Tag Archives: Evolution

Podcasts, Reviews, Science

Science Podcast: Views Of Magnetars, When Human Brains Got Complex

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Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol about magnetars—highly magnetized neutron stars. A recent intense outburst of gamma rays from a nearby galaxy has given astronomers a whole new view on these mysterious magnetic monsters. 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6bt9US2rhXZKQakDOecMk0

Also on this week’s show, Christoph Zollikofer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich, talks about the evolution of humanlike brains. His team’s work with brain-case fossils suggests the complex brains we carry around today were not present in the early hominins to leave Africa, but later developed in the cousins they left behind. 

Analysis, Psychology, Society, Videos

Conspiracy Theories: ‘Why People Are So Attracted?’

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Belief in conspiracy theories is far more widespread than the stereotypes that dominate pop culture. Recently, QAnon, Covid-19 and 5G theories have gained traction and criticism while less controversial conspiracies like the faked moon landing have persisted for decades. We all share hardwired evolutionary traits that make us vulnerable to them, from the way we assign truth to new information to our tendency to find patterns in unrelated phenomena. But if we’re all potentially susceptible to conspiracy theories, how can we manage these cognitive shortcuts?

Evolution, Plants, Reviews, Videos

Carnivorous Plants: The Evolutionary Success Of The ‘Sundews’ (Video)

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Covered in long, sticky tentacles, the Sundew is a predatory plant that looks like it’s from another planet.

Sundews are “flypaper” plants that trap prey in sticky hairs on their leaves. They make up one of the largest groups of carnivorous plants. Long tentacles protrude from their leaves, each with a sticky gland at the tip. These droplets look like dew glistening in the sun, thus their name.

Drosera, commonly known as the sundews, is one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species. These members of the family Droseraceae lure, capture, and digest insects using stalked mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surfaces.

Evolution, Science, Videos, Wildlife

Wildlife: The Uncertain Origins And Evolution Of The Turtle (Video)

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Turtle evolution has caused many problems for scientists over the years due to multiple fossil discoveries seeming to contradict each other with different turtle features evolving independently on different turtle ancestors. However, although there is still work to be done this video sets out to explain what is known so far.

History, Videos

History: “Mass Extinctions Paved Way For Human Evolution” (NatGeo Video)

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Everybody thinks mass extinctions are a bad thing. As much as they eliminate life, they also helped trigger the creation of new species. By studying fossils from the Big Five mass extinctions, we can learn how life was able to bounce back and see what this could mean for humans in future mass extinctions.

History, Paleontology, Videos

Evolution Of Dinosaurs: “The Golden Age Of Paleontology” (Video)

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With advancements in technology and access to areas once considered unreachable, the field of paleontology is experiencing a golden age of discovery. Roughly 50 new dinosaur species are found each year, giving us a closer look at their prehistoric world like never before. Our previous understandings of how dinosaurs looked and evolved are being revolutionized, especially in regards to evidence that modern birds descended from dinosaurs. But while it’s exciting to see how incredibly far paleontology has come from the previous generations, it’s equally as thrilling to imagine what new discoveries lie just ahead.

Biology, Books, Evolution, Interviews, Science, Space, Videos

Video Interviews: “The Biological Universe” Author Wallace Arthur

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Wallace Arthur
Wallace Arthur

Are we alone in the Universe, or are there other life-forms ‘out there’? Recent discoveries of planets beyond the solar system (more than 4000 of them) suggest that the question is not ‘whether?’ but ‘where?’. This book enables general readers to understand current endeavours to answer this question and the related one of ‘what kind?’

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Wallace Arthur is an evolutionary biologist and science writer. He is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His most recent book is The Biological Universe: Life in the Milky Way and Beyond, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.