Category Archives: Podcasts

Podcasts

New talks on marrriage by Jennifer Roback Morse and Maggie Gallagher

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I listened to these several times each, and they are really good. Even better than the ones I posted earlier. If you only have time for one and you’re new, listen to the Dr. Morse lecture. If you have time for both or you’ve heard Dr. Morse before, listen to the Maggie Gallagher lecture.

Cloning her would solve the marriage problem
She can teach you to defend marriage

Jennifer Roback Morse

First, this is Dr. Morse’s well-known lecture on “The Institute Formerly Known As Marriage”. She takes a look at the decline of marriage using her skills as an economist. She talks about the importance of a mother being present during the first 18 months of the child’s development, and the purpose of marriage.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics covered include children’s needs, no-fault divorce, single motherhood and same-sex marriage.

Maggie Gallagher

Maggie Gallagher

Second, here is a very Catholic talk given by Maggie Gallagher. But Maggie is one of the best known voices defending marriage and you can even learn a little bit about her background here – she had an out of wedlock child and saw firsthand the effects of having no father in the home on her son.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics covered include children’s needs, single motherhood, same-sex marriage and the marriage movement.

Podcasts

Ann Gauger’s new peer-reviewed paper on Darwinian evolution

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Amazing new research paper by the Biologic Institute. The PDF of the paper, “Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,” is available here.

The MP3 file is here.

Participants

  • Jay Richards, Director of Research at the CRSC, (Discovery Institute)
  • Ann Gauger, senior research scientist at the Biologic Institute

About Ann:

Ann is a senior research scientist at Biologic Institute. Her work uses molecular genetics and genomic engineering to study the origin, organization and operation of metabolic pathways. She received a BS in biology from MIT, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington, where she studied cell adhesion molecules involved in Drosophila embryogenesis. As a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard she cloned and characterized the Drosophila kinesin light chain. Her research has been published in Nature, Development, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Topics:

  • Co-authored with microbiologist Ralph Seelke at the University of Wisconsion
  • Purpose: study whether bacteria can evolve the ability to fix a broken protein (e.g. – enzyme)
  • Two areas are broken in the enzyme
  • If you fix the first one, it works a little but not fully (slight advantage)
  • If you fix the second one, it starts to work fully (huge advantage)
  • It’s a “two-step adaptive path” – a textbook case for evolution
  • should be able to hit both mutations and get back full functionality
  • At the start of the experiment, the cell is churning out broken protein
  • there is a cost to the cell for create the broken protein
  • the cell can either go through the adaptive path and repair the protein
  • OR, it can shut off production of the broken protein
  • EITHER PATH gives a selective advantage
  • So what happens? The cells NEVER followed the adaptive path
  • They almost ALWAYS turn off the production of the broken protein
  • It happens in 30-50 generations, in 14 different cultures
  • Each culture had a different way of turning off the production
  • They tested on 10^12 cells
  • Only one cell made the first repair, none made the second repair
  • It’s more advantageous to STOP PRODUCING the broken protein as soon as possible
  • The first cell that gets rid of the non-functional protein first overtakes the whole culture
  • so, even adaptive paths that provide a benefit with one mutation are unlikely to be followed
  • The point: even promising theoretical adaptive pathways MAY NOT WORK in experiments

I wrote about Doug Axe’s recent research paper here. He is the Director of the Biologic Institute.

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Podcasts

J.P. Moreland talks about the meaning of happiness

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A while back I posted an article about the changing definition of happiness. I noticed then that Wes picked up on the post and he posted a lecture on happiness by J.P. Moreland.

Here is the short 26-minute lecture on happiness that he linked to. (He posted the video, I grabbed the audio)

This is really, really good. The same thing applies to love. A lot of people talk about love being a feeling, but I think rather that it is a decision that a person makes when they perceive that someone else can be moved closer to God, and they decide to act to make that happen.

Sometimes I worry about having grown up with non-Christian parents who really didn’t have much to tell me about what life was really about. But lectures like this really help me to learn the kinds of things that people really need to know.

I also just wanted to post a cleaned-up version of the Walter Bradley lecture that I had posted previously, with the noise removed, and the file size reduced. This is my favorite lecture of all. There are a couple of other versions of it in different venues here and here. These are all good, at least if you like Christians talking about the Christian life in a courageous, yet realistic way. I wouldn’t give these the attention I’m giving them unless I felt they were important.

About DropBox

I’m hosting some of those lectures using DropBox. I use it to share files with people.