Bozeman-based science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with implications for human health and even our own human nature. Most importantly, the existence of horizontal gene transfer, meaning that genetic material can and does pass between unrelated species, essentially invalidates the standard, simply branching depiction of the tree of life. Reading from and discussing his new book, entitled The Tangled Tree, Quammen describes some of the discoveries and the researchers who made them–people such as Carl Woese, the most important biologist of the twentieth century that nobody knows.

Recorded at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman on August 22, 2018.