How Evolution Explains Everything About Life: From Darwin’s brilliant idea to today’s epic theory (Instant Expert)

How did we get here?

All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things, exist because of the action of evolution on the first simple life form and its descendants. We now know that it has taken 3.8 billions of years of work by the forces of evolution to turn what was once a lump of barren rock into the rich diversity of into plants, animals and microbes that surround us. In the process, evolution has created all manner of useful adaptions, from biological computers (brains) to a system to capture energy from the sun (photosynthesis).
But how does evolution actually work?

Evolution, explores the question of whether life is inevitable or a one-off fluke, how it got kick-started, whether it has a purpose or direction, and if evolution itself is evolving?