Evolution Went On Trial 100 Years Ago. Where Are We Now?

Summary

Short Wave: Evolution Went On Trial 100 Years Ago. Where Are We Now?

Released on July 9, 2025, "Short Wave" by NPR delves into the centennial reflections of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, exploring its historical significance, long-term impacts on education and society, and its enduring relevance in contemporary scientific and cultural debates. Hosted by Regina Barber and featuring insights from NPR Science Correspondent Nell Greenfeld Boyce, the episode offers a comprehensive examination of how the trial continues to influence discussions around evolution, education, and belief systems.

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1. Introduction to the Scopes Trial

Regina Barber opens the episode by referencing the classic play and film adaptation of the Scopes Trial, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the actual historical events.

Regina Barber [00:13]: "Today we're going to start with a famous play called Inherit the Wind. Maybe you read it in high school or saw the classic movie made in 1960."

She introduces the central event—the trial of John Scopes, a teacher accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act by teaching human evolution.

Regina Barber [00:56]: "The movie is about the so-called Scopes monkey trial, which happened 100 years ago this week. Tennessee state law prohibited teaching human evolution and a teacher named John Scopes was put on trial for violating that law."

2. The Cultural Divide of 1925

NPR Science Correspondent Nell Greenfeld Boyce provides context about the societal tensions leading up to the trial.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [01:15]: "I think in 1925, the nation really felt culturally divided and it kind of coalesced into this one trial happening in the town of Dayton, Tennessee."

She emphasizes that the trial was a microcosm of the broader cultural and ideological conflicts of the time, many of which persist today.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [01:46]: "I think the Scopes trial is still well known today. But now it's kind of like folklore. I mean, the reality of the trial doesn't always match up with what people think they know."

3. The Butler Act and Its Implications

The episode delves into the specifics of the law that set the stage for the trial.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [03:46]: "The law was the Butler Act and it outlawed teaching, 'any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.'"

Regina clarifies that the prohibition was specifically against teaching human evolution, not the evolution of other animals.

Regina Barber [04:00]: "So I guess that means, like, you could teach about, like other animal evolution, just not humans."

4. William Jennings Bryan's Role

The episode highlights the influence of William Jennings Bryan, a key figure opposing the teaching of evolution.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [04:06]: "For Bryan, the key thing was divine creation."

Bryan's stance was rooted in his belief in humans being created in the image of God, which fueled his opposition to evolutionary theory in education.

Ken Miller [04:22]: "As a Christian, he believed it was essential that humans were created in the image of God."

5. The Manufactured Nature of the Trial

Contrary to popular portrayals, the Scopes Trial was largely orchestrated for publicity and as a test case by the newly formed American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [05:16]: "This whole deal was a completely contrived event... some town leaders in Dayton saw that and they thought, well, why not get some publicity for our town?"

John Scopes himself was aware of the orchestrated nature and agreed to participate under specific conditions.

John Scopes [06:04]: "But had you taught at my school? Well, I had taught a class in biology for about three or four weeks."

Ken Miller [06:38]: "Scopes had never taught evolution. Nobody thought he did."

6. The Trial as a Public Spectacle

Regina Barber and Nell Greenfeld Boyce discuss how the trial was more a public debate than a traditional legal proceeding, attracting nationwide attention.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [07:11]: "Larson told me the nation was riveted. At one point, the judge moved the proceedings out into the courthouse lawn because of the heat and the crowds."

The trial featured prominent figures like Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, whose oratory skills captivated the public.

Ken Miller [07:02]: "You had two magnificent orators in, Bryan and Darrow making their arguments, backed up by a legion of supporters who are also articulate on both sides."

7. Misconceptions and Immediate Aftermath

Contrary to the dramatized version in Inherit the Wind, the actual trial swiftly concluded with Scopes being found guilty, and neither side achieved a clear victory.

Ken Miller [07:35]: "Oh, that Scopes won. That's the biggest misconception."

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [07:44]: "In reality, it took the jury less than 10 minutes to find him guilty."

Despite the sensational nature of the trial, evolution was effectively removed from Tennessee schools for decades thereafter.

8. Long-Term Impact on Education

The episode traces the ebb and flow of evolution's presence in American education post-Scopes Trial, highlighting key milestones and ongoing controversies.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [08:15]: "A couple did, but really it was more just like, you know, look, I mean, if you were a textbook publisher trying to sell books, would you want to touch this issue?"

Ken Miller discusses efforts to reinforce the teaching of evolution in biology textbooks.

Ken Miller [09:34]: "He and his co-authors stuck to their guns, and the book proved to be very popular, although it did still get embroiled in a couple of court cases, like in 2005 and 2006."

9. Contemporary Relevance and Public Opinion

The conversation shifts to the present-day landscape, assessing public acceptance of evolution and the lingering pockets of resistance.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [10:45]: "But there's still a minority that doesn't buy it."

A recent Pew Research Center poll indicates that 17% of U.S. adults reject the notion that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [10:50]: "The Pew Research Center had a poll out earlier this year. It found that 17% of U.S. adults believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

10. The Broader Spectrum of Controversial Science Topics

Regina Barber and Nell Greenfeld Boyce draw parallels between the evolution debate and other contentious scientific issues like transgender rights, climate change, and vaccines, emphasizing the deep-rooted ideological divides that complicate public discourse.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [12:45]: "I do feel like I should say that some people, lots of people, see no conflict between their religion and evolution."

Regina Barber [12:05]: "I feel like today evolution is kind of more on the back burner in the sense that, like, other issues have taken up a lot more public attention."

11. Looking Ahead: The Legacy of the Scopes Trial

The episode concludes with reflections on the enduring legacy of the Scopes Trial and its implications for future scientific and cultural debates.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [12:33]: "And, you know, the public can feel very divided, kind of hopelessly divided on these issues. It’s hard for one side to, you know, talk to or understand the other."

Regina Barber [12:54]: "It definitely does. And, like, if there's another big case like this in the future on any of these scientific issues, we'll expect you to come back and cover it for us."

Nell Greenfeld Boyce humorously muses about the possibility of future trials shaping public understanding, underlining the timeless nature of such societal debates.

Nell Greenfeld Boyce [12:54]: "I'm trying to imagine who the popular figures would be on each side that would make arguments. But I will cover it, and then I will turn my coverage into a movie script. That is my plan."

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Produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Rebecca Ramirez, this episode of "Short Wave" provides a nuanced exploration of the Scopes Trial's centenary, offering listeners a rich understanding of its historical context, immediate outcomes, and lasting influence on American society and education.

Transcript

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[Regina Barber]

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers, it's me, Regina Barber. And today we're going to start with a famous play called Inherit the Wind. Maybe you read it in high school or saw the classic movie made in 1960.

[John Scopes]

For our science lesson for today, we will continue our discussion of Darwin's theory of the descent of man.

[Regina Barber]

This black and white film starts with town officials marching into a classroom. There's a teacher standing next to this chart that shows a gorilla. He's about to teach human evolution. So he's arrested.

[John Scopes]

You're charged with violation of Public Act 31428, Volume 37, Statute 19.

[Regina Barber]

The movie is about the so called Scopes monkey trial, which happened 100 years ago this week. Tennessee state law prohibited teaching human evolution and a teacher named John Scopes was put on trial for violating that law.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, but if your idea of this trial comes from Inherit the Wind, you better get ready for a shock.

[Regina Barber]

That's NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfel Boyce. Hey, Nell.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Hey there.

[Regina Barber]

So I'm excited to talk about the Scopes trial with you because here in 2025, a hundred years later, it still seems very relevant.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, I think in 1925, the nation really felt culturally divided and it kind of coalesced into this one trial happening in the town of Dayton, Tennessee. And back then, the trial was this huge, huge deal. And it sort of foreshadowed a bunch of divisions in the country that I think to a certain extent seem very much still in play.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I read it was the first trial ever broadcast on radio.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Everyone was covering it. I mean, everyone. Newspapers all over the country followed it extremely closely. And I think the Scopes trial is still well known today. But now it's kind of like folklore. I mean, the reality of the trial doesn't always match up with what people think they know.

[Regina Barber]

So today on the show, we'll look back at the 1925 Scopes trial, what really went down in Tennessee, how that affected the teaching of evolution, and why this still matters today a century later. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from npr.

