Many of us take evolution for granted, but over the years I've received many comments from people who doubt whether it's true. In this episode, I'll describe the logic of and major evidence for the theory of evolution by natural selection.

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Chapters:

00:00 Why do we believe what we do?

08:19 The Logic, Mechanism, and Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

21:36 Caveats and Objections to Evolutionary Theory

34:48 The 4 Main Categories of Evidence

35:09 1) The Fossil Record

45:06 2) Direct Observation

49:02 3) Biogeography

53:04 4) Genetics

1:00:21 Other Categories of Evidence

1:03:15 Artificial Selection (selective breeding)

1:06:17 Countering Young Earth Creationism

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Sources:

Coyne, J. A. (2009). Why evolution is true. Viking.

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

Dennis, M. Y., Nuttle, X., Sudmant, P. H., Antonacci, F., Graves, T. A., Nefedov, M., ... & Eichler, E. E. (2012). Evolution of human-specific neural SRGAP2 genes by incomplete segmental duplication. Cell, 149(4), 912-922.

Freedman, A. H., & Wayne, R. K. (2017). Deciphering the origin of dogs: From fossils to genomes. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, 5(1), 281-307.

Leakey, L. S., Tobias, P. V., & Napier, J. R. (1964). A new species of the genus Homo from Olduvai Gorge. Nature, 202(4927), 7-9.

Li, Y., Zhang, G., & Cui, J. (2022). Origin and deep evolution of human endogenous retroviruses in pan-primates. Viruses, 14(7), 1370.

Moorjani, P., Amorim, C. E. G., Arndt, P. F., & Przeworski, M. (2016). Variation in the molecular clock of primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(38), 10607-10612.

Reece, J. B., Urry, L. A., Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V., & Jackson, R. B. (2014). Chapters 22-25. In Campbell biology (10th ed.). Pearson.

Shubin, N. (2008). Your inner fish: A journey into the 3.5-billion-year history of the human body. Pantheon Books.