50: Richard Prum

06/25/18 • 73 min

Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In his thirty years of fieldwork, Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum has witnessed numerous such display traits that seem to contradict a classically upheld scientific dogma—that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life and accounts for the evolution of every trait we see in nature.

Prum joined us to share findings from his book The Evolution of Beauty and dusted off Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection, in which the act of choosing a mate purely for aesthetic and pleasurable reasons is an independent engine of evolutionary change. He explored how, according to Darwin, mate choice can drive the formation of traits that are ornamental rather than purely adapted for survival, and how the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Prum showed us how this framework grants us insight even into the evolution of human sexuality—how female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. Join Prum for a unique scientific vision of nature’s splendor that has the potential to contribute to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

Richard O. Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has conducted field work throughout the world, and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.

Recorded live at PATH by Town Hall Seattle on Monday, June 11, 2018.

Recorded live at PATH by Town Hall Seattle on Monday, June 11, 2018.

Previous Episode

49: Jason Colby

Since the release of the documentary Blackfish in 2013, millions around the world have focused on the plight of the orca, the most profitable and controversial display animal in history. Yet until now, no historical account has explained how we came to care about killer whales in the first place. In celebration of Orca Awareness Month, environmental professor Jason M. Colby drew on interviews, official records, private archives, and his own family history, to tell the exhilarating and heartbreaking story of how the public came to love the ocean’s greatest predator.

Colby dove into oceanic history to reveal the origins of the orca. Historically reviled as dangerous pests, killer whales were dying by the hundreds, even thousands, by the 1950s—the victims of whalers, fishermen, and even the US military. But that all changed in 1965, when Seattle entrepreneur Ted Griffin became the first person to swim and perform with a captive killer whale. Colby traced the trajectory of the orca’s image, revealing factors that led the public to embrace killer whales as charismatic and friendly. He explored encounters with captive orcas reshaped regional values in the Pacific Northwest, and helped drive environmental activism like Greenpeace’s anti-whaling campaigns. Join Colby for a definitive history of the feared and despised “killer whale,” and how its transformation into the beloved regional icon of the “orca” has impacted our relationship with the ocean and its creatures.

Jason M. Colby is associate professor of environmental and international history at the University of Victoria. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, and raised in the Seattle area, he worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and Washington State. He is the author of The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and US Expansion in Central America.

Recorded live at University Lutheran Church by Town Hall Seattle on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.

Next Episode

51: Angela Garbes with Lindy West

Like most first-time mothers, food and culture writer Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she first became pregnant. And like many mothers, she sought satisfactory answers to the scientific mysteries and cultural myths that surround motherhood. She joined us with a compilation of the wisdom from her book Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, debunking myths and dated assumptions.

Garbes shared the results of her intensive search for judgement-free answers to the questions that had filled her mind. She demystified the topic of pregnancy and encouraged women the freedom to choose the right path themselves, rather than filtering information through a lens of what women ought to do. Garbes was joined in conversation with Seattle-based writer Lindy West to share a rigorously researched look at the physiology, biology, chemistry, and psychology of pregnancy and motherhood. Garbes and West offered personal and feminist guidance to women navigating one of the biggest and most profound changes in their lives, and unpack the science behind postpartum hormones, breast milk, miscarriage, and more. Join Garbes and West for an exploration of pregnancy infused with candor, humor, awe, and appreciation of the human body.

Angela Garbes is a Seattle-based author and journalist, and former staff food writer at Seattle newsweekly The Stranger, where she contributes articles on food, culture, and other feature stories. She is the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy.

Lindy West is a Seattle-based writer, editor and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice, humour and body image. She is a contributing editor and opinion writer for The New York Timesand the author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman. Her essays on feminism, social justice, body image, and popular culture have been featured in Jezebel, Cosmopolitan, GQ and The Stranger and on “This American Life.”

Recorded live at The Summit by Town Hall Seattle on Wednesday, June 13, 2018.