This book is about how climate science works and why you should absolutely trust some of its conclusions and absolutely distrust others. Climate change raises new, foundational challenges in science. It requires us to question what we know and how we know it. The subject is important for society but the science is young and …

Description: Darwin was a writer! We all are familiar with his 490 page “abstract”, aka “On the Origin of Species”. But he left a far wider, and wonderful, paper trail! Writing to himself in his notebooks, to others in correspondence and a whole library of books, especially on botanical topics, that together help us explore …

The Great “Monkey Trial” – State of Tennessee vs. John Scopes In the long , hot summer of 1925 America was transfixed by the first real” trial of the 20th century” when the State of Tennessee brought criminal charges against an unknown young high school teacher named John Scopes. His crime? He taught about the …

Most people are familiar with hummingbirds and the balletic ways in which they feed on flowers. But did you know that these kinds of relationships first evolved at least 50 million years ago? And that nowadays at least 64 families of birds include species that act as pollinators, for tens of thousands of different plants? …

Beyond DNA is a journey through uncharted territory, advancing new ways of thinking about evolution and adaptation. For nearly a hundred years evolutionary biologists have understood that evolution proceeds by substituting better genes for less good ones. But consensus is growing that this is not the whole story: geneticists are now revealing that spores, sperm, …

The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship, science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship’s biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship …

Dr. Leslie S Jones of Valdosta State University will present the evidence that the different shades of human skin color—from light pink to dark brown—are evolutionary adaptations to the varying intensity of ultraviolet radiation in different parts of the world. Topics such as types of selection, the bottleneck effect, and the founder’s effect will be …

Everyone knows that the United States is not among the top tier… or even middle tier when it comes to understanding and accepting evolution. But why? This talk will briefly explore the “how did we get here?” of evolution acceptance in the United States, before zooming in on one of the most maddening causes (and …