Darwin’s Doubts
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 and he dove into it at every opportunity.
Dec 01, 2014•13 min
Evolution Talk
Everything you wanted to know about evolution by natural selection in short, easy to digest, episodes. Hosted, and produced by writer Rick Coste.
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Episodes
The Beginning: Out of the Sea
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 have here our first plants - and they spread like wildfire. The quiet life on land enjoyed by the plants looked appealing to that first vertebrate that poked its head out of the water as it supported itself with its new backbone and fins.
Nov 24, 2014•15 min
The Beginning: An Arms Race
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 race that we see the proliferation of body forms that mark the Cambrian Era. The real winners were the Trilobites.
Nov 17, 2014•11 min
The Beginning: Multicellularity Rules
The reason natural selection had such a grand old-time with multicellular organisms is because it gave it something to select for. These organisms increased in size, moved into new areas for food, and protected themselves against the environment. It is during this period that some peculiar forms began to emerge.
Nov 10, 2014•12 min
The Beginning: Sexual Reproduction
One day, millions of years ago, something occurred between two unsuspecting eukaryotes. When they bumped into one another something magical happened. They both left that encounter slightly different than they had been before. What passed from one to the other was a few microscopic bits of genetic material. Natural selection had new toys to play with.
Nov 03, 2014•16 min
The Beginning: Cyanobacteria
3.5 billion years ago microbial organisms appeared on the earth. These organisms combined, split, and combined some more, until the formation of microbes and single-celled algae. One of these single-celled algae-like organisms were cyanobacteria.
Oct 27, 2014•13 min
The Beginning: Life
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 life emerge from these conditions? We are still asking this 4.6 billion years later. Darwin proposed a primordial pond that was teeming with the just the right materials for life to form. If so, what happened in this little pond 3.9 billion years ago set the stage for everything the followed.
Oct 20, 2014•12 min
Only A Theory
Charles Darwin had a hypothesis was that animals evolved due to a process he called natural selection. He strengthened his hypothesis with tests and observation. Evolution by natural selection has held up to every test. It is because of this that it long ago graduated from being a hypothesis to being a theory. It is a valid explanation for the fact of evolution.
Oct 13, 2014•15 min
Alfred Russel Wallace
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 reached the same conclusions about evolution that he had been working to prove for the previous two decades.
Oct 06, 2014•15 min
Why Darwin Matters
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 opponents stance, and sometimes with animosity. That subject of course is evolution by natural selection. But what does it mean?
Sep 29, 2014•15 min
On the Origin of Species
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.
Sep 22, 2014•18 min
Darwin: The Calm Before the Storm
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 professional, things were looking up for Charles. His days were spent pouring over his notes and the specimens he had collected from his five year voyage. He would take long walks to gather his thoughts and rarely left Down House unless he had to attend a meeting. He wasn't in any rush to publish his book however. He knew that a possible backlash was in s...
Sep 15, 2014•12 min
Darwin On The HMS Beagle
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 England farewell. The date was 12/27/1831.
Sep 08, 2014•14 min
Darwin Before the Beagle
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 ancestor and that the driver, or the mechanism behind this, is natural selection.
Sep 03, 2014•16 min
Introducing Evolution Talk!
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, and years, we will look at Darwin's revolutionary theory and what it means to the life we see around us.
Aug 31, 2014•6 min
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