More on Darwin

Even this clip on Richard Milner shows how we can change our language when speaking about evolution. We didn't "come from apes" as he and others suggest all the time when speaking about evolution. We share a common ancestor with apes, chimps monkeys etc. and a relatively recent one at that.

On a somewhat related note, I was listening to the Science podcast (January 9 episode) when they starting talking about a new series they are having on evolution. This is interesting for two reasons. 1). 6 months ago I asked a friend of mine "what is the deal with these podcast things? I don't get the hype or the utility of them?" Then I bought myself an ipod and soon discovered the joy of podcasts. Besides the Science one, the geeky podcasts I listen to are NPR: Environment, NPR: Science Friday and WNYC's Radio Lab. Non-science ones I enjoy are The Story with Dick Gordon and of course Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me and This American Life. If you have other nerdy podcasts or otherwise, that I'm missing out on, let me know. Now for the second reason this particular story was interesting. 2). I was asked by one of my committee members during my preliminary oral exam, "Is life monophyletic?". Granted, that is a pretty crazy question, but not unexpected for me. Some of my other committee members were a little astonished, but I proceeded to attempt to answer it. I likely said some blabbering things and didn't really answer it. I think I said something like, maybe but we'll never know. Now to the point of this story, in this episode of Science they were talking about this very question. I hadn't connected the idea of understanding the origin of life with the question posed during my prelims, but it seems like they are very similar. One prevailing theory on the origin of life is that of the RNA world hypothesis where RNA was the precursor to DNA. This is important to the idea of monophyly because all cellular life has DNA and some viruses have RNA. It follows that if we are going to consider all life on Earth today to be monophyletic, RNA would be one of the "all life" group defining characters. As I suggested, this was not something I discussed (to my knowledge) in my answer to the question "is life monophyletic" and this was a way to redeem myself slightly.