Scientists talking to scientists, but accessible to anyone. We are living in a golden age of biology research. Big Biology is a podcast that tells the stories of scientists tackling some of the biggest unanswered questions in biology.
Your hosts, Marty Martin and Art Woods, talk to leading scientists from around the world about topics like why we drink alcohol, human consciousness and artificial intelligence, where diseases come from, and whether Godzilla could actually exist. From each conversation, we produce two podcasts—a condensed version lasting 5-10 minutes, which focuses on just the highlights, and a longer, lightly edited version of the entire conversation. You can listen to the podcasts here, on the BigBiology web site, or get them on iTunes and Google Play.
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Episode 132: Feel the heat (with Jancitha Ellers, Enrico Rezende, & Wilco Verberk)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do scientists measure thermal tolerance and predict organismal responses in the wild? What kind of other data is needed to make predictive models better at helping us understand species responses to high temperatures?
In this special episode, roving podcaster Cameron Ghalambor went on the ... Read More
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Episode 131: Secrets in the structure (with Scott Edwards)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How are new technologies allowing biologists to look beyond simple genetic variation to whole genome structure? What is a pangenome?
In this episode, we talk with Scott Edwards, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Curator of Ornithology at Harvard University. On ... Read More
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Episode 130: A direct hit (with Holden Thorp)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Will a change in policy at the National Institutes of Health derail science in the US? How does the “indirect cost rate” for federal research grants fuel research?
In this episode, we talk with Holden Thorp, a chemist and editor-in-chief of Science, about ... Read More
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Episode 129: Beaks and (fitness) peaks (with Trevor Price)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Which factors lead to the evolution of reproductive isolation? What role does hybridization play in speciation? Why are there so many bird species in the tropics?
In this episode, we host Trevor Price, a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at ... Read More
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Episode 128: Homo pathogenesis? (with Sabrina Sholts)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How does human behavior contribute to disease transmission? What can our history with infectious disease teach us about modern epidemics?
On this episode, we talk with Sabrina Sholts, Curator of Biological Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum ... Read More
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Episode 127: Devo-lutionary theory (with Scott Gilbert and Tobias Uller)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What role does development play in evolution? How can biology incorporate a broader, more complex definition of what it means to be an organism?
In this episode, we talk with Scott Gilbert and Tobias Uller, two of the authors who wrote ... Read More
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Episode 126: What does it take to change the world? (with Stephen Porder)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How have organisms changed the Earth and what can humans learn from its deep past?
On this episode, we talk with Stephen Porder, a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and the Associate Provost for Sustainability at Brown University. Stephen is ... Read More
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Episode 125: A quiet place (with Dale Broder and Robin Tinghitella)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do natural selection and sexual selection interact? What can observing adaptive radiation in the wild teach us about evolution?
On this episode, we talk with Dale Broder, an Assistant Professor at American University, and Robin Tinghitella, an Associate Professor at ... Read More
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Episode 124: Spiny, but social (with Aubrey Kelly)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What are spiny mice and why are they so social? What about their brains makes them gregarious? Might network neuroscience be a useful framework for understanding spiny mice behavior?
On this episode, we talk with Aubrey Kelly, an Assistant Professor in Psychology at ... Read More -
Episode 123: The long and winding road (with Rosemary Grant)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What was life like in wartime England for a young female scientist? What about living and doing research for months each year with your daughters and husband on a remote island?
On this episode, we talk with Rosemary Grant, Emeritus Professor of Ecology ... Read More
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Episode 122: Ahead of the (thermal) curve (with Ray Huey)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do biologists study the influence of heat on organisms and how can this be applied to the study of climate change? What impacts mountaineer survival at high altitudes?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Professor Emeritus at University of Washington and ... Read More
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Episode 121: Stickle-back to the future: experimental evolution in nature (with Alison Derry and Andrew Hendry)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Can we study evolution in the wild? Are some species “super-evolvers”?
On the episode, we talk with Alison Derry, a professor of biology at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and Andrew Hendry, a professor in the Department of Biology at ... Read More
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Episode 120: Shifting mutational landscapes (with Deepa Agashe)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is mutation bias and how can scientists study it? How does changing a population’s mutation bias influence its evolutionary trajectory?
In this episode, we talk with Deepa Agashe, an Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. We ... Read More
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Episode 117: The time of your life (with Rosemary Braun)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How should we study complex biological networks? How do cells keep time and stay in sync? What does it mean for a network to be resilient?
In this episode, we talk with Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of ... Read More
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Episode 116: Rewilding Biology (with Harry Greene)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do biologists strike a productive balance between descriptive natural history and manipulative experiments in the lab or field? Should we bring back species to areas where they’ve gone extinct and what values do we use to make these decisions? What is wildness and how ... Read More
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Episode 115: Does a porpoise have a purpose? Agency and goals in evolution (with Samir Okasha)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is an agent, and does an organism have to be conscious to be one? How does organismal agency affect evolution?
In this episode, we talk with Samir Okasha, a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. Samir studies fundamental ... Read More
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Episode 114: How power explains the history of life (with Geerat Vermeij)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
If the tape of life were replayed, how recognizable would today’s species and biomes (environments?) be? How and why does power increase over evolutionary time? How have humans unleashed so much power, and what are the consequences of that power for life on Earth?
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Episode 113: Cephalopods: aliens among us (with Danna Staaf)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Does biological plasticity have a cost? Are there evolutionary consequences of plasticity and of organisms acting on their environments?
In this episode, we talk with Danna Staaf, a science communicator and marine biologist with a lifelong love of cephalopods. Danna earned a PhD ... Read More
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Episode 112: The Entangled Organism (with Sonia Sultan)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Does biological plasticity have a cost? Are there evolutionary consequences of plasticity and of organisms acting on their environments?
In this episode, we talk with Sonia Sultan, the Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science in the Department of Biology at Wesleyan University. Sonia ... Read More
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Episode 111: Evolution of the Invaders (with Ruth Hufbauer)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do small, founding populations establish and thrive in new places? What is biocontrol, and how is it carried out responsibly?
In this episode, we talk with Ruth Hufbauer, a Professor of Applied Evolutionary Ecology at Colorado State University about the ways that ... Read More
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Episode 110: Tempest in a barcode: how rapidly can we (and should we) identify new species? (with Michael Sharkey)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do biologists categorize species? What’s the best and quickest way to describe millions of unknown species?
On this episode, we talk with Michael Sharkey, an entomologist and taxonomist who spent much of his career at the University of Kentucky, and is now ... Read More
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Episode 109: Nothing in biology makes sense except through time (with Kevin Mitchell)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do living things exert agency in a world of strict physical and chemical laws? Do humans have free will?
In this episode, we talk with Kevin Mitchell, an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. The question of ... Read More
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Episode 108: The dialectical biologists: challenges of studying evolution in nature (with Erik Svensson)
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How has evolutionary biology evolved over time? What does it take to study evolution in natural populations?
On this episode, we talk with Erik Svensson, an evolutionary biologist at Lund University, Sweden. Historically, evolutionary theory has focused largely on population and quantitative genetics, ... Read More
