In 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

Stephen 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

Imagine 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

Just 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

It 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

If 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 to do.  It had two strategies to chose from.  They are known as the r and K selection estrategies.

For show notes and more, please visit https://EvolutionTalk.com

How 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

A 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

We 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

In 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