Scientific genetics, little more than a century old, holds at once the promise of eradicating disease and the threat of altering the very essence of what it means to be human. It traces the dizzying evolution of this new science as researchers race to identify treatments for genetic diseases, such as cancer and sickle cell anemia, and to perfect tools for rewriting DNA.

200,000 years ago we took our first steps in Africa. Today there are seven billion of us living across the planet. How did our ancestors spread from continent to continent? This is a global detective story, featuring the latest archaeological discoveries and genetic research. On each continent, we track down the earliest members of our species, Homo sapiens. Who were these First Peoples? What drove them to the ends of the earth?

Murphy stars as shy, kind, brilliant "calorically challenged" genetics professor Sherman Klump, who longs to shed his 400-pound frame in order to win the heart of a beautiful faculty member. His experimental fat-reducing serum creates a slimmed down alter-ego, with startling results.

English novelist and scientist C. P. Snow classed certain scientific ideas with the works of Shakespeare as things every educated person should know. The lectures in this series explore the fundamental discoveries and principles of the physical and biological sciences--physics, genetics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology, thermodynamics, and more--providing a comprehensive and integrated introduction to all of science. The Joy of Science,...