TELEVISION
The Gist: Puking Newts, Selfish Genes, And Other Reasons To Adore Darwin
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Three hunters in Oregon's Cascade range are discovered dead by their campfire. The only possible cause: newts found boiled in their coffee. To figure out why this specific species produces such a potent toxin, a fanatical father-and-son team of evolutionary biologists wrestles snakes to the ground, forces them to puke up the deadly newts, and discusses the smell of the toxin as the pair handles the slimy creatures bare-handed. Is this the latest rival to Crocodile Hunter ? Almost. It's a scene from the seven-part, eight-hour PBS series Evolution. Coproduced by WGBH and Paul Allen's Clear Blue Sky Productions, the series will air September 24 to 27.
Sure, there's a healthy dose of animal mating footage here - especially fun are the lesbian lizards that bear fatherless offspring and the chimplike bonobo that enjoy mixing it up Kama Sutra-style. And melodramatic reenactments of Darwin's life will have you reaching for the TiVo remote faster than you can say "extinction" (biography buffs should check out the historical treatments in the series' companion book, Evolution:The Triumph of an Idea, penned by accomplished science writer Carl Zimmer for HarperCollins). But this isn't your mother's nature program. With a little armchair commentary from idea man Stephen Jay Gould and Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins, the series goes beyond the tired examples taught in biology class to dish out some cutting-edge theory. Stop taking those antibiotics and let the kids put their grubby hands in their mouths - it's time to rethink the antibacterial products in our modern kitchens and bathrooms. Evolution explores why some doctors are taking their AIDS patients off all medicines for weeks at a time and how bacteria found on cows may explain why farm kids rarely suffer from asthma and allergies. Think resistance is a problem of the underprivileged? Microbe stalkers are tracking strains of deadly tuberculosis from overcrowded Russian prisons to American households - and both nations are running out of treatment options.
The sixth episode, "The Mind's Big Bang," is the gem of the lot. Turns out that big brains really are sexy! A growing group of evolutionary psychologists believes that all human behavior - from gossip to jewelry-making - is rooted in million-year-old sexual selection mechanisms. Evidence found in children and the deaf supports many of the ideas that our mind, not our physical body, is now the force driving human evolution. And yes, we are evolving. The series triumphs in presenting evolution not as a thing of ancient history but a force in present-day life that perhaps we can control.
PBS: www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution.
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