MEMBER REVIEW: This DVD set is produced by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It is done in-house, but has very good technical quality. The 2 DVDs are different. All are from the 2005 Holiday Lectures on Science. The first DVD consists of 4 lectures on evolution, plus a series of interactive presentations taken from the lectures. The lectures are good presentations with introductions, video clips, and graphics. Each lecture is on a different topic, but they progress, so watch them in order. These are generally college-level presentations, and are an excellent overview of genetics and evolution. They touch on natural selection, plant and animal breeding, and modern DNA research. You need your remote to play the interactive stuff, there is interesting material there. But you can also skip the interactive stuff, as it is all in the lectures. Each lecture lasts about an hour, with talk and questions. Interestingly, they take video from all sorts of sources, commercial and educational, from Nova to Jeopardy. The second DVD has a discussion reconciling religion and science. It has interviews with 4 principals about evolution and science and the benefits from evolutionary research. The interviews seem geared toward encouraging young people to go into science. The discussion about religion and science and can they easily coexist, feature the scientists who presented the lectures, a priest, and a philosopher. Both the priest and philosopher say the Bible is not to be taken literally, so they bypass totally a main argument against evolution. They get into media bashing – the media does not represent all viewpoints – just fundamentalists vs. a scientist or two. The fear of science and evolution seems a uniquely American phenomenon. They get into Intelligent Design vs. Creationism. This whole discussion seems more germane to people in the DC area, where there is a lot more overt fundamentalism than here in Minnesota, where we have not ever tried to legislate the falsity of evolution. But it is interesting to hear some good arguments for evolution, and yet you can still believe in God (or whatever). But if you are not needing this material it is easily skipped. The courses are good, and give a real sold foundation for understanding evolution and how it works both in the greater scale and also down to the specific genes.