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 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
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Episode 024: Mental Smoke Detectors
Art Woods
Why hasn’t natural selection eliminated human diseases? Are bad feelings like anxiety and depression adaptive? Can we use evolutionary biology to improve medicine?
Randy Nesse is a doctor and a scientist at Arizona State University who uses evolutionary biology to inform the ... Read More
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Episode 023: Beauty of the Beasts
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why are animals loud and conspicuous when that increases their risk from predators? How does noise pollution affect mating behaviors? How can robots help biologists study complex topics such as sexual selection and mate choice?
Gail Patricelli is a behavioral ecologist at ... Read More
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Episode 022: Whale Aware
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Is intelligence similar in humans and dolphins? Do dolphins and whales have their own culture and language? How do they perceive the world around them?
Janet Mann is a biologist at Georgetown University, where she studies how dolphins form social groups, use ... Read More
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Episode 021: Replaying the MP3 of Life
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why do some rove beetles look like ants? Why do living things evolve similar solutions to common problems? Is there predictability within the evolutionary process?
On this episode, Art and Marty talk with Joe Parker, an entomologist at Caltech. Joe has been ... Read More
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Episode 020: Ask Us Anything
Art Woods and Marty Martin
In this episode, we've taken a break from our regular format to answer some of your questions such as what's the chance of human-like intelligence on another planet and if we had the technology, what organism would we want to bring back, Jurassic Park style?
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Episode 018: Bug in the system
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How can cicadas eat nothing but tree sap for 17 years? How do endosymbiotic relationships evolve? What do bacteria-insect symbioses teach us about the evolution of mitochondria and chloroplasts?
On this episode, Art and Marty talk with John McCutcheon, an evolutionary ... Read More
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Episode 017: 1000 ways to make a baby
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How did sex evolve? Why are there sexes at all? what are the evolutionary costs and benefits of sex?
On this episode, Art and Marty talk with Hanna Kokko, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Zurich. Hanna studies the evolution of ... Read More
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Episode 016: Rules of Life
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What role does one part of the federal government, the National Science Foundation, play in biological research in the US? How will their new funding initiative help us discover Rules of Life?
On this episode, Art and Marty talk with two NSF directors, ... Read More
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Episode 015: Climate change: Should they stay or should they go?
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How is climate change affecting the distribution of animals? How will these changes in species distribution affect us?
Tune in to hear Marty and Art talk with physiological ecologist Jenn Sunday about how climate change is affecting the distribution of life on ... Read More
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Episode 014: Plasticity? Sounds fishy
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Does plasticity always help organisms adapt? What happens if it doesn't? Could it speed up evolution?
Tune in to hear Art and Marty talk with evolutionary ecologist Cameron Ghalambor about the role of non-adaptive plasticity in evolution. Cam is a professor at ... Read More
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Episode 013: Unraveling Genetic Knots
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Do single genes cause variation in traits or are gene effects more complex than that? How do genes interact with one another, and how do those interactions alter the pace and direction of evolution? Do those interactions constrain or facilitate evolution?
Tune in to hear ... Read More
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Episode 012: Containing Cancer with Squirrel Ecology
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Will cancer ever become just another chronic but manageable disease? What can a squirrel biologist teach us about treating cancer?
In this episode, Marty and Art talk with Joel Brown about how to contain cancer using basic ideas from ecology and evolution. ... Read More
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Episode 011: The Vagina Research Institute
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Why do some animals have weird genitalia? Why is there conflict between males and females when it comes to producing offspring?
Tune into this podcast to hear Art and Marty talk with Patty Brennan about how sex in the animal kingdom is ... Read More
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Episode 010: Tangling the Tree of Life
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How has the Tree of Life changed since Darwin? How do genes jump from one species to another? Why do we have viral genes in our DNA? Tune into this podcast to hear Art and Marty talk with David Quammen about his ... Read More
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Episode 009: Information, Aliens, and the Origin of Life
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is life? How did life arise from non-life? What did life look like at its origin?
Tune into this podcast to hear Art and Marty talk with Sara Walker, an expert in astrobiology and theoretical physics at Arizona State University. They ... Read More
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Episode 008: Immune System: Make Love not War
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Is there a constant battle between our immune system and pathogens? Does the fighting ever end? Does the immune system do more than just provide defense against pathogens?
Tune into this podcast to hear Art and Marty talk to F... Read More
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Episode 007: Genes Don't Do Crap
Art Woods and Marty Martin
What is the connection between an organism's genes and its environment? Can the environment alter an organism's characteristics without altering its genetics? Can an organism alter its environment and change the course of its own evolution?
Tune into this podcast to hear Marty and Art ... Read More
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Episode 006: Shrimp Fight Clubs and Basