WEBVTT - Are Humans Still Evolving? (Featuring Scott Solomon) 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:08.920 What are the greatest mysteries in science? Surely up near 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:10.960 the top of the list have to be questions like 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.040 how did the universe begin? Or how will it all end? 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.160 Or how can anyone understand organic chemistry? These are all 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:20.840 amazing questions, and I'd love to know the answers to 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.120 any of them. But in my opinion, the biggest mysteries 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.480 are the most personal ones, the questions we have about 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.280 why we are here, how we came to be, who 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.880 we are. The answers to those questions are the context 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.760 of our existence, and they can't help but shape the 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.680 way we live and guide our future. So that's why 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.040 the history of humanity's evolution has always been so fascinating 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:47.680 to me, because it's our story. Where did humanity originate? 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.319 How did we spread around the globe? What catastrophes did 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.080 we barely survive? And what marks did that leave in 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:58.120 our genetic heritage? Why are we so smart or why 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.279 aren't we much smarter? What happened to all of our 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.640 hominid cousins? And what was it like to live on 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:09.000 an earth with several closely related, interbreeding, intelligent communities. We 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.200 don't have the answers to all of those questions, but 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:13.920 modern techniques are beginning to flesh out some of the 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.720 biggest blank spots we have in our history and to 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.360 help us grapple with the other side of that question, 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:24.319 what does the future hold? Is humanity fixed or still changing? 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:27.560 Has evolution had it to day or are we still 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.679 evolving today? On the podcast, we'll chat with doctor Scott 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.960 Solomon about all of that, and of course about aliens. 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:38.040 Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Evolving Universe. 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:51.720 Hi. 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.320 I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, but I love biology 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.080 and biologists, well maybe one or two in particular. 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.960 I'm Kelly Wader Smith, parasitologist. And you are singing a 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.360 different tune than you did the other day, Daniel, because 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:05.920 the other day you told me you weren't a huge 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.200 fan of biology. So I'm glad to see you're coming around. 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.520 Well, it may be that my biologist's wife heard that 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.239 episode and so we had a conversation. 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.600 Good good. I'm glad. My cartoonist husband the other day 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:20.400 when I told him that there was a physics topic 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:23.200 I wasn't super excited about. He was like, you are 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:27.840 exhibiting a distinct lack of curiosity. I was like, all right, fine, 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.240 So anyway, our partners are keeping us in line. 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.480 I love the wealth of topics that anybody can dive 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.040 into because there's so many things to be curious about 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:38.720 in this universe. And that's why we call it the 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.359 podcast the Extraordinary Universe, right, because it's filled with amazing 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:45.280 things to learn about, from our own particular history to 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:47.360 whether antelopes do string theory. 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:49.880 Yeah, I totally agree. One of the things that stresses 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:51.760 me out about having a shortened lifespan is that I 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:54.200 will never get to know about all the topics that 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.119 I want to know about. There's so many cool things 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:57.760 I could be learning about, but I don't have time 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.800 to read about all of them. But on the show 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:01.080 get through a lot of them. 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:04.400 So that's my question for you. Actually, So in an 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:06.880 alternative universe where you got to pick a different kind 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:09.640 of science to do instead of being a parasitologist, you 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:10.240 would have been. 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.639 A oh my gosh, that is really hard. I think 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:17.880 there's a world where I could have really enjoyed being 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:20.919 a historian or being someone who like spent all day 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.080 digging in the dirt. Although, as we'll hear later in 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:25.079 the episode that requires a degree of patience that I 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.240 might not have realized when I was excited about those 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:28.280 ideas when I was younger. 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.520 But that makes sense to me because you always do 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.280 a deep dive in the research of asking you a question. 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.040 You're like, I read three books about this and ten 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.040 pages of notes, so I'm like, WHOA. 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:40.360 Well, I really like to feel confident before I open 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.320 my mouth, so I'm quiet a lot of times when 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:45.560 I don't feel confident. But I don't know, just any 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.680 job that involves a lot of time reading and trying 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:51.840 to understand something deeply. I think there's lots of things 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:53.200 I could have done with my life that I really 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.560 would have enjoyed, but I only have this one lifetime. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:56.200 What about you? 0:03:57.720 --> 0:03:58.880 Ooh, that's a good question. 