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 (University of South Florida) and Art Woods (University of Montana), 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. (Art Woods left the podcast after episode 122.)
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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?
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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
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Episode 038: Coronavirus
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How is COVID-19 transmitted and how broad will the pandemic become? What can mathematical models of infectious disease tell us? What are steps we can take now to slow the spread?
On this episode of Big Biology, we speak with John Drake, ... Read More
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Episode 037: Loading the Dice
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What forms of consciousness exist in the natural world? What roles did associative learning and episodic like memory play in its origins? Does consciousness have a function, and is it an adaptation?
On this episode of Big Biology, we speak with ... Read More
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Episode 036: Intentional Evolution
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Is there a role for agency in evolution? Do organismal efforts to maintain homeostasis represent a form of biological intentionality?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Scott Turner, a physiologist and emeritus professor of Biology from the SUNY College ... Read More
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Episode 035: #PruittData
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What led to a recent series of research paper retractions in behavioral ecology? How do scientists trust the data their collaborators share?
Earlier this year, several journals retracted papers using data collected by the biologist, Jonathan Pruitt, data that upon inspection were found to have ... Read More
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Episode 034: Matrix Matters
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is sensory drive, and how has it affected the evolution of communication? How do surf perch and other animals sense and signal in noisy environments?
On this episode of Big Biology, in front of a live audience at the Society of Integrative and Comparative ... Read More
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Episode 033: Magic Puzzle Box
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is Maxwell's demon, and what is its role in biology? How do molecular demons underpin life? Does life really defy entropy?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and the Director ... Read More
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Episode 032: Diluting Disease
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How is declining biodiversity affecting the occurrence and spread of Lyme disease? Is there a way to reduce the transmission of tick-borne diseases using ecological approaches?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk with Felicia Keesing and Rick ... Read More
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Episode 031: Methusalicious
Art Woods and Marty Martin
If natural selection is constantly ridding lineages of detrimental traits, why do all organisms wear down with age? Why does restricting the diet slow down the aging process?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk with Jenny Regan and ... Read More
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Episode 030: Know Your 'Ome
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What can direct-to-consumer genetic companies tell us about our health and ancestry? How do scientists figure out which genes affect particular traits? Is Art related to a Nigerian prince? Is Marty a Neanderthal?
On this episode of Big Biology we talk with ... Read More
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Episode 029: Lick Your Kids
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How important are pathways other than DNA for transmitting traits from one generation to the next?
On this episode of Big Biology, we talk to neuroscientist Frances Champagne from the University of Texas at Austin. Using rodents, Frances studies how early-life experiences affect ... Read More
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Episode 028: Evolution Now
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do new species form? How long does it take for evolution to happen? What can hybrids tell us about the process of speciation?
On this episode we talk with Peter and Rosemary Grant, two Princeton biologists who spent ... Read More
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Episode 027: Flight of the Ur-Sect
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why did conventional thinking in aerodynamics fail to explain how insects fly? What can robots teach us about how insects do it? How do insect brains direct their incredible aerial feats and get around in the world?
Michael Dickinson is a biologist ... Read More
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Episode 026: The Long Road to Mexico
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How does a tiny insect migrate thousands of miles from Canada to Mexico each year? What does the decline of monarch butterflies tell us about the ecological health of our continent? How are scientists using gene editing to understand how insects have evolved to tolerate ... Read More
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Episode 025: Dopamine Unto Others
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What does neuroscience have to say about morality, politics, and cross-cultural communication? How are neurobiology and philosophy connected?
Pat Churchland is a neurobiologist and philosopher at UC San Diego, where she has spent years studying connections between mind and brain. Tune into ... Read More