Academically more able? This could inspire. ‘To most people through history it has always seemed obvious that the teeming diversity of life, the uncanny perfection with which living organisms are equipped to survive and multiply, and the bewildering complexity of living machinery, can only have come about through divine creation. Yet repeatedly it has occurred to isolated thinkers that there might be an alternative to supernatural creation. The notion of species changing into other species was in the air, like so many other good ideas, in ancient Greece. It went into eclipse until the 18th century, when it resurfaced in the minds of such advanced thinkers as Pierre de Maupertuis, Erasmus Darwin and the man who styled himself the Chevalier de Lamarck. In the first half of the 19th century the idea became not uncommon in intellectual circles, especially geological ones, but always in a rather vague form and without any clear picture of the mechanism by which change might come about. It was Charles Darwin (Erasmus’s grandson) who, spurred into print by Alfred Russel Wallace’s independent discovery of his principle of natural selection, finally established the theory of evolution by the publication, in 1859, of the famous book whose title is usually abbreviated to the Origin of Species. He amassed an overwhelming quantity of evidence for the fact that evolution has occurred, and, together with Wallace (independently) he thought up the only known workable theory of the reason why it leads to adaptive improvement – natural selection. Some fossil evidence was known to Darwin but he made more use of other evidence, less direct but in many ways more convincing, for the fact that evolution had taken place You should distinguish two quite distinct parts of Darwin’s contribution… the rapid alteration of animals and plants under domestication was persuasive evidence both for the fact that evolutionary change was possible and for the effectiveness of the artificial equivalent of natural selection. Darwin was particularly persuaded by the evidence from the geographical dispersion of animals. the presence of local island races, for example, is easily explicable by the evolution theory: the creation theory could explain them only by unparsimoniously assuming numerous ‘foci of creation’ dotted around the earth’s surface. the hierarchical classification into which animals and plants fall so naturally is strongly suggestive of a family tree: the creation theory had to make contrived and elaborate assumptions about the creator’s mind running along themes and variations. Darwin also used as evidence for his theory the fact that some organs seen in adults and embryos appear to be vestigial. According to the evolution theory such organs as the tiny buried hind-limb bones of whales are remnants of the walking legs of their terrestrial ancestors. In general the evidence for the fact that evolution has occurred consists of an enormous number of detailed observations which all make sense if we assume the theory of evolution, but which can be explained by the creation theory only if we assume that the creator elaborately set out to deceive us. Modern molecular evidence has boosted the evidence for evolution beyond Darwin’s wildest dreams, and the fact of evolution is now as securely attested as any in science.’

Experts on what kinds of science topics are you looking for?

I miss the golden days of r/askscience and r/askhistorians on Reddit. I was flared contributor on r/askscience for pharmacology and medicine related topics

This question reminded me of James Burke’s documentaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_(science_historian)