Evolution Talk
162 episodes - English - Latest episode: 13 days ago - ★★★★★ - 186 ratingsEverything 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 Eclipse: Neo-Lamarkism
December 12, 2022 06:00 - 11 minutes - 15.4 MBIn Part 2 of a 4 Part Series on "The Eclipse of Darwinism", we take a look at "Neo-Lamarkism" as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamark. Proponents hoped it would push Darwinian evolution aside as the principal force behind the evolution of species. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.c...
The Eclipse of Darwinism
December 05, 2022 06:00 - 10 minutes - 14.3 MBAfter Charles Darwin's death, the period from the 1880s to the 1920s is known as "The Eclipse of Darwinism". Coined by Julian Huxley, it was a time where alternative theories to explain evolution sought to push Natural Selection aside. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com
Speciation Pt. 2
November 28, 2022 06:00 - 8 minutes - 11.7 MBIn this continuation of the look at speciation we began in the last episode, we will tackle some more "not so obvious" causes. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com
Speciation Pt. 1
November 21, 2022 06:00 - 14 minutes - 19.7 MBIt's been awhile since we took a look at speciation and its causes. In the first of two parts we'll jump right in with Allopatric speciation. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com
One Cell's Junk
November 14, 2022 05:00 - 12 minutes - 17.1 MBFor decades, ever since we first began to study and understand our cell’s biology and the coding sequences of DNA, we saw bits and pieces that didn’t seem to make sense. Strings of DNA that didn’t appear to do anything at all. It appears, they do quite a lot. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https:/...
Orthogenesis
November 07, 2022 05:00 - 11 minutes - 15.5 MBIn 1893, the German zoologist Wilhelm Haacke published Design and Inheritance. In it, Haacke introduced the concept of orthogenesis. According to Haacke, changes in organisms are directed toward perfection. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated...
Gone Forever
October 31, 2022 05:00 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBConsider this episode a memorial to the millions of extinct animals that once walked the earth long before we inherited it. Like fragments of novels and poems that have been found over the years, hinting at what might have been, we have fossils and shards of bones to tell us what once was. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your local bookstore and ask them to order a copy. For show notes...
Eureka Moments
October 24, 2022 05:00 - 10 minutes - 15 MBGreat idea don't spring out of a vacuum, but they do sometimes seem to. In this episode we take a look at a few. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Evolution Talk - The Book
October 15, 2022 05:00 - 1 minute - 1.5 MBEvolution Talk - the book is now available at your local bookstore! If you love the show, and have listened to the last 100 episodes this book is for you. If you’re a student, or want to learn more about evolution by natural selection it’s the perfect introduction. If you’re a teacher, your class will love it. Just like the show, it’s meant to be accessible and easy to grasp. You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page of EvolutionTalk.com, or call your lo...
The Eggplant of Life
October 10, 2022 08:30 - 12 minutes - 17.4 MBWhat came first, the chicken or the egg? It's an age old question. How about another one? What stored genetic information first? DNA or RNA? For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Bringing Back the Mammoth
October 03, 2022 05:00 - 12 minutes - 16.9 MBColossal Biosciences hopes to reintroduce the wooly mammoth to the world, thousands of years after the last one walked the earth. If successful they will have paved the way for a "de-extinction pipeline" for other lost species. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
A Gut Feeling
September 26, 2022 05:00 - 11 minutes - 16.3 MBEvolution by Natural Selection has assisted many amazing symbiotic relationships. Here's one you may not be familiar with, and which you're a participant in. It involves your gut microbiome. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste Evolution Talk's TeePublic Store
The Immortal Gene
September 19, 2022 05:00 - 9 minutes - 13.4 MBIn 1976, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene. It made exactly the splash he’d intended, but people were confused. How can genes be selfish? For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Hitting Replay
September 12, 2022 05:00 - 13 minutes - 18 MBStephen Jay Gould once asked what would happen if the evolution of life on Earth were to take the same path if we had the ability to start it all over again? In this episode we'll ask the question again ... For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
The Joy of Mutation
September 05, 2022 05:00 - 9 minutes - 13.6 MBImagine a world without mutants. I don’t mean those super-powered heroes that populate the comics and movies from Marvel. I’m talking about you, me, and everyone else we know. We are all mutants trying to survive. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Jaws!
