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 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
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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