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 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
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Episode 045: Student Spotlight
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How are early stage scientists pushing biology forward? What’s it like to be a graduate student during a global pandemic?
Over the last several months, we’ve been collecting short audio clips from biology students describing their research. Associate Producer Michael Levin spearheaded the project, which ... Read More
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Episode 044: The Science of Slime
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What’s the slimiest fish on Earth? Why are they so slimy? And can we leverage our understanding of slime to make better bioengineered materials?
In this episode we talk with Doug Fudge, an Associate Professor at Chapman University, about his research on ... Read More
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Episode 043: Project ICARUS
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What can we learn from animals by constantly tracking their movements with transmitters? How can we use information from collectives of animals to study and predict disease spread, earthquakes, and outbreaks of pests? How do you transform a massive, international scientific idea into a reality?
... Read More -
Episode 042: Fatal Fungus
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why are amphibians across the world dying from a fungal infection? Where did the fungus come from? How does it kill and are populations adapting?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Craig Franklin, a biologist at the University of ... Read More
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Episode 041: Coronavirus II
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Where did the new coronavirus come from? How can we be on the lookout for new diseases emerging from animals? Now that the coronavirus has infected humans, what’s the best path forward?
In this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Andy ... Read More
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Episode 040: Songbird Scents
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do hormones like testosterone coordinate important activities in an animal’s life, and how might those activities tradeoff with one another? How do the microbial communities living on birds affect the scents they give off, and how do those scents influence the birds’ choices of ... Read More
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Episode 039: Bioelectric Computation
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do animals construct tissues, organs, and limbs in the right places during development? How do some animals manage to regenerate missing body parts?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Michael Levin, a biologist at Tufts University who studies ... Read More