Anyone who has ever watched “Law and Order” or “CSI” knows: obtaining and analyzing DNA evidence features prominently in many of its fictional criminal cases. But leaving such TV dramatizations aside, over the last two decades, DNA evidence has come to play an increasingly routine and important role in the U.S. law enforcement and justice systems. Technological innovations within science and social policy have both played a role in this process. 

In the Rocky Mountains, archeologists uncover a unique fossil site packed with astonishingly well-preserved bones of mammoths, mastodons, and other giant extinct beasts. The discovery opens a highly focused window on the vanished world of the Ice Age in North America.

One hundred thousand years ago, on planet Earth, huge sheets of ice surge and retreat. Now, a stunning find in an ancient lake promises a glimpse into this exotic Ice Age realm and at the fantastic creatures that ruled the land: ancient elephants like mammoths and mastodons; giant bison; sloths and camels.

Try to stop thinking for five seconds. Ready?…steady…GO! Okay, now you’re just reading this and not-stopping-your-thinking! So why can’t we stop thinking? Well, this is the handiwork of our old friend, evolution. A long time ago moment-to-moment readiness was necessary for survival. In those days people had to worry about things like lion attacks, leopard attacks, monkeys stealing berries, scorpions, falling rocks, drowning, giant snakes, and so on. This required a brain that was constantly working. To learn more, listen to the Question Your World Radio Report below from the Science Museum of Virginia.

Contemporary genetic medicine is both revolutionary and deeply traditional. Our mastery of the molecules of life is unprecedented - yet modern medical genomics shares some of the same basic goals with the eugenicists and geneticists of the early 20th century. Join Dr. Nathaniel Comfort, Associate Professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, on January 24th at STS@VCU’s “Art of Medicine” lecture series as he discusses how genetics became medical - and how medicine became genetic.