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 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
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Episode 063: Survival of the Systems: the Power of Persistence
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Can selection act on ecosystems, societies, or planets such that some persist and others disappear? Must such systems reproduce to evolve?
On this episode, we talk to Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute (@GSI_Exeter) and a Professor of ... Read More
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Episode 062: Situated Darwinism: Organism-centered evolution
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Are genes the prime movers in evolution, or is causality distributed across multiple levels of organization? What role do organisms play in evolution? Could organismal agency, the propensity to respond actively to selective forces, affect standard evolutionary theory?
On this episode, we talk with ... Read More
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Episode 061: Decoding CRISPR: Jennifer Doudna and the future of gene editing
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is CRISPR? Who are the key players behind it’s discovery? And what does it mean for science both now and in the future?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk to renowned author Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) about his new book, Code ... Read More
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Episode 060: Human-assisted evolution: conserving coral diversity
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why are some corals more resilient to bleaching than others? How should we leverage genetic and epigenetic information to conserve coral diversity?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Hollie Putnam (@HolliePutnam), a professor at the University ... Read More
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Episode 059: Feel the burn: The limits of human energy expenditure and endurance
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What can modern hunter-gatherer societies teach us about human energy budgets? What misconceptions do we have about weight loss and weight management? Are there limits to human endurance?
On this episode, we talk with Herman Pontzer (@HermanPontzer) of Duke University. We ... Read More
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Episode 058: Finding our voice: the neurobiology of vocal learning
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How did vocal learning evolve? What is special about human language? What brain structures are associated with speech and the many components of spoken language?
On this episode, we talk with Erich Jarvis (@erichjarvis), a professor at Rockefeller University, about the ... Read More
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Episode 057: Georgia O'Keeffe and the Red Queen: Ecosystem services via coevolution
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is coevolution? How has coevolution between plants and insects shaped human culture and history?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk with Rob Raguso, a professor at Cornell University, who studies insect-plant interactions. Rob discusses his work on diffuse coevolution ... Read More
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Episode 056: Bee Kind: The Buzz on Global Insect Decline
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why are bee populations declining? How can we reliably monitor insect populations when many are so cryptic? And what steps can we take to ensure that populations remain viable?
In this episode, we talk with Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at ... Read More
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Episode 055: Hot wings: How birds stay cool under the Australian sun
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do birds and other small animals cope with extreme heat? And can their tactics withstand increases in the magnitude and regularity of extreme heat events as the climate changes?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk to Christine Cooper (@CECooperEcophys), a ... Read More
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Episode 054: And the Oskar goes to: germ-soma differentiation in insects
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is a germ cell and why do animals separate germ and soma (body) cells at all? What molecules determine whether cells become germ or soma, and are some such mechanisms products of horizontal gene transfer?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with ... Read More
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Episode 053: Turn Down the Lights: The Ecological Effects of Bright Lights
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How has the amount of artificial light changed over the last 150 years? In what ways does artificial light affect human health and wildlife? And how can new lighting technologies ameliorate the effects of light pollution?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk to ... Read More
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Episode 052: Coronavirus III: Town Hall
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How can local and state governments repair the damage done by COVID-19? Is there a vaccine on its way to a pharmacy near you? What should you expect about lockdowns, facemasks, and new COVID-19 therapies in the coming months?
On this episode of Big Biology, ... Read More
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Episode 051: A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and Contingency
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is the role of chance in biology? How has it shaped the history of life on Earth? How do scientists incorporate chance in their experiments? Do scientists have something to learn from comedians?
On this episode, we talk with Sean Carroll, ... Read More
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Episode 050: How whales evolved to become ocean titans
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Are whales the biggest animals to have ever lived? Why have they evolved to become so gigantic? What key adaptations support their immense size?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk to Jeremy Goldbogen (@GoldbogenLab), a scientist at ... Read More
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Episode 049: The Vital Question: The Chemistry of Early Life
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How did life originate on Earth? Why is it that eukaryotes but not bacteria or archaea evolved large size and complicated body forms? How likely is that life has arisen independently elsewhere in the universe?
On this episode, we talk with Nick ... Read More
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Episode 048: An 8-legged bite: The Evolution of Venom in Spiders and Beyond
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How did the Brown Recluse get its powerful bite? How widespread is venom across the tree of life? How do spiders use their venoms?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with spider venom expert Greta Binford (@gretabinford), a ... Read More
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Episode 047: The Origins of Us: Human evolution
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Where, when, and how did Homo sapiens appear? What do we know about the complex set of ancestral hominins that preceded us? How recently did other hominin lineages live and what happened to them?
On this episode, we talk with Kate Wong, a senior editor ... Read More
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Episode 046: Smarthropods: Cognition in Insects
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Which animals are conscious, and how can we tell? Does it matter? Although many people think of insects as simple organisms that react in preprogrammed ways to their environments, scientists know increasingly that insect have subtle and complex forms of behavior and learning. But are ... Read More