August 29, 2022 05:00 - 8 minutes - 12.1 MBJust what does the act of chewing have to do with brain size and evolution? Perhaps nothing or everything. A team of researchers is helping us to understand exactly how much energy is involved when we use our jaws. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Evolution Talk is Now a Book
June 14, 2022 05:00 - 44 seconds - 1.05 MBI'm excited to announce that the Evolution Talk book will be published by Prometheus Books on Oct. 2022! The Oldest Story Ever Told can now sit on your book shelf. You can preorder the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or anywhere else you buy your books. You can also do so through the links here: https://evolutiontalk.com/
Love is Like... Hydrogen?
May 09, 2022 05:00 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBIt has long been believed that an early oxygenation even gave rise to the eukaryotes. Perhaps oxygen had nothing to do with it. A castle deep beneath the ocean waves might hold the answer. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com
A Selection Strategy
September 20, 2021 05:00 - 9 minutes - 13.7 MBIf you were somehow in control of repopulating and regenerating an area that had essentially been wiped clean of life, how would you do it? With limited resources at your disposal would you decide to throw all your effort into producing as many offspring as possible, as quickly as possible? Or would you take a different tactic and produce a one or two offspring, protecting and nourishing them until they can take care of themselves? Both strategies might work. And that’s what nature had ...
A Bit of Astrobiology
September 06, 2021 05:00 - 12 minutes - 17.8 MBHow do we find life in a galaxy, or galaxies, far far away while sitting here on Earth? It’s not just by looking through telescopes or sending probes. Those will tell us a few things, but not everything. We need a multi-disciplinary approach. One that combines astronomy, biology, oceanography and chemistry - and that’s just to name a few. Enter Astrobiology. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Carrion My Wayward Plant
August 23, 2021 05:00 - 8 minutes - 12 MBA friend of mine recently posed a question on his podcast about carrion plants. If you don't know what one is, the carrion plant emits an odor that is very similar to rotting flesh.This odor attracts flies which serve to pollinate the flower. The question posed on my friend’s show was how? How does the plant know to do this? For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Artificial Selection
March 30, 2021 05:00 - 12 minutes - 16.8 MBWe don’t know why dogs became man’s best friend, but we have some ideas. And those ideas take us back anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.They are perhaps the perfect visual example when it comes to witnessing the power of the gene pool and how a selection process, whether natural or artificial, can affect it. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Meet LUCA
March 09, 2021 06:00 - 11 minutes - 16.4 MBIn this episode I want to introduce you to someone. Actually, this someone is a thing, and this thing wiggled its way through life between two to four billion years ago. Listener, meet LUCA. Your Last Universal Common Ancestor. LUCA, meet your descendant. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Cro-Magnon
February 02, 2021 06:00 - 13 minutes - 18.9 MBAs a kid I was fascinated by the idea of cavemen. Of course, all I had to go on were a few poorly produced movies that depicted cavemen battling dinosaurs, which of course never happened. I even owned an early plastic model of a Cro-Magnon man and woman. To me the Cro-Magnon were indistinguishable from the Neanderthals. As far as I knew they both lived in caves, wore skins of the animals they slaughtered and fought with spears. Spoiler alert - we really don’t refer to them as Cro-Mag...
The Cosmic Calendar
January 05, 2021 06:00 - 11 minutes - 16.4 MBMany years ago, in 1977, astronomer and author Carl Sagan offered us the concept of a “Cosmic Calendar” in his book The Dragons of Eden. It’s a fun thought experiment in which you take the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang until now, and represent it as calendar year. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Dating Fossils Again
December 22, 2020 06:00 - 12 minutes - 17.8 MBIt's time to look at fossil dating again! The last episode mentioned two dating methods used to estimate how old the Homo Naledi bones found the Rising Star cave system might be. To do so, researchers used a Uranium-thorium method as well as electron spin resonance, or “ESR”. Let's take a brief look at what each of these entail. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Homo Naledi 2020
December 08, 2020 06:00 - 13 minutes - 18.5 MBQuite a few episodes back, I produced a show that looked at a new hominin species discovered in 2013. This history-changing discovery happened when paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, assisted by cavers Rick Hunter and Steve Tucker, explored the Rising Star Cave in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. I thought it’s about time we revisited that earlier hominin species. Think of it as an update on what science has to say about them now. For show notes and more, please visit https://Evolutio...