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.040 It's your question, Daniel. You don't get to say that's 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:03.680 a great question when it's your question. 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.240 It's a way for me to delay giving an answer because. 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.200 I have one, got it. 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:13.440 You know, everybody else in my family is a computer 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:15.520 scientist of some sort, and I actually have a degree 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.720 in computer science, and so I couldn't decide between physics 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.760 and computer science, and I took both paths until basically 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:23.840 I applied to grad school in both areas, and then 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.800 I had to make a decision. So I chose physics 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.680 because I wanted to be a tool user instead of 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.320 a tool builder. But I still love building tools for 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.040 other people to use. And so in some other universe, 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.240 I'm a programmer, you know, maybe working on scientific tools, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.320 maybe something else, who knows. But I love writing programs, 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:42.880 and so I could have just done that as a 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:44.560 career rather than having it be like the day to 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:46.040 day work of my science career. 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.000 That's pretty cool that, like, if you could rewind and 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:51.719 do a completely different career, the other career you would 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:53.320 have done is something that you get to do a 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:55.239 lot of in your day to day life. That suggests 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:57.400 to me that you have really, like made some good 0:04:57.480 --> 0:04:59.200 choices in your life. 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:01.480 Yeah. Except if I did the other career, I've probably 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:02.640 making a lot more money. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.120 Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, I also did not pick a 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.560 lucrative career. Most people don't care about what's happening to 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.000 brain infecting parasites on little fishies. But what are you 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:11.320 gonna do? 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:13.760 Yeah, but you're right, and I feel lucky that the 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.560 day to day work of my job does connect with 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.320 my other interests, and the people who work for me 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:21.279 end up going off to make a lot more money 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.919 than I do working for Google or Facebook or whatever. 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.599 So yeah, it worked out pretty well. And I've just 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:29.560 love that there's so many things to be excited about, 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.760 and so many ways life could go, and so many 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:33.400 things to be curious about. And I love that our 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:36.280 listeners seem to share that that really resonates with them, 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.000 because they seem to be curious about all sorts of topics, 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:42.880 from the details of quantum gravity all the way to 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:44.760 how are we here and what is the history and 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:46.000 future of humanity? 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.080 And I have been loving that we've been getting more 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.640 biology questions lately, and today's episode is essentially the answer 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.440 to a wonderful biology question that we got from our 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.440 listener named Seth. So let's go ahead and listen to 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.360 Seth's awesome question before we introduce the guest we brought 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:02.640 on the show to answer the question. 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.280 Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I have some questions related to 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.360 human evolution. Are we slowly evolving as a species as 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:10.760 we have in the past. If we are, in what 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.640 ways are we evolving and what is driving that evolution? 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:16.760 Are there pockets or groups of people evolving at different 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:19.640 rates where natural selection may still play a large role, 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.600 What changes might arise in humans from future evolution, And finally, 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:27.880 what might evolution look like in a future society living 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:28.760 on another planet. 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:31.960 Thanks love the question. The only complaint I have about 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:33.719 it is that you don't need to apologize at the 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.200 end for asking questions. We love questions. Send us as 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.680 many as you have, really no limits. Please write to 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:42.200 us with your questions to questions at Daniel and Kelly 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.560 dot org, not Daniel and Kelly dot com. That's the 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:47.640 wedding website for a very nice looking couple. 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:49.960 That's right. That's right. So it turns out I have 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:51.960 a really good friend named Scott Solomon who wrote a 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.599 book on whether or not humans are still evolving, and 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.600 he's just wrapped up his second book about what human 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.440 evolution might look like when humans move out and become interplanetary. 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:03.479 So today we're going to have Scott on the show 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.080 to answer the first set of questions about human evolution 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:06.799 here on Earth. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:08.000 Yeah yeah, and. 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:09.840 We'll have him back on the show some other time 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.400 to talk about his next book and the questions about 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.280 the future of human evolution. When that book becomes available. 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:17.280 Future ya Future Yay. 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:20.640 So let's go ahead and bring Scott on the show. 