Oh, wow, oh, oh, oh, wow, oh, oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Oh, my. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 21.

Introduction to Evolution, and I'm your host, James Fodor.

So, in today's episode, we're going to look at the basic concepts of evolutionary theory,

including an overview of the contributions of Charles Darwin, a discussion of hereditary,

and then we'll look at a summary

of the main mechanisms by which evolution occurs, including natural selection, sexual selection,

genetic drift, and so on. And finally, I'll go through the major lines of evidence that support

evolutionary theory and the fact that common

dissent has occurred because there are many separate lines of evidence in support of this,

such that the evidence is quite overwhelming. Okay, so let's get into it. First of all,

we'll look at just a basic definition. What is evolution? Evolution, also known as organic or

biological evolution, is simply the change over time in one or more inherited traits

found in a population of organisms. So these inherited traits could be anatomical traits,

biochemical or behavioral characteristics. So whenever these things change over time in a population of organisms,

evolution is said to have occurred.

Evolution can be a sort of a short-term phenomenon,

which leading to relatively minor changes in a population.

That's referred to as microevolution.

For example, a bacteria might develop an ability to metamilize a new chemical or develop

a new enzyme or a species of animal might develop a new behavioral characteristic or something

...