Evolution Does Not Produce Perfection
November 24, 2020 06:00 - 11 minutes - 15.7 MBNatural selection isn't perfect. It only cares that something works. If it works and is not harmful to its host, then that something is passed on. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Is Evolution Random?
November 10, 2020 06:00 - 12 minutes - 17.4 MBThere is more than random mutations when it comes to evolution by natural selection. You also have to look at other variables outside of a genetic mutation. Variables such as the environment the organism lives in, the challenges it has to face, and its ability to find food. For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
Series 2 Update
November 03, 2020 06:00 - 1 minute - 2.74 MBPlease join me for a brief update on the show, it's future, and what you can do to help.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
October 27, 2020 05:00 - 11 minutes - 15.3 MBEvolution by Natural Selection is a beautiful theory. But as wonderful a theory as it is, it does have its detractors. One argument states that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Is this true? For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com Written, Produced, & Narrated by: Rick Coste
The Human Eye
January 28, 2020 06:00 - 9 minutes - 12.7 MBEvolution by natural selection can build complex features through small, incremental changes. But can it build an eye?
Denisovans
January 21, 2020 06:00 - 8 minutes - 12 MBCaves hide many things. Be it shards of glass, arrowheads... or bones. It's to whom these bones might have belonged to which often leads us on a path to great discoveries... and forgotten 'cousins'.
Survival of the Fittest Part 2
January 15, 2020 11:32 - 12 minutes - 17.8 MBConsider this a 'lost episode' of Evolution Talk. In it I talk with Stephanie Keep of BiteScis.org about the origins and misconceptions around the term 'survival of the fittest'.
Update: Video Series
August 14, 2019 20:06 - 58 seconds - 1.5 MBThere is now a new way to enjoy the show. A video series is being created to add visuals to the podcast. Learn more at EvolutionTalk.com !
Mary Anning
February 22, 2016 06:00 - 13 minutes - 19.3 MBIn 1811 , or 1812, a young girl by the name of Mary Anning, along with her little brother, happened upon an incredible find while digging around the cliffs of Lyme Regis in England. It was a skull. A very large skull.
Rosalind Franklin
February 08, 2016 06:00 - 14 minutes - 19.7 MBIt’s safe to say, and very few would disagree, that without Rosalind Franklin the double helix structure would not have been discovered when it was, nor perhaps by the same team of discoverers.
An Interview With Emma Darwin
January 25, 2016 06:00 - 14 minutes - 19.6 MBWay back in Episode 30 I stepped into a time machine and traveled back to 1869 in order to interview Charles Darwin. This time around I brought someone forward in time... his wife Emma Darwin.
Convergent Evolution
January 18, 2016 06:00 - 13 minutes - 19.2 MBConvergent evolution has shown us that nature will find similar solutions under similar conditions. So too might it be on other planets. Life might not look that much different that it does here
Cladistics
January 11, 2016 06:00 - 12 minutes - 17.3 MBA 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
January 04, 2016 06:00 - 16 minutes - 22.4 MBJonathan 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?
December 28, 2015 06:00 - 14 minutes - 20.5 MBThere 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
December 21, 2015 06:00 - 19 minutes - 27.2 MBOver 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
December 14, 2015 06:00 - 22 minutes - 30.9 MBIn 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
December 07, 2015 06:00 - 23 minutes - 32.8 MBIn 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
November 30, 2015 06:00 - 11 minutes - 15.4 MBPierre-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
November 23, 2015 06:00 - 12 minutes - 17.6 MBCoevolution 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?
November 16, 2015 06:00 - 11 minutes - 16.2 MBWithout 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
November 09, 2015 06:00 - 15 minutes - 20.8 MBIn 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
November 02, 2015 06:00 - 15 minutes - 21.6 MBIn 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.