About

This blog and the podcasts are based on and updated from my 1994 book, History of the Earth: Perpetual Calendar. To purchase the book, see this page. The Facebook page is a way of posting announcements about this blog.  And Twitter.

The purpose of the blog is educational and non-profit, intended for interested non-geologists. It's a personal, unfunded effort by me, and obviously it's my subjective, simple overview of earth history distilled into 366 short snapshots. It's not to scale - if it were, we'd be pretty bored until the middle of November! While every effort has been made to provide accurate, well-researched information, it is not guaranteed. As with anything you find on the Internet, you should use this as a starting point, and do your own additional research. Geologists who catch me in errors, PLEASE let me know! (either by email or comment on the appropriate page.) 

The series was designed to cover the History of the Earth in one year, calendar year 2014. So the project is over with the end of 2014. All episodes remain available here, through the index in the right sidebar. The podcast and blog saw only a few episodes in 2015-17, but beginning in late 2017 it was rejuvenated on a weekly basis. Also, each month of podcasts from 2014 were assembled into a single program containing all that month's episodes. They are available here, using the label "monthly package" in the index. 

The podcast intro music is from "Vintage Education" by Kevin MacLeod; public domain from freepd.com. Banner photos by Richard Gibson unless credit line is given. Then, they are either public domain or are used with permission of the photographer. For additional good and great information, check out the blogs and podcasts listed under "Recommended" on the right side of the blog pages.

I'm a geologist with a career including mineralogical analysis of kidney stones, geophysics and tectonics for oil and mineral exploration, environmental studies, and teaching. I've been a geological study guide for Smithsonian Journeys in Iceland, Alaska, and western United States. For more information, visit my web site.

I'm very much interested in making many of the podcasts short discussions with interested people rather than just me talking, which even I can find boring. If you are curious, are willing to learn about geology, are in the Butte area, and would like to be recorded in a short back-and-forth discussion, please contact me at rigibson@earthlink.net. Thanks to Colleen Elliott, Katie McDonald, and Robert Edwards for helping out with several episodes, and beginning in 2018, Petr Yakovlev is a regular guest podcaster.

If you are a geologist, even if you are not in the Butte area, I'd be very interested in additional topics that could be discussed during the coming months.  Give me a good idea for something that relates to a particular period, and we'll do it!