February 12, 2020

Kirk, Spock and Darwin

Duke University evolutionary biologist Mohamed A. F. Noor talks about his book Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds.

By Steve Mirsky

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Welcome to Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on February 12, 2020. I’m Steve Mirsky. It’s Darwin Day—Charles Darwin was born on this date in 1809. So we’ll talk a bit about evolution on this episode but in a fun way:

[CLIP: Star Trek]

No, we won’t be talking to Kirk or McCoy. But we will chat with Mohamed Noor. He’s a biologist at Duke University specializing in genetics and evolution. And he’s the author of the 2018 book Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds. The paperback edition is coming out on February 25. We spoke by phone.

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[NOOR 1]

More with Noor after this short break.

[NOOR 2]

Mohamed Noor will be speaking on Star Trek: The Cruise IV, a weeklong trip leaving from Miami March 1. That’s it for this episode. Get your science news at our Web site, www.ScientificAmerican.com, where you’ll also find a bunch of articles in our archives on the science of Star Trek. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, where you’ll get a tweet whenever a new item hits the Web site. Our twitter name is @sciam.

The music playing us out on this episode is an original composition and performance by a young singer I saw at a little Scientific American party just last night. Her day job has her collaborating with some SciAm folks. Her name is Meli Sul, spelled S-U-L. And her song is called “Pride.” For Scientific American’s Science Talk, I’m Steve Mirsky. Thanks for clicking on us.

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