Holiday sale starts Monday!
We here at Charlie's Playhouse embrace crass holiday commercialism. In fact we consider it a clever adaptation to our environment. Survival of the most heavily discounted, right?Announcing our 3-week holiday saleNovember 30th through December 21st

Providence College waters down its teaching staff
Much to the chagrin of tuition-paying students at Providence College, I took over a marketing class last week and prattled on for a while about the business end of Charlie's Playhouse and evolution for kids.I had a terrific time. What a pleasure to have a group of s

Kids in the UK get an evolutionary treat
How magnificent is the UK? First, the entire nation drinks tea incessantly, much as I do. Second, my splendid dad was born and raised there. Third, it produced our big man Darwin.Well, it gets better, folks.Earlier this month, the UK government announced that

Don't listen to me, listen to the professor
Colin Purrington is both an associate professor of biology at Swarthmore College and a one-man force for revealing the fun, wacky, irresistible side of evolution. He's a national treasure.I love his blog, Axis o

Kids just *get* natural selection
Ah, the bird feeder, everyday model of natural selection. It's right there out the window as we chew our Cheerios in the morning.Yesterday Caleb (5) said, "Look at them fight, Mommy! The birds are fighting over who gets to sit on the perch and eat the food." Dozens of little brown birds are fluttering around the feeder, all the same species. Then Caleb jumps up and does his best full-body imitation of the battle, which I must say is pretty impressive."Why do you think one bird wins and another bird loses?" I ask him. He thinks it over."Maybe the bird who is on the perch knows that the next bird wants some food, so he just moves away," he says