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[Regina Barber]

So now let's start at the beginning. What was this Tennessee law and where did it come from?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

The law was the Butler act and it outlawed teaching, quote, any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals, unquote.

[Regina Barber]

So I guess that means, like, you could teach about, like other animal evolution, just not humans.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Exactly. Yeah. So it's really human evolution that was a big deal for people like William Jennings Bryan. He's this famous populist and public speaker. Historian Edward Larson, who wrote a book about the Scopes trial, told me that for Brian, the key thing was divine creation.

[Ken Miller]

As a Christian, he believed it was essential that humans were created in the image of God.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

So for years before the Tennessee law was passed, Bryan had been campaigning against the teaching of human evolution in public schools. He gave speeches where he sort of attributed all the ills of modern society to a belief in evolution. Or.

[Regina Barber]

Well, back in 1925, wasn't evolution kind of like wrapped up in eugenics and like, racist ideas about, like, some people being fitter than others?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, you know, Brian was actually against eugenics. He thought it was brutal. But it's worth noting that the textbook that Scopes taught out of discussed eugenics favorably. Anyway, for Brian and lots of others, evolution was also kind of a symbol of, you know, abandoning old time religion and sort of losing touch with the old moral ways.

[Regina Barber]

Okay, so Tennessee passes this law. How was it that John Scopes came to be arrested?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

That's the thing. So unlike what's portrayed in the movie, this whole deal was a completely contrived event. The American Civil Liberties Union had just been founded a few years before and they wanted to challenge this law and they were Looking for a test case. And news of their search got reported in a Chattanooga newspaper. And some town leaders in Dayton saw that and they thought, well, why not get some publicity for our town? They literally dreamed this up in a drugstore, like at the soda fountain where local people gathered to chew the fat.

[Regina Barber]

So was Scopes in on this too?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Absolutely. He told radio legend Studs Terkel that the head of the school board called him in and was like, look, can we use your name for this?

[John Scopes]

And I said, well, ok, it was that simple.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

In this interview, which is held by the Studs Terkel archive, Scopes says once he agreed to this plan, it was.

[John Scopes]

On the wires out of Chattanooga that you arrested. That I was arrested. But had you taught at my school? Well, I had taught a class in biology for about three or four weeks.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, that's not exactly like that full throated admission of like, teaching evolution.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

He was just a substitute teacher. He basically told the town officials who were planning this thing, look, I'll do it as long as you can make it so that I don't have to perjure myself. Here's what Larson, the historian, told me.

[Ken Miller]

Scopes had never taught evolution. Nobody thought he did.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Everybody, even the judge, understood that this was a manufactured event. Really, it was more of a staged public debate than a trial.

[Regina Barber]

And the two debaters were like famously, Clarence Darrow, this well known attorney, and William Jennings Bryan.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, they both volunteered their services. They wanted to get in on this because it was clear it was going to generate a lot of publicity.

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Fascinating.

[Ken Miller]

You had two magnificent orators in, Bryan and Darrow making their arguments, backed up by a legion of supporters who are also articulate on both sides.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Larson told me the nation was riveted. At one point, the judge moved the proceedings out into the courthouse lawn because of the heat and the crowds. And you had kids walking around selling refreshments. I mean, it was not a trial in the traditional sense. Not at all.

[Regina Barber]

I mean, but there was a jury, right? And there was a verdict.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yes. So I asked Ed Larson, you know, what's the biggest misbelief that people have about the case?

[Ken Miller]

Oh, that Scopes won. That's the biggest misconception.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

In reality, it took the jury less than 10 minutes to find him guilty.

[Regina Barber]

Yet in this fictional account, Inherit the Win, it's portrayed as this, like, great moral victory.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Sure. Both sides immediately declared victory. I mean, Larson told me that newspaper editorials written back then did not see any great win by either side. Wow. I mean, people who were observing it at the time mostly were just marveling at how divided the country was. And what's more, evolution disappeared from schools for decades after this.

[Regina Barber]

So did other states pass laws?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

A couple did, but really it was more just like, you know, look, I mean, if you were a textbook publisher trying to sell books, would you want to touch this issue?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, that's true.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

I talked with Kenneth Miller. He's a cell biologist. He told me when he was in high school in New Jersey in the 1960s, he first heard about the Scopes trial and also learned about evolution.

