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Evolutionary Biology
If an asteroid hadn't killed off the dinosaurs, humans would almost certainly have never walked the Earth.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Science writer Matt Ridley joins us to discuss how “Darwin’s strangest idea” makes us all a bit feather-brained (in a good way).
A fresh view of intelligence — spanning living systems from bacteria to human civilization — challenges the idea that it’s merely problem-solving.
These books helped build the empirical case that life's origins differ from those described in myths and legends.
Memory takes effort, and our brains know it.
“I want to change the way we think about the past altogether,” says Dr. Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist who studies the origin of life.
New research challenges old assumptions about the evolution of the human brain.
Life may have arisen far earlier — and more rapidly — than previously thought.
Life might be more common across the Universe than the "Hard Steps Model" suggests.
“Could you create a god?” Nietzsche's titular character asks in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
Could studying the Oriental hornet lead to a treatment for people with alcohol use disorder?
We need a "theory that explains the evolution of evolution," argues theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker.
Scientists have created a magnificent portrait of every connection among neurons in a fruit fly’s brain.
Here's the dark side of first contact.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?
Dinosaurs and other beasts were once thought to be the “undisputed masters” of Venus.
Are breakthroughs really a matter of chance, or are they simply waiting to be uncovered by the right person at the right time?
New evidence suggests the corvid family has surprising mental abilities.
Some biologists believe natural selection produces animals that are just good enough. Dawkins disagrees.
In "Life As No One Knows It," Sara Imari Walker explains why the key distinction between life and other kinds of "things" is how life uses information.
"What modern science has taught us is that life is not a property of matter."
Life arose on Earth early on, eventually giving rise to us: intelligent and technologically advanced. "First contact" still remains elusive.
In the 1970s, James Lovelock proposed that the biosphere was not just green scruff quivering on Earth's surface. Instead, it managed to take over the geospheres.
Cats twist and snakes slide, exploiting and negotiating physical laws. Scientists are figuring out how.
The true story of the shot that "reverberated through England" when science collided head-on with religion.
Physicists have increasingly begun to view life as information-processing "states of matter" that require special consideration.
Is there a force keeping humanity in check?
Scientists still aren't sure how they perform without those restorative Z's.
Are fava beans and chianti really the best pairing for human liver?