StarTalk Radio Darwin’s Daring Idea with Richard Dawkins
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Jun 11, 2024 
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins discusses evolution, living reflections of ancestors, and the delay in recognizing Darwin's theory. They explore tides, Earth's rotation, memes, and the complexity of the eye. The podcast also touches on poetry, culture in literature, religion, and public understanding of evolution.
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Why Evolution Took So Long
- Before Darwin, thinkers assumed perfect, fixed types which delayed evolutionary thinking.
- Dawkins suggests cultural biases like essentialism slowed acceptance of natural selection.
Artificial Selection Illuminates Nature
- Darwin used artificial selection as the bridge to natural selection for the public imagination.
- He showed nature substitutes the human breeder via survival and reproduction filtering genes.
Genes As Enduring Information
- Genes carry digital information across generations and are the unit natural selection acts upon.
- Organisms are vehicles that preserve and transmit those genes over time.