 'Grandmother Fish'.

  • Are We Still Evolving?

    28/12/2015 Duración: 14min

    There are some who say that evolution by natural selection, at least when it applies to you and I, is no longer a driving force. The argument is that we are no longer evolving and that we’ve pushed natural selection aside and taken the reign of our own development.

  • Your Brain

    21/12/2015 Duración: 19min

    Over the course of billions of years a small region of specialized cells began to develop sensory organs. These light sensitive cells slowly developed into eyes. Behind them another organ began to develop. It’s still there, buried beneath everything else that has developed to become your brain today.

  • Homo Naledi

    14/12/2015 Duración: 22min

    In 2013 a secret that had been hidden for hundreds of thousands of years in a South African cave was discovered. Bones... many bones. Upon inspection by a team of specialists a picture began to emerge. At the center of it all is a new species of hominin - Homo Naledi.

  • The Evolution of Music

    07/12/2015 Duración: 23min

    In this episode of Evolution Talk we take a look at some of the theories which have attempted to trace the evolution of music, from Charles Darwin to philosopher Daniel Dennett.

  • Math and Maupertuis

    30/11/2015 Duración: 11min

    Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was fascinated with the origin and evolution of life. If there was a creator, finding the keys to his work had to involve careful study of the facts and an examination of the natural world with critical eyes.

  • Coevolution

    23/11/2015 Duración: 12min

    Coevolution often involves an arms race. You have a predator and prey both upping the game. Like a bat and a moth. Each one trying to outdo the other. If the change in one organism is linked to a change in another organism, genetically speaking, then coevolution is said to have occurred.

  • Why Water?

    16/11/2015 Duración: 11min

    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 fact, as far as the universe is concerned, water in its liquid form is almost a rarity.

  • Misconceptions About Evolution & Natural Selection

    09/11/2015 Duración: 15min

    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 her many talents as a writer and educator, Stephanie also loves to correct misconceptions that involve the science and study of evolution.

  • An Explosion of Cambrian Proportions

    02/11/2015 Duración: 15min

    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 after the other. A parade of unique forms and shapes that had never been seen before.

  • An Appendix

    26/10/2015 Duración: 13min

    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 taking their closer look something interesting began to emerge. Something that had always been there but had remained hidden, or unobserved for centuries. Your appendix, that little organ that we so often remove and forget, just might be useful after all.

  • Radiation and DNA

    19/10/2015 Duración: 13min

    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

    12/10/2015 Duración: 17min

    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 Mendel, the world would't be ready to listen until decades after his death.

  • Our Unique Species

    05/10/2015 Duración: 11min

    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 use to altruism it appears that we are not as special as we might think. But, of all of earth’s creatures we seem to be the only species cursed with the ability to ask ‘why ?’ We alone appear to have the ability to look back into the past to help us to explain the present and to prepare for the future. Is it, as Darwin said, only a matter of degree, or is it something more?

  • Are We Unique?

    28/09/2015 Duración: 14min

    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 actions as La Mettrie would have us believe? You might be shocked to know that we don’t really know. Science hasn’t been able to touch it.

  • Hairless Apes

    21/09/2015 Duración: 16min

    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 been on the savannah after our ancestors left the safety of the trees to hunt for food. Homo Erectus did this almost 2 million years ago, and perhaps as recently as 70,000 years ago. They made their homes on the savannahs. They ran, played, and hunted. They fought for survival. And one of the byproducts of all of that activity is sweat. Wouldn’t it be a benefit to have less hair?

  • Master Switches

    14/09/2015 Duración: 18min

    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 making you who you are. And just like that one regulating switch which controls the current of electricity to your home, you have one which controls certain sets of genes. It’s called the PAX gene.

  • The Predictive Power of Evolution

    07/09/2015 Duración: 20min

    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 they happen at all, is beyond our power to know. Does this mean that theories about evolution are outside of the realm of true science?

  • The Strange Case of Richard Owen

    31/08/2015 Duración: 25min

    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 just like the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Owen had his good side. Not that his good side cared about the proper treatment of his fellow man, his good side cared more about the proper treatment, and appreciation of, science.

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