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

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" — where a teacher was charged with the crime of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. At the time, it was illegal in Tennessee https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/scopes/images/Butler%20Act.pdf to "teach 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." The trial, which was orchestrated to be a media spectacle, foreshadowed the cultural divisions that continue today and led to a backlash against proponents of evolution. Read more https://www.npr.org/2025/07/08/nx-s1-5430760/evolution-scopes-creationism-monkey-trial of science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce's https://www.npr.org/people/4494969/nell-greenfieldboyce reporting on the story. Want us to cover more science history? Less? Either way, tell us by emailing [email protected] mailto:[email protected]! We'd love to know what you're hearing — and want to hear from us! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave http://plus.npr.org/shortwave. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:22Regina Barber?

  Hey, Short Wavers. 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.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  For our science lesson for today,

• 0:36Speaker 02

  we will continue our discussion of Darwin's theory of the descent of man.

• 0:41Regina 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.

• 0:54Speaker 03

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

• 0:59Regina 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.

• 1:14Speaker 04

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

• 1:19Regina Barber?

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

• 1:21Speaker 04

  Hey, there.

• 1:22Regina Barber?

  So I'm excited to talk about the Scopes trial with you because here in 2025, 100 years later, it still seems very relevant.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:49Regina Barber?

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

• 1:53Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:13Regina 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 Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

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• 3:55Regina Barber?

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

• 4:00Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:14Regina Barber?

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

• 4:19Speaker 04

  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 Bryan, the key thing was divine creation.

• 4:36Speaker 06

  As a Christian, he believed it was essential that

• 4:41Speaker 06

  Humans were created in the image of God.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 4:56Regina 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?

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, Bryan 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 Bryan 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.

• 5:24Regina Barber?

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

• 5:30Speaker 04

  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.

• 6:03Regina Barber?

  What? So was Scopes in on this too?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  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?

• 6:13Speaker 07

  And I said, well, okay.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  It was that simple. In this interview, which is held by the Studs Terkel Archive, Scopes says, once he agreed to this plan.

• 6:23Speaker 07

  It was 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.

• 6:34Regina Barber?

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

• 6:40Speaker 04

  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.

• 6:51Speaker 06

  Scopes had never taught evolution, and nobody thought he did.

• 6:54Speaker 04

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

• 7:03Regina Barber?

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

• 7:09Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:14Regina Barber?

  Fascinating.

• 7:15Speaker 06

  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.

• 7:25Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:40Regina Barber?

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

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Yes, so I asked Ed Larson, you know, "What's the biggest misbelief that people have about the case?"

• 7:48Speaker 06

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

• 7:54Speaker 04

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

• 7:57Regina Barber?

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

• 8:03Speaker 04

  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. 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.

• 8:27Regina Barber?

  So, did other states pass laws?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  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?"

• 8:38Regina Barber?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:49Speaker 06

  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.

• 9:04Regina Barber?

  Wow.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  The textbook used this euphemism, organic variation over time.

• 9:10Regina Barber?

  And that's like 40 years after scopes.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Teaching evolution continued to be controversial.

• 9:15Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  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?

• 9:33Regina 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.

• 9:43Speaker 04

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

• 9:46Regina Barber?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. So Ken Miller told me, he, you know, co-wrote this biology textbook, which came out in 1990. It's, 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.

• 10:05Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  But even then, some of the book's marketers found the whole thing worrisome.

• 10:08Speaker 08

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

• 10:14Speaker 04

  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.

• 10:23Regina Barber?

  Really? Like, tell me about that.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  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.

• 10:41Speaker 08

  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.

• 10:56Speaker 04

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

• 10:59Regina Barber?

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

• 11:04Speaker 04

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

• 11:16Regina Barber?

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

• 11:19Speaker 04

  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?

• 11:27Regina Barber?

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

• 11:31Speaker 04

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

• 11:42Speaker 09

  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?

• 11:58Speaker 04

  In his view, evolution versus creationism is really about who we are and 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, Ken Miller, the textbook author, he told me he's a practicing Catholic.

• 12:18Regina Barber?

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

• 12:29Speaker 04

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

• 12:38Regina Barber?

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

• 12:46Speaker 04

  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.

• 12:59Regina Barber?

  It definitely does. And 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.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  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.

• 13:21Regina Barber?

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

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

• 13:31Regina Barber?

  This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Kwasi 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 NPR.

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