Diderot’s Dream – Updated

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Diderot’s Dream – Updated

FromEvolution Talk

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Length:

16 minutes

Released:

Jan 12, 2015

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

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.

Released:

Jan 12, 2015

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

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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Darwin Before the Beagle: Charles Darwin will be forever known as the man who came up with the brilliant, and magnificent, idea that life evolved on this planet from a common ancestor and that the driver, or the mechanism behind this, is natural selection. by Evolution Talk
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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... by Evolution Talk
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The Beginning: Cyanobacteria: 3.5 billion years ago microbial organisms appeared on the earth. These organisms combined, split, and combined some more, until the formation of microbes and single-celled algae. One of these single-celled algae-like organisms were cyanobacteria. by Evolution Talk
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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... by Evolution Talk
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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,... by Evolution Talk
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Alfred Russel Wallace: In 1858, Charles Darwin received a paper authored by a young naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace. In it, Darwin found that the young man had reached the same conclusions about evolution that he had been working to prove for the previous two decades. by Evolution Talk
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The Beginning: Sexual Reproduction: One day, millions of years ago, something occurred between two unsuspecting eukaryotes. When they bumped into one another something magical happened. They both left that encounter slightly different than they had been before. What passed from one to... by Evolution Talk
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Darwin On The HMS Beagle: Charles Darwin, at 22, had never sailed before. With his notebooks, gear, rifles, and trunks loaded, he stood on the deck of the HMS Beagle to bid England farewell. The date was 12/27/1831. by Evolution Talk
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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". by Evolution Talk
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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... by Evolution Talk
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Only A Theory: Charles Darwin had a hypothesis was that animals evolved due to a process he called natural selection. He strengthened his hypothesis with tests and observation. Evolution by natural selection has held up to every test. It is because of this that it... by Evolution Talk
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Darwin: The Calm Before the Storm: In the years following his return from his voyage on the Beagle, Charles settled into a life as a naturalist. On all fronts, both personal and professional, things were looking up for Charles. His days were spent pouring over his notes and the... by Evolution Talk
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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. by Evolution Talk
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The Father of Zoology: Aristotle actually came close to explaining natural selection, 2200 years before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace did. by Evolution Talk
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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... by Evolution Talk
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The Beginning: Multicellularity Rules: The reason natural selection had such a grand old-time with multicellular organisms is because it gave it something to select for. These organisms increased in size, moved into new areas for food, and protected themselves against the environment. It... by Evolution Talk
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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... by Evolution Talk
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The Beginning: An Arms Race: As predators evolved to better catch their prey, their prey evolved unique and efficient ways to avoid being eaten. It was because of this sudden arms race that we see the proliferation of body forms that mark the Cambrian Era. The real winners were... by Evolution Talk
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The Beginning: Life: In the beginning the Earth wasn’t exactly a hospitable place. It was hot, volcanic, and oxygen was a rare commodity. So the question now is how did life emerge from these conditions? We are still asking this 4.6 billion years later. Darwin proposed... by Evolution Talk
12 min listen
On the Origin of Species: On November 24, 1859, "On the Origin of Species" was published. To say that it made a splash would be an understatement. It changed the world. by Evolution Talk
18 min listen
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... by Evolution Talk
12 min listen
The Beginning: Out of the Sea: The sea was full of life a half a billion years ago. Arthropods fought to survive and there were some interesting things happening on land as well. We have here our first plants - and they spread like wildfire. The quiet life on land enjoyed by the... by Evolution Talk
15 min listen
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... by Evolution Talk
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Fossil Dating: How do we date fossils? There are a few ways and in this episode we will look at a couple. by Evolution Talk
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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 this mean that theories about evolution are... by Evolution Talk
20 min listen
Darwin’s Doubts: Throughout his life Charles Darwin suffered bouts of anxiety and often went off alone by himself to think. His work afforded him the perfect escape and he dove into it at every opportunity. by Evolution Talk
13 min listen
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. by Evolution Talk
17 min listen
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. by Evolution Talk
16 min listen

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Diderot’s Dream – Updated

Diderot’s Dream – Updated

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from Evolution Talk