Convergent Evolution

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If we re ran kalfman's again, whether you'd expect to get something like us, i think that's a genuine controversy. I am kind of on the simon conway morris end of that spectrum. And when you see the power of selection to produce o pilbug em crustaceans and and milipedes looking almost exactly alike, i find convergent evolution so impressive. It doesn't mean that it's going to be progress from the origin of life to now, or from some very distant point in the past until now. But if the present mammal fauna wes to go extinct, it wouldn't take that long before progressive evolution would produce features as sophisticated as

In episode 205, Michael Shermer speaks with Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene, voted The Royal Society’s Most Inspiring Science Book of All Time, and also the bestsellers The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and two volumes of autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder and Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a Fellow of New College, Oxford and both the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature. In 2013, Dawkins was voted the world’s top thinker in Prospect magazine’s poll of 10,000 readers from over 100 countries.

This episode is heavily edited because Dawkins was having trouble with his voice, and Shermer tried to speak a little more to give Dawkins a chance to let his voice rest.