Tag: Biology

Tangling the Tree of Life

Big Biology | 18 October 2018 | 1h 15m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with David Quammen about his book The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. Discusses how recent advances in genetics have changed our way of thinking about evolution and the relatedness of plants, animals, and microbes.

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Andrew Knoll – A Brief History of Earth

The Dissenter | 20 January 2023 | 0h 54m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Andrew Knoll about his book A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters. Discusses the main events in the history of the Earth: its formation, the formation of its atmosphere, where water came from, plate tectonics, the origins of life, the rise of oxygen, evolution from the first unicellular organisms to animals, the colonization of land by plants and animals, the mass extinctions, the evolution of and ecological impact of humans, and the future of the Earth.

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Nick Lane on Powering Biology

Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 23 May 2022 | 1h 25m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Nick Lane about his book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death. Discusses the importance of the Krebs cycle to contemporary biology, as well as its possible significance in understanding the origin of life. The Krebs cycle is the sequence of reactions that functions as a pathway for energy distribution in aerobic organisms.

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Beth Shapiro with Carl Zimmer: The Perks of Meddling with Nature

Town Hall Seattle Science Series | 18 January 2022 | 1h 02m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Beth Shapiro about her book Life as We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined―and Redefined―Nature. Argues that humans have always been meddling with nature – hunting, hybridizing plants, domesticating animals, and conserving the living things around us. Makes the case to free ourselves from fear of obtrusion and instead become better meddlers.

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Itai Yanai: The Society of Genes

The Dissenter | 28 October 2021 | 1h 05m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Itai Yanai about his book The Society of Genes, co-authored with Martin Lercher. Discusses the “selfish gene” metaphor; the randomness of mutations; how genes cooperate and compete with one another; pleiotropy and polygenic traits and what they tell us about how genes work; the evolution of sex; what we can learn about genetics by studying cancer; genetic diversity and how to deal with genetic ancestry in medicine; epigenetics; gene editing; and some unanswered questions in genetics.

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Herbert Gintis on Game Theory, Evolution, and Social Rationality

Sean Carroll’s Mindscape | 13 September 2021 | 1h 29m | Listen Later | iTunes | Spotify
Interview with Herbert Gintis arguing that game theory, together with an expanded model of rational behaviour (that includes social as well as personally selfish interests) provides an understanding of human behaviour that integrates ideas from biology, economics, psychology, and sociology.

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Paul Nurse on What Is Life?

Books on Pod with Trey Elling | 9 February 2021 | 0h 56m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Sir Paul Nurse about his book What Is Life?. Discusses five key ideas of biology along with details about each: the cell, the gene, evolution by natural selection, life as chemistry, and life as information. Also considers some current challenges and whether mankind is up to the task.

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Fungi

In Our Time | 15 February 2018 | 0h 48m | Listen Later  | iTunes
Discusses fungi: organisms which are not plants or animals but a kingdom of their own. The millions of species of fungi play a crucial role in ecosystems, enabling plants to obtain nutrients and causing material to decay. Without fungi, life as we know it simply would not exist. They also make possible the production of bread, wine and certain antibiotics.

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