Carl Sagan: Evolution Is A Fact 🧬 #shorts

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0GCdexCwrqY

 

'Intelligent Design' on trial (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

The Trump administration is whitewashing American history in Philadelphia. Federal Judge John E. Jones tells the behind-the-scenes story of the 2005 trial leading to his landmark decision barring “intelligent design” from public school science classes.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-july-23-2026/

let’s put this debate to rest.

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/scYPIMYjJCA

 

Why the Pro-Life Movement Smuggles in Property Rights (Cross Examiner and Jim Barrows on AXP on YouTube)

Why are women viewed by religions as mere incubators in their logical frameworks? Gohan in TX presents a pro-life argument but admits he would kill someone to protect a DVD. The hosts expose the absurdity of valuing property over human life while protecting zygotes.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/yNlN0IJjSt4?si=-bFBJ9wtBTwHT5U3

Nebraska Steve Gets a Class A Education in Abiogenesis. (DZ Debates on YouTube)

Steve calls in to convince Justin that the orderliness of DNS proves the existence of God.  However, multiple biologists and physicians chime in to teach him that his assumptions and conclusions are way off base, and real science proves him wrong.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/ELd083I-ZBs?si=TbT95zQ_nVTvfnnH

Creationism on Trial (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

After covering state/church news, we report on the “war-mongering” Christian nationalist rhetoric at Charlie Kirk’s memorial. 

Then, we hear distinguished attorney Richard Katskee speaking at the Scopes Trial Centennial conference about his role in the 2005 lawsuit in Dover, Pa., defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-september-25-2025/

Fighting anti-science nonsense and scams: Dave Farina: The Scumbags I've Debunked (The Thinking Atheist podcast)

Science communicator Dave Farina is back to talk about the charlatans and idiots. Buckle up.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/h4j-REoGZmE?si=-P1PEIlcZ_HjrHUM

From heart to skin to hair, 'Replaceable You' dives into the science of transplant (Terry Gross; Fresh Air podcast)

Mary Roach36-Minute Listen

Science writer Mary Roach is fascinated by the human body, especially, she says, the "gooey bits and pieces of us that are performing miracles on a daily basis."

Take the human heart, for instance. If we're lucky, Roach says, our hearts might continue beating for 80+ years. "What thing that you buy at Best Buy keeps going that long?" she asks.

Roach is known for her books about what makes the human body so remarkable. She's done deep dives on human cadavers, the digestive system and the science of sex. Now, in Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, she chronicles both the history of body part replacement (including prosthetic noses that date back to the 1500s), as well as more recent medical breakthroughs.

The book was inspired by a woman Roach knows with spina bifida, whose gait was impeded by a twisted foot. The woman was seeking to have her foot surgically amputated and replaced with a prosthetic limb, when she encountered an unexpected impediment: Surgeons were reluctant to remove what they considered a healthy limb — even though the patient could not walk on it.

"And I thought that was interesting, the reluctance of the surgeons to remove a foot because it is an act with some finality to remove a foot," Roach says.

Roach's book describes how advancements in gene editing and 3D printing technology might further make our anatomy "replaceable." She profiles scientists in lab at Carnegie Mellon University who used a 3D printer to create a tiny ventricle, which was used to pump the heart of a mouse. But, she adds, the Trump administration's cuts to medical research threaten to interrupt the "pipeline of innovation and discovery."

"That's going to have terrible effects further down the line," Roach says. "Just looking forward to the future of innovation and medical care, it's very depressing."
Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5530048/mary-roach-replaceable-you-anatomy-transplant

 

Biological sex is far from binary − this college course examines the science of sex diversity in people, fungi and across the animal kingdom

Biological sex comes in many more forms than just male or female…

https://theconversation.com/biological-sex-is-far-from-binary-this-college-course-examines-the-science-of-sex-diversity-in-people-fungi-and-across-the-animal-kingdom-214690

Zooming across time and space simultaneously with superresolution to understand how cells divide

Based on these findings, we were able to discover new information about the process of cell division. We found that interactions between actin building blocks sync up with the contraction and expansion of the whole cell during division. In other words, the behavior of the actin molecules is connected to the behavior of the cell: The cell contracts when the actin expands, and it expands when the actin contracts...

https://theconversation.com/zooming-across-time-and-space-simultaneously-with-superresolution-to-understand-how-cells-divide-203324

For the intersex community, 'Every Body' exists on a spectrum (Terry Gross; Fresh Air podcast)

"Intersex people are born with physical traits that don't fit neatly into a 'male' or 'female' box," Weigel says. "We have combinations of hormones, chromosomes, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia that just doesn't fit neatly on one of those two binary options that you were taught in elementary biology class are the only options."

Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/05/1185988683/intersex-documentary-every-body-julie-cohen-alicia-roth-weigel

Science Proves There are More than Two Human Sexes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT0HJkr1jj4

New Discovery in the Chemistry of Life (Point of Inquiry podcast)

Graham Cooks and his team at Purdue University have discovered a chemical process that has exciting implications for people who believe that life could have emerged spontaneously and through natural means. The idea that the building blocks of life started in a primordial ocean now has a competitor: airborne tiny water droplets.

In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Jim Underdown speaks to chemistry professor and researcher Graham Cooks about his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery that adds an important piece of the puzzle of how life came to be. Does this find have religious implications?
Interview: 

https://pointofinquiry.org/2022/12/new-discovery-in-the-chemistry-of-life/

The fountain of life: Water droplets hold the secret ingredient for building life

“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” said Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science. “This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water. This is a dramatic discovery.”

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2022/Q4/the-fountain-of-life-water-droplets-hold-the-secret-ingredient-for-building-life.html

(If) I Debated Kent Hovind... Best Evidence for Evolution

Kent Hovind, once young-earth creation's shining star, has repeatedly challenge me to debates. In this video, I lay out my conditions for such a thing happening... and also just bypass the whole notion by presenting my personal favorite lines of evidence for evolution, along with Kent's most substantive rebuttals to said points. Voila! A debate with no debate needed.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/Ys08KGxjUmU

There Are More Than Two Human Sexes

In high school biology, we learn that humans are born with either XX or XY chromosomes, and that a person’s internal and external sex organs match those chromosomes. It turns out, however, that sex isn’t that straightforward.
https://youtu.be/kT0HJkr1jj4

Can a Cell Make Decisions? - Scientific American

… There's only one problem: no known cellular mechanism can produce this result. That head scratcher remains both unreplicated and unexplained...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-a-cell-make-decisions/

The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries (with Dr. Donald Prothero) (Seth Andrews, The Thinking Atheist podcast)

Renowned paleontologist and geologist Dr. Donald Prothero talks about his new book, "The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries." Join us for a fascinating discussion about the cosmos, evolved eyes, our "inner fish," dinosaurs, and so much more.

Interview: 

https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-exc7r-ccdf68a

Erich Jarvis on Language, Birds, and People (Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast 127: Science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas)

Many characteristics go into making human beings special — brain size, opposable thumbs, etc. Surely one of the most important is language, and in particular the ability to learn new sounds and use them for communication. Many other species communicate through sound, but only a very few — humans, elephants, bats, cetaceans, and a handful of bird species — learn new sounds in order to do so. Erich Jarvis has been shedding enormous light on the process of vocal learning, by studying birds and comparing them to humans. He argues that there is a particular mental circuit in the brains of parrots (for example) responsible for vocal learning, and that it corresponds to similar circuits in the human brain. This has implications for the development of intelligence and other important human characteristics. 

Support Mindscape on Patreon. 

Erich Jarvis received his Ph.D. in Animal Behavior and Molecular Neurobehavior from Rockefeller University. He is currently a professor in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at Rockefeller and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Among his many awards are the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation, an American Philosophical Society Award, a Packard Foundation fellowship, an NIH Director’s Pioneer award, Northwestern University’s Distinguished Role Model in Science award, and the Summit Award from the American Society for Association Executives.

Interview: 

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/12/14/127-erich-jarvis-on-language-birds-and-people/

Evolutionary Psychology and Sex Differences (Thomas Smith, Serious Inquiries Only SIO269)

It's part 2 of the Defending Evo-Psych series! This one was so much fun. Lindsey talks about sex differences in different species and how they are also present in human behavior. We talk about ridiculous birds, mating dollars, casual sex, and all kinds of fun stuff!

Interview: 

https://www.podbean.com/ew/dir-wdi82-c7f8b1a