Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 3: Life and Death

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 19th March 2009

In the final episode of this ground-breaking series about Charles Darwin's legacy, Andrew Marr discovers how Darwin's ideas are helping us to save ourselves and all life on earth from extinction. Marr argues that Charles Darwin is the father of ecology. The modern environmental movement was built upon his insight that all life on earth is linked by a delicate web of connections. He also discovers that Darwin's dangerous idea is inspiring scientists to create a 'flotilla of Darwinian Noah's Arks' to help save life on earth from disaster.

Exploring the impact of industrialisation, intensive farming and our growing hunger for meat, Marr tells the story of our slow awakening to the full implications of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and our own destructive powers as a species. After showing how Darwin developed his ideas by digging up fossils, exploring coral reefs and studying the habits of the humble earthworm, Marr explains how Darwin's dangerous idea was launched into the space age. He discovers the mysterious movements of the 'mouse society', snorkels over a coral reef and visits a 'boiling cauldron of evolution' - the tropical rainforest - which is now threatened by the shadow of mass extinction.

Over the last 150 years, the combination of Darwin's ideas with politics has often had disastrous social consequences. In this programme, Andrew Marr argues that our failure to combine politics with Darwin's insights into the delicate connections between all life on earth could be accelerating the countdown to our own extinction.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 2: Born Equal?

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 12th March 2009

Andrew Marr discovers something surprising about his own evolutionary history as this epic series continues with an exploration of Darwin's impact on politics and society.

Under the banner of Survival of the Fittest, Darwin's theory of natural selection has been used to justify imperial expansion and the oppression of indigenous peoples; to inform the science of eugenics - the selective breeding of humans which was implemented in the United States in the early 20th century; and to provide a veneer of scientific respectability to Nazi plans to create an Aryan master race. It was also used quite explicitly to explain the twisted logic of the final solution.

But Andrew Marr also finds a kind of redemption for Darwin's theory of evolution. After the Second World War, it was a founding idea behind the democratic, anti-racist values of the United Nations. More recently, it has also been used to help eliminate a fatal genetic disease from the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Marr goes on to consider the difficult social and political choices presented by predictive DNA testing - the final frontier of Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Part 1: Body and Soul

Part 1/6

Darwin's Dangerous Idea
BBC2 Thursday 5th March 2009

In the first episode of the three-part series, Andrew Marr explores how Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has taken on a life of its own far beyond the world of science.

He argues that Darwin's theory has transformed our understanding of what it means to be human. Over the last 150 years, Darwin's ideas have challenged the need for a creator, undermined religious authority, and provided new ways of looking at the origins of human morality.

Marr's journey begins following Darwin's footsteps in Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of South America where Darwin first encountered an 'uncivilised' native tribe. This began to raise questions in his mind about the origins of the human race. The answers to these questions would emerge over the next 30 years, culminating in the publication of On The Origin of Species in 1859.

Marr then traces the development of Darwin's idea in the years since then and finds a range of influences that Darwin could never have imagined: from the existential philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to the battlefields of the First World War; from the Freudian psychoanalyst's couch to the Vatican; and from the genetic logic of kindness to an Islamic creationist's claim that Darwin is to blame for modern terrorism. Darwin's dangerous idea is as influential and challenging today as it was 150 years ago.

So You Think You Know? : Wildlife

Check out the fish Macropinna microstoma. It has tubular eyes and a see-through head.


The common name for the fish is "barreleyes." Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute investigators recently figured out why this species has such an unusual head. Its eyes can actually rotate within its "skull," so the transparency allows the wary swimmer to keep a literal eye on happenings above it, as well as to the sides and directly in front.

And...

10 Evolution Stories Darwin Would Love

1. Sexy Bugs – tiny blister beetles have evolved a trick to survive their infancy in the scorching Mojave desert. They band together and emit phermones to attract male bees that they then ride like a taxicab to shelter and food. (full web article here)

2. Evolving Brain – Are people still evolving? Yes indeed, and it’s happening in the organ that sets us apart from the other species. (full web article here)

3. Shrinking Fish – Why would certain fish evolve to become smaller and weaker? Evolutionarily it’s in their best interests, because fishermen throw those fish back rather than eat them. (full web article here)

4. Romance Genes – When it comes to mating and dating, smell matters. An evolutionary psychologist showed how humans can basically sniff out a mate with the appropriate genetic make-up – or at least sniff out the bad ones. (full web article here)

5. Walking Whales - What ran like a wolf, but is related to the hippo, and now lives in the ocean? A Whale! (full web article here)

6. Hot Chili Secret – the heat in hot peppers is actually an evolutionary defense mechanism aimed at stopping fungus, as hole-poking insects also play a role. (full web article here)

7. Vampire Bats Run – Aside from the incredibly amusing video of vampire bats on a mini-treadmill, the story of how bats lost and regained (”devolved and revolved”?) the ability to run is pretty awesome. (full web article here)

8. Straight Corn Rows – How humans have shaped the evolution of a plant’s, um, shape. Or, why corn used to look really nasty. (full web article here)

9. Mating Trick – Cross dressing among invertebrates? Not quite. Small male cuttlefish who are masters of disguise put a brains-over-brawn twist on the survival of the fittest. (full web article here)

10. Reverse Evolution – scientists reconstructed a single gene that existed more than 500 million years ago, by reverse engineering it from the many genes it has since split into. (full web article here)

Source: Science Central

Richard Dawkins on "The Genius of Charles Darwin"

This is part 1 of 10. Do check the rest esp. part 2, 1:00 min Dawkins was reading the hate mails. LOL

Tree of Life

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on February 12, I would like to post a few interesting clips on evolution...starting off with this one:


More details on the evolution...

Thanks Taro for reminding me about the clip.