An Appendix

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...

Radiation and DNA

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. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others on the front page...

Mendel and His Peas

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. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can...

Our Unique Species

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...

Are We Unique?

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...