[Ken Ham]

But significantly, the textbook we used didn't mention the word evolution. And only in retrospect did I realize that that was sort of part of the aftermath of the Scopes trial.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Wow. The textbook used this euphemism, organic variation over time.

[Regina Barber]

And that's like 40 years after scopes.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Teaching evolution continued to be controversial.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

When I was growing up in the 1980s, there were some key court cases that basically said, you can't teach creationism in public schools. It's equivalent to religion. I can't really remember what was in my textbooks. I know I did definitely get taught Darwin and evolution. I mean, what about you?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I was taught evolution, but I grew up in a really small rural town, and my high school biology teacher, she was harassed, her car was vandalized because she taught evolution.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Wow. So that must have been in the 1990s, is that right?

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

So Ken Miller told me he, you know, co wrote this biology textbook which came out in 1990. It's now widely used, used in all 50 states. He told me he and his co author deliberately peppered evolution all through the thing. I mean, he calls evolution the central idea in biology. Yeah, but even then, some of the book's marketers found the whole thing worrisome.

[Ken Ham]

And they very much asked us to de emphasize the e word, which would be evolution.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

He and his co authors stuck to their guns, and the book proved to be very popular, Although it did still get embroiled in a couple of court cases, like in 2005 and 2006.

[Regina Barber]

Really? Like, tell me about that.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

It was just the same concerns about evolution and people wanting creationism, or what some call intelligent design, to get presented as alternatives in public school science classes. I mean, Miller does see progress in getting evolution taught and accepted in this country.

[Ken Ham]

After many years of the American public being 50, 50 on evolution, we now have a substantial majority saying they accept evolution in terms of the evolution of the human species.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

But there's still a minority that doesn't buy it.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah. What are the latest figures on how many Americans reject human evolution.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

The Pew Research center had a poll out earlier this year. It found that 17% of U.S. adults believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

[Regina Barber]

I mean, 17%. That's millions of people.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah. I was talking with Ken Ham. He's the founder of the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, which are in Kentucky. Have you heard of them?

[Regina Barber]

Well, is he. Is he the same person who, like, debated Bill Nye back in, like, 2014?

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, yeah, they debated evolution. Anyway, Ham was telling me he sees the debate over evolution as just kind of the inevitable result of drastically different things, Foundational worldviews.

[John Scopes]

If there is a God who created us, and it is the God of the Bible, then he determines right and wrong and good and evil, and we have an absolute authority. But if you are just the result of natural processes, and there is no God who determines right and wrong, who determines good and evil, in his view.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Evolution versus creationism is really about who we are and, like, where we came from and what's the whole meaning and purpose of life. So I do feel like I should say that some people, lots of people, see no conflict between their religion and evolution. I mean, like Ken Miller, the textbook author, he told me he's a practicing Catholic.

[Regina Barber]

Yeah, I mean, I feel like today evolution is kind of more on the back burner in the sense that, like, other issues have taken up a lot more public attention. Transgender rights, for example, for one of them.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Yeah, that's another thing where it comes down to, like, you know, the Bible says God created man and woman, and then you got scientists saying, well, you know, it's more complicated than that.

[Regina Barber]

So it's similar to evolution in that sense. But then there's other controversial science topics, like climate change or even vaccines.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

And, you know, the public can feel very divided, kind of hopelessly divided on these issues, and it's hard for one side to, you know, talk to or understand the other. I mean, to me, it does feel very much like the Scopes trial sometimes.

[Regina Barber]

It definitely does. And, like, if there's another big case like this in the future on any of these scientific issues, we'll expect you to come back and cover it for us.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Well, I will. It's hard to imagine anything that could be quite like the Scopes trial. I'm trying to imagine who the popular figures would be on each side that would make arguments. But I will cover it, and then I will turn my coverage into a movie script. That is my plan.

[Regina Barber]

Nell, thank you so much for bringing us this reporting.

[Nell Greenfeld Boyce]

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

[Regina Barber]

This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts, Kwesi Lee was the audio engineer, Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior Vice president of Podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Short Wave from N.

[Ken Miller]

Foreign.

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