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.
19 Okt 201513min
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 deca...
12 Okt 201517min
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 spec...
5 Okt 201511min
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 mi...
28 Sep 201514min
Hairless Apes
If chimps are our closest relative why aren't we hairy like they are? The answer lies somewhere in the far distant past. Imagine how hot it must have been on the savannah after our ancestors left the ...
21 Sep 201516min
Master Switches
Nestled comfortably within our DNA are a set of switches. Like the light switches you casually flip on and off in your home, they are responsible for making you who you are. And just like that one reg...
14 Sep 201518min
The Predictive Power of Evolution
We can make broad predictive strokes when it comes to how an organism will evolve. But that's all we can do. What those changes will look like, if they happen at all, is beyond our power to know. Does...
7 Sep 201520min
The Strange Case of Richard Owen
Every good story needs a villain. And there has been quite a few in the history of evolution theory. History has not been kind to Richard Owen. But just like the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Owen h...
31 Aug 201525min