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:26.440 Scott Solomon is a teaching professor in the Department of 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.520 Biosciences at Rice University. He's the author of Future Humans 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:34.640 Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution, and his upcoming book, 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:38.880 tentatively entitled Becoming Martian How Living in Space will Change 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.080 Our Bodies and Minds, is coming out through MIT Press 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.200 in late twenty twenty five early twenty twenty six. He 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.800 hosts the podcast Wild World with Scott Solomon, taught What 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.400 Darwin Didn't know the Modern science of Evolution for the 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.440 Great Courses, and you can check out his streaming series 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:59.480 Becoming Martian on Curiosity stream. And that's like a small 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.160 subset of many things that my good friend Scott Solomon does. 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.600 He's incredible. We had to just take a couple so anyway, 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:05.280 welcome to the show. 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:06.800 Scott, Hey, Kelly, Hey Daniel. 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.400 Can you also leap buildings in a single bound? 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.040 I wish, Oh my gosh, maybe I'll evolve to be 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:14.040 able to in the future. 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:19.080 Right there, we can hit an interesting misconception. Do humans evolve, Scott, 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:20.880 or is it populations and species that. 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.760 Evol Well, humans as a species can evolve, but yeah, 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:30.360 individual people, like any individual organism, can maybe change a 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:32.240 little bit. We like to think we can improve ourselves 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:34.120 over time, but we wouldn't call that evolution. 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.280 Even if you're bitten by a radioactive spider. 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.800 Well, that's a change I keep hoping for. But I'm 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.720 going for radioactive ant ideally, but still not evolution unless 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.479 your kids also inherit those extraordinary abilities. 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.240 Yep, all right, I mean you go lots of dangerous places. 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:52.880 Is that kind of like the goal that some radioactive 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:53.640 animal will get. 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:57.000 You searching everywhere for the radioactive ant to bite me? 0:08:57.160 --> 0:08:58.040 Yeah, I'm still looking. 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.400 I was just an Antarctica, and contrary to what you 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:04.400 might imagine, there are no ants in Antarctica. 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:06.280 So well, at least not that we found. 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.520 Yeah, you know, there are no Kelly Wienersmith's in Antarctica either, 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.040 because it is way too cold. But you jumped into 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:13.679 the water in Antarctica. 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:16.360 I did. It was crazy, Yes. 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:17.840 I would describe it as crazy. 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:19.520 I would describe that as poor judgment. 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.080 Well, there was a diver in a dry suit perched 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.640 on the edge of the platform you dive from, prepared 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.200 to basically drag your lifeless body out of the water. 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.080 So I felt like they had all the contingencies covered. 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:35.800 All right, But you've already had your kids, and so 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.120 in terms of evolution, you've like checked that box. Good move. 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.240 So you've mentioned that you are super into ants already. 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:47.559 So as a person whose PhD was in ant work 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:51.319 and evolutionary questions, what got you interested in studying human 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:52.480 evolution in particular? 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:55.520 Yeah, so I've been interested in human evolution for a 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:57.840 very long time. Actually, I took a class as a 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:01.880 college student in anthropology. I first really was introduced to 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.000 human evolution and what we do and don't know about it, 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.800 and I was just absolutely fascinated and actually considered going 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.520 into the field of paleoanthropology, which is the field where 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:14.079 people are studying human evolution. 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.079 But I ended up going a different route. 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.120 I was actually pre med at the time and thought 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:20.800 I was going to be a doctor, mainly because I 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.440 didn't know that there were a lot of other options 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.600 for people who like biology and want to have a career, 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:29.720 and so I did the pre med thing. 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:32.640 You were like, doctor, or I can work at a zoo. 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:33.520 Those are the options. 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:35.160 Yeah, right, Well, yeah, exactly. 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.560 Yeah, Yeah, it's just I didn't have role models in 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:40.840 my life of people who were doing other kinds of 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:42.120 biology careers. 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.240 I guess were your parents' academics or not. 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.920 Yeah, so my dad was a professor, but an accounting professor, 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:51.040 so quite different. I thought I was going in a 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.720 very different direction by going into biology, and then it 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.560 turns out that I ended up having an academic career 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.520 very much like his in some ways so different. 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.920 After all, you're both wrangkling spreadsheets and email. But he's 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.240 probably not jumping into the water in Antarctica. 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:08.000 That's true. That's true. 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.360 Yeah, counting is a little safer as a profession indeed. 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.319 Indeed, yes, yes, but. 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.439 What you say really resonates with me thinking about anthropology. 