Having a Laugh
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 ancient competitors?
Jun 29, 2015•14 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
Punctuated Equilibrium
In 1972 Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge published a paper that immediately went viral among biologists. Gould and Eldridge pointed out, using the fossil record as evidence, that evolution by natural selection worked in a series of starts and stops. There were periods of stasis where no changes occurred. They called this theory Punctuated Equilibrium.
Jun 22, 2015•11 min
The Piltdown Man
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 discovered in England. Germany had the Neanderthal and France had the Cro-Magnon. In the summer of 1912 all of that changed.
Jun 15, 2015•18 min
Darwin’s Bulldog
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".
Jun 08, 2015•14 min
Neanderthalis Extinctus
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 their lives in a quiet struggle for survival while modern humans settled around them? Was they killed... or assimilated?
Jun 01, 2015•16 min
The Neanderthal
In the Neander valley, limestone miners found something which shocked them. They had found bones which they first thought belonged to a bear. Once Professor Schaafhausen had seen the bones he recognized them for what they were. Shortly after that the Neanderthal Man stepped into the spotlight. Were Neanderthals our early ancestors or were they a separate species?
May 25, 2015•14 min
Genetic Drift
Frog populations remained pretty much the same in Podville until the Great Fire of 2015. After the fire the population of blue frogs increased. Welcome to genetic drift, the subject of this week's episode of 'Evolution Talk'.
May 18, 2015•13 min
Non-Overlapping Magisteria
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-Overlapping Magisteria’. It’s commonly referred to as NOMA. The concept behind NOMA is that science and religion operate in two different, non-overlapping, realms.
May 11, 2015•18 min
Altruism
Where does altruism come from? How did it evolve in a world ruled by 'selfish genes'?
May 04, 2015•18 min
Survival of the Fittest?
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 later picked up by Charles Darwin who used it himself in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species five years later. But is it fair to say that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is synonymous with evolution by natural selection? In this episode of Evolution Talk we explore this very question.
Apr 27, 2015•13 min
Putting the Selection in Sex
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 importance as natural selection.
Apr 20, 2015•13 min
Warm Blooded Dinosaurs
In 1986 Professor Robert Bakker, a paleontologist, published 'The Dinosaur Heresies'. According to Professor Bakker there have been waves of extinction, and these extinction events mainly attacked, or affected, one particular type of animal... warm blooded animals.
Apr 13, 2015•11 min
Where Are the Dinosaurs?
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 evidence comes another theory. Dinosaurs didn’t disappear overnight. It took a few millions years for them to die out. Perhaps six million years.
Apr 06, 2015•13 min
A Whale of a Tale
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 animal out there). Our DNA contains traces of our past - switches in our genes that have either been shut off or turned over the years while natural selection’s fingers hovers over the controls.
Mar 30, 2015•12 min
An Interview With Charles Darwin
To mark the occasion of Evolution Talk's 30th episode, Rick Coste steps into the past to interview Charles Darwin.
Mar 23, 2015•15 min
Mistakes Were Made
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 in the population prior to their births. Defects which enhanced their chances of survival.
Mar 16, 2015•11 min
Is Everything Related?
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 completion of the project is the story that it tells when you begin to compare it with other chapters in the book of life.
Mar 09, 2015•12 min
Fossil Dating
How do we date fossils? There are a few ways and in this episode we will look at a couple.
Mar 02, 2015•12 min
Robert Chambers
Robert Chambers' masterpiece was titled 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'. In it he explained how everything evolved. Everything from simple, less complex forms, to more complex forms over time.
Feb 23, 2015•18 min
The Case of Patrick Matthew
Patrick Matthew published 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture' in 1831. There were a few positive reviews but they were somewhat tepid in their praise. Only a couple reviewers happened to notice something else that Matthew had mentioned in his book. A certain passage that appeared in the book’s appendix. This passage would would later catch the eyes of Charles Darwin.
Feb 16, 2015•18 min
The Work of WC Wells
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.
Feb 09, 2015•13 min
Unlucky Lamarck
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 have ways of being resurrected and, in recent years, there are hints out there that Lamarck wasn’t completely off base when he proposed his theory for the evolution of species.
Feb 02, 2015•19 min
Erasmus Darwin
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. He also believed that life evolved from a single filament that wiggled out of the mud in the distant past.
Jan 26, 2015•17 min
Hutton’s Hypothesis
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 completely different. That would have to wait until Charles Darwin entered the scene over 50 years later.
Jan 19, 2015•14 min
Diderot’s Dream – Updated
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 those ideas took him into places that others feared to tread.
Jan 12, 2015•16 min
Of Mermaids and Men
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 species as it encountered different environments. To present these ideas would be dangerous to him so he wrote it as a work of fiction called Telliamed.
Jan 05, 2015•20 min
Lucretius – Evolution’s Poet
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 tiniest particles of matter and how they move, as well as the nature of time and space, consciousness, mortality, and the arrival of life from animals to man.
Dec 29, 2014•15 min
The Father of Zoology
Aristotle actually came close to explaining natural selection, 2200 years before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace did.
Dec 22, 2014•16 min
Darwin and God
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 pretty dark places. As he grew more and more certain that nature was fully capable of producing the abundance of life around us without the assistance of a deity, the more he became afraid to say anything on the subject.
Dec 15, 2014•14 min
Darwin or Design
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 changed, then how was it that breeders were able to change the forms of dogs or pigeons? What if something similar occurred in nature? According to William Paley nature required a designer. Charles began to think that Nature was the designer. A blind designer with no goal in mind at all.
Dec 08, 2014•16 min
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