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 087: Life in the lab, are model organisms an asset or impediment to biology?
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What are model organisms? Why have they been so important to biology?
Much of biological research over the past 50 years has relied on model organisms. These species – which include mice, rats, fruit flies, and others – have yielded many insights and led ... Read More
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Episode 086: What the flux? The evolution of oxygen cascades
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do we properly study complex traits? How does organismal function relate to how organisms evolve?
All animals use oxygen to convert sugars and other substrates into energy using a multi-step pathway called the oxygen cascade. This cascade involves many, many parts of the respiratory, ... Read More
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Episode 085: The rise of the mammals and fall of the dinosaurs
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What makes a mammal a mammal? How did mammals survive the KT event when dinosaurs mostly went extinct? And why did mammals become so dominant?
When we think of the Cretaceous, or the Jurassic, we immediately think of dinosaurs. But mammals were there too! ... Read More
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![[Episode 085b]: Big Biology Presents: Little Biology: Zombie Parasites by Art Woods and Marty Martin](https://scholarworks.umt.edu/bigbiology_podcasts/1086/thumbnail.jpg "[Episode 085b]: Big Biology Presents: Little Biology: Zombie Parasites by Art Woods and Marty Martin")
[Episode 085b]: Big Biology Presents: Little Biology: Zombie Parasites
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What’s behind the infamous zombie ant story? How does a fungus take control of an insect? Are zombies common in nature? How do biologists study the phenomenon of adaptive manipulation?
Interns RB Smith and Natasha Dhamrait hijack the Big Biology channel to explore their favorite ... Read More
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Episode 084: Fractals in the Foliage
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What do plants, animals and even river systems have in common?
Branching networks are a universal element of life on Earth. Networks of veins, roots, xylem, phloem, and nerves – they all have large components that branch, usually repeatedly, into smaller and smaller components. ... Read More
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Episode 083: The Amazon in us
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How does one of the most diverse groups on the planet, the ants, interact with the extremely diverse group of microbes that live on and inside them?
On this episode, we talk to Corrie Moreau, a professor of entomology at Cornell University, about ... Read More
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Episode 082: Organisms are not machines
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why shouldn’t we think of living things as machines? What is and what isn’t an organism?
In this episode, we talk to Dan Nicholson, a philosopher and biologist from George Mason University about his new edited volume, "Everything Flows: Toward a ... Read More
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Episode 081: How staying cool blunts evolution
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why are tropical mountain passes ‘higher’ than temperate ones? Why do some organisms regulate their temperature better than others, and what effect does this have on evolution?
On this episode, we talk with Martha Muñoz, a professor in Yale’s Department ... Read More
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Episode 080: Human-wildlife conflict in a changing world
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is the link between climate change, declining wildlife populations and conflict between animals and humans? And how should scientists, governments and individuals manage declining populations of wildlife, especially when humans rely on them?
On this episode, we explore the interface of biology and resource ... Read More
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Episode 079: How the genetic lottery affects complex human traits
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Does our DNA matter for our life outcomes? Can and should we use it for better social policy? And why have these questions caused such a stir?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Kathryn Paige Harden, a professor in the ... Read More
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Episode 078: The amphibian omnivore's dilemma: Plasticity-led evolution in spadefoot tadpoles
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What roles does plasticity play in evolution? Where does novelty come from, and how does it become widespread in populations?
On this episode, we talk all things plasticity with David Pfennig, a professor at the University of North Carolina, and ... Read More
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Episode 077: A (Very) Short Interview with Henry Gee: 4 Billion Years in 30 Minutes
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How did life on Earth get from its humble beginnings to the dazzling array of forms we see now and in the fossil record?
On this episode, we talk with paleontologist Henry Gee about his latest book, A (Very) Short ... Read More
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Episode 076: Beasty beats: The origins of musicality
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Do animals dance to the beat? When is birdsong music for a bird? Humans hear music in everything, but what about other species?
On this episode we talk with Henkjan Honing, professor of music cognition at the University of Amsterdam, about the biology ... Read More
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Episode 075: Hidden network: The evolutionary relationship between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and plants
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What rules dictate trade in symbiosis? How did the complex relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi evolve? What’s really going on in the world beneath our feet?
On this episode, we talk to Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at VU University ... Read More
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Episode 074: Food for thought: Plant domestication and the promise of green super rice
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How and when did early humans domesticate the plants that we use today? Did these ancient farmers purposefully select traits, or did they domesticate unconsciously? In the future, can breeders and farmers grow more nutritious and robust food using genomics?
In this episode, we talk ... Read More
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Episode 073: A gene's-eye view: Useful tool or narrow lens?
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Are genes the primary units of selection and main drivers of adaptation? How does a gene’s-eye view of evolution fit into modern biology?
On this episode, we talk with Arvid Ågren, an evolutionary biologist and Wenner-Gren Fellow at Uppsala University, about... Read More
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Episode 072: Stability and Change: Lessons from the Serengeti
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why is the Serengeti such a special ecosystem? Why does it support so many different species, and what ecological processes regulate the enormous population sizes of its dominant large-bodied herbivores?
On this episode, we talk with Tony Sinclair, professor emeritus of zoology at ... Read More
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Episode 071: A Tattoo on the Brain: The neurobiology of Alzheimer's disease
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What causes Alzheimer’s disease? Why are some people more at risk than others? What are the prospects for a cure and the best options for slowing the onset of symptoms?
On this episode, we talk with Daniel Gibbs, a retired neurologist, about ... Read More
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Episode 070: The virus and the vegan: How the brain gains inference
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is the free energy principle? How do our brains use active inference to manage uncertainty and stress?
On this episode, we talk with Karl Friston, world-renowned neuroscientist at University College London, about his free energy principle. In order ... Read More
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Episode 069: Butterfl-eyes: the evolution and function of insect vision
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What does the world look like through insect eyes? What biological mechanisms make their vision different from our own? And how might those differences influence their evolution?
On this episode, we talk with UC Irvine evolutionary biologist Adriana Briscoe (@AdrianaBriscoe) ... Read More
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Episode 068: Performance anxiety: How coastal invertebrates cope with changing climate extremes
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What do we mean by ‘extreme ecological events’? What’s more important to a population, more frequent extremes or changes to average conditions? How should we link the performance of individuals to the success or failure of entire populations?
On this episode, we talk with ... Read More
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Episode 067: Foiling the flashy: how artificial light dims insect behavior
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Is artificial light at night partly responsible for insect declines? How does it affect nocturnal insects, especially fireflies and other species that need darkness to thrive?
On this episode, we talk with Avalon Owens (@avalonceleste), a PhD candidate at Tufts University ... Read More
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Episode 066: Old vaccines for new pandemics
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What has COVID-19 taught us about preparing for future epidemics? Can we trigger innate immune responses – our first lines of defense - to mitigate novel infections? Can we use live-attenuated vaccines (LAV) meant for other infections to protect us while we develop specific vaccines ... Read More
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Episode 065: Mouse on a hill: the structure and function of agency
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is agency? How does it evolve? Do non-living things have agency?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Tufts University professor Michael Levin about his recent article in Aeon magazine called ‘Cognition all the way down’. In it, ... Read More
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Episode 064: The stall protocol: Diapause in the annual killfish
Art Woods
How do organisms cope with long periods of tough conditions where regular life is impossible? How do some animals turn down their metabolism to levels so low that they can appear dead? How do animals emerge from such deep, low activity states?
In this episode ... Read More