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:18.960 I remember hearing about that field and thinking like, wow, 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.559 this is it. I mean, all of science is some 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.280 kind of attempt to understand the universe and our context 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.400 of our lives, but like anthropology is literally like what 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:29.719 is the history? How did we get here? Why are 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:32.120 we here? In terms of like why are we who 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:35.000 we are? So absolutely I think that's it's like, yea 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:36.840 one of the most fascinating questions in science. 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.680 No, exactly, I mean, I've always been fascinated by these 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.480 big idea questions like who are we, where do we 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:43.080 come from? 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:44.720 And where are we headed? Right, And that's what the 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:45.680 stuff is all about. 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.200 So yeah, I took a few twists and turns in 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.360 my career, and as you mentioned, Kelly, I ended up 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:53.840 for my PhD research studying ants, which seems like it 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.440 has nothing to do with human evolution, except that ants 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.320 in some ways are sort of similar to human right, 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.600 they have like complex societies. And the answer that I 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:05.920 was studying leafcutter ants they grow their own food, they 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.360 have agriculture, and they manage disease outbreaks, and they do 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:12.480 all these sort of complicated things that we normally associate 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.959 with people. And so, in a sort of strange way, 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:19.520 studying ants helped me eventually to get back to thinking 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:24.360 about people, because I knew that ants never stopped evolving, right, 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:26.839 It's very clear from our studies of ants that they 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.480 have evolved and are evolving and expect them to continue evolving. 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.319 So why not people? And that got me to think 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:37.439 as a young faculty member. It actually the question came 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:41.160 to me as actually a question I asked my students. 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.719 I was teaching a class, an introductory biology class, and 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:46.760 we were learning about evolution, and I just said to 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.040 the students, well, do you think humans are still evolving? 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:54.199 And you know, that was a question that clearly struck 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:56.000 a chord with my class. They had a lot of 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.240 thoughts about that. They had their own questions. It was like, 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:01.600 you know, if you're a professor, right, you guys know, 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.439 like you get your students talking, that's right, that's what 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.520 you want to do. And so I was like, oh, 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.400 this is an interesting topic. I wonder what we really 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.400 know about it. And that led me down this path 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.360 of eventually researching and writing a whole book on the 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.240 topic of whether humans are still evolving and if so. 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:21.240 How how hard is it to make that kind of 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.240 transition professionally? I mean, if you were like known in 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.600 the ant world and you published on ants and you 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.480 can get ant grants, is it then hard to be 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:33.680 taken seriously in another field? I mean, I know, in physics, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.160 for example, we're so niche that like, if you do 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.079 collider physics and then you write a grant proposal on 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:41.800 you know, cosmic ray physics, They're like, who is this guy? 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.840 He knows nothing? Yeah? Right, does it to make that 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:45.840 kind of leap. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:47.920 Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting. 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.080 I guess the challenge for me was that if you 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:53.200 look at a lot of popular science, often it's either 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.800 written by somebody who was writing about their own field, right, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.000 and we're used to that, or somebody who isn't necessarily 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:03.280 a scientist themselves, but they're writing about a particular topic 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:05.880 that they've researched. And I was trying to do something 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:09.040 that was sort of in between those two, right, and Kelly, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.560 I mean you've done, you know, very similar things in 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.280 your career as well, right, where you sort of have 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:15.640 a certain amount of expertise that you can apply to 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.960 the thing that you're researching and writing about, but you're still, 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:20.520 at the end of the day an outsider in this 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:23.600 very particular field that you're researching and writing about. So 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:28.280 I found the transition to be, for myself kind of straightforward, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:30.880 because you know, we are used to talking to one 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.440 another about research that is not exactly what we work on. 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.000 I mean, we all have conversations with our colleagues and 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:39.080 go to meetings and it's just sort of like that. 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:41.520 But you have to kind of encourage people to answer 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.760 questions in a way that is a little different from 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:45.840 how you would speak to you know, your peers, which 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.920 of course you guys know very well because it's what 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.680 you do here on the podcast. It's a lot of fun, 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:51.920 it is, it is. 