In the 2005 lectures, HHMI investigators Sean B. Carroll and David M. Kingsley discuss how Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution ignited a revolution in biology that continues to this day. Darwin's concept of a living world changing over time through natural selection has become biology's major unifying framework.

View the on-demand webcast of the lectures, the student discussion session on reconciling religion and evolution, or the 2006 Ken Miller lecture on evolution versus "intelligent design."

Click here to view summaries of the 2005 Holiday Lectures.

Boning Up on Evolution

David Kingsley's office at Stanford University might look to some observers like a Halloween supply store-it's filled with skeletons. "I have a turtle, an armadillo, a mole rat, an axolotl [a kind of salamander]," Kingsley says. "I have a piranha head from someone's trip to South America." Read more...

Winged Victories

When collecting butterflies is your job, what do you do for a hobby? Biologist Sean Carroll leaves his butterflies in his lab and hits the road in search of bigger game. "I like to go to jungles and swamps and coral reefs," he says of trips with his wife Jamie and some percentage of their four sons, Josh, Chris, Patrick, and Will. Read more...

How did we get here?

Today's evolution is not your grandfather's evolution. Molecular biology and genetics, crucial to our current understanding of evolution, didn't even exist as scientific disciplines during Charles Darwin's life. In fact, Darwin's evolution was not even his grandfather's evolution. Read more...

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