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Connie and Michael sample 5 songs from "Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway" (companion CD to the extraordinary fossil + art exhibit (by that same title) now on display at the Burke Museum of the University of Washington, Seattle).  Titles include "Ages of Rock," "Hey Fishface," "I Am a Paleobotanist," "Ammonite" (which is an extinct mollusk, pictured here), and "Time Travellin' with a Shovel" -- all destined to become classics!  Inspired by the latter song, Connie composed a song to convey the content of her 2001 book, "Ghosts of Evolution" -- and that song is played here too. (You can also watch the full 5-minute music video "Ghosts of Evolution" on Connie's YouTube channel.)   Closing out this podcast is the audio from the latest "Symphony of Science" music video (by John Boswell): "Poetry of Reality".

Here is Michael Dowd's Feb 28, 2010 sermon at the Unity Church of Portland -- his first sermon since re-launching itinerant evolutionary evangelism following 6 months of successful cancer treatment in Seattle. Fresh from reading Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Empathic Civilization, and listening to Frans de Waal's The Age of Empathy, Michael offers that "The challenge of our times is to create a global empathic civilization -- where we cooperate at the scale of a species and where we do so from a place grounded in respect for our differences."  At the personal scale of relationships he advises, "To the degree that we share our vulnerability with each other, we become much more beautiful to each other because that's where our hearts open with compassion -- suffering with -- and our natural, instinctual empathy begins to embrace the other." Michael has also blogged on this topic at his Thank God For Evolution website.

Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow discuss current events in the context of "evolutionary legacy" -- the ripples of action that continue on in the world after we, as individuals, are gone.  Intentional, even courageous, action are what the evolutionary impulse is calling forth from each of us now.  As Dowd frames the issue, "The growing edge of both Eastern and Western thinking is participatory: How do we, in an embodied way, participate in the evolution of life, the evolution of consciousness and culture, such that we further evolution in positive, constructive ways?" Examples come from the work of Thomas Berry, notably, his distinction between a "redemption" focus v. a "creation" focus, as well as a February 7, 2010, sermon by Rev. Marlin Lavanhar of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Michael Dowd published 3 blogs recently on his ThankGodforEvolution.com website, which he and Connie Barlow discuss here.  The first is for general audiences and is titled, "Ev olutionary Spirituality: Coming Home to Reality".  Dowd advocates a very practical form of evolutionary spirituality that is above all relational.  Striving for "deep integrity" and pursuing an evolutionary calling ("deep bliss") are core elements. Next come the highlights of the two blogs Dowd wrote specifically for Christians: "At heists Promote Bible Reading?!" and "Th e Salvation of Religion: From Beliefs to Knowledge"

Connie and Michael discuss a variety of ways in which new technologies and new information systems are boosting and challenging their own work: both in staying informed and getting their ideas out into the world. Kevin Kelly calls this suprabiological phase of evolution, "The Technium."  New modes for the free exchange and collaborations of ideas and meaning include not only podcasts, such as these, but video uploads to YouTube, video "mashing" (by which third parties freely offer their time to make video snippets more accessible and entertaining), downloadable and thus ever-updated curricula, webinars and teleseminars, and synergistic mixes of all these modes. 

View from the Center of the Universe made a powerful impression on Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow when it was published in 2006. This podcast celebrates its coauthors: Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams and their continuing role in interpreting cosmological science in ways that offer modern peoples not only a deeply meaningful universe but one in which the human project can be experienced as central. Michael and Connie offer listeners a sampling of their favorite quotations from this book, while reflecting on their own experience of evangelizing mainstream science as our common creation story. Web references include: Primack Quotes and View from the Center of the Universe, as well as two YouTube videos: Nancy Ellen Abrams: "Cosmic Society" and Joel and Nancy's 4-part 20 09 Terry Lectures.