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:54.080 It's one of my favorite side benefits of doing the 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.560 podcast is we'll be working on an episode about, you know, 0:14:57.800 --> 0:14:59.640 how galaxies formed, and I'm like, well, I never took 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:01.320 a class on that. Let me go learn about it. It's 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:03.520 like an excuse to learn something about it and go 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.400 talk to the experts and digest it. Yeah, it's a 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:06.840 lot of fun. 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:07.920 Yeah. 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:09.960 The other day, I was embarrassed to realize that I 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:12.600 didn't know why the Y chromosome is smaller than the 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:14.480 X chromosome, and I was like, oh, I need to 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:16.280 explain that on a show. So I guess I'm spending 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:19.640 four hours reading about that and it ended up being great. 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.680 And also my insecurities are slowly going away something. Oh 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:25.760 I didn't know that, but now I know that anyway. 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.000 Well, and I think partly like I'm sure you've both experiences. 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.000 In teaching, university classes were often asked to teach something 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.040 that is a little outside or a lot outside of 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.520 our own research areas, and so, yeah, we have to 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:38.360 learn as much as we can about it so that 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:40.760 we can explain it to students and keep. 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.960 Ahead of them. Yeah, so we do that, right. 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:44.840 I think it's just a slightly different way. I mean, Daniel, 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.000 you've done this too, right, So, like, I find it 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:49.120 to be kind of a natural thing to do. I 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.720 think maybe it looks weird from the outside to certain people. 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:52.120 I don't know. 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.040 I don't know if it does, but I really enjoy it. 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:56.440 Like you said, it's fun to explore topics that are 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:00.360 not the things that we know are always reading about 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:02.480 and doing and talking about on a daily basis. 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.480 Yeah, so let's back up and let's get into the 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.160 meat of the content of the book. So let's just 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.840 start with like a simple definition of like what is 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.040 evolution and how do you go about measuring evolution and 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:15.240 like showing that it's happening. 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:21.080 Yeah, So biologists define evolution as change over generations, and 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:25.840 I guess specifically we these days define evolution and measure 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:31.480 it by talking about evolution as change in allele frequencies 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:35.000 over generation. So an allele is just a version of 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.440 a gene. So to give a like overly simplistic. Example, 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.200 you can have a gene for hair color, and the 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.120 different alleles would be like an allele for brown hair, 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.520 an allele for black hair, and allele for blonde hair, 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.160 for red hair, et cetera. So how common each of 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:54.440 those alleles is in a population. If that changes over time, 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.560 if they either become more common or less common, then 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.560 we say evolution has happened. And so that's something that 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:04.919 is very quantifiable. It's something we can go out and 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.840 look for in a population and say, look, this allele 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:10.680 has become more common, it's become less common. The next question, 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:14.040 of course is why. But just whether or not evolution 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.639 has taken place is really just as simple as is 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:22.400 this allele or the trait that it codes for changing 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:23.760 in how common it is? 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.840 Isn't there always change happening just due to randomness? I mean, 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.320 if you measured like the fraction of the population that 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:33.720 had brown hair, even if there wasn't large scale change happening, 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.239 it'd be going up and down. This noise in that measurement, right, 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:38.520 is there like a threshold beyond But you say, okay, 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.119 this is meaningful change and this is statistical noise. 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:44.080 Yeah, so we actually have an equation that we can 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.040 use to measure whether there has been significant change from 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.080 one generation to the next. It's called the Hardy Weinberg 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.959 equilibrium equation, and we can measure it. The key thing 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.280 here is that it has certain assumptions, and the assumptions 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:00.359 actually are sort of the thing that man makes it 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.400 most interesting, I would say, because as you point out, 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:08.920 we actually almost never find that a population is not evolving, 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.280 is not changing in allele frequencies. So the only ways 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.200 that it would not be changing where if a set 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:19.760 of five very strict assumptions are in fact taking place. 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:24.639 And those assumptions are that everybody has equal chances of survival, 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:29.719 not just chances, equal actual outcomes of survival. There's completely 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:34.080 random mating, So who's mating with whom? It's all completely random. 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.640 That sounds like an interesting society. 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:40.760 Yes, exactly right, right, Well, it gets even more implausible 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.800 an infinite population size or a near infinite population size. 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.600 Good luck with that, no movement. Nobody's allowed to move around. 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:51.360 Everybody has to stay in the same geographical location. 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:53.280 Then how a You're going to mate with a random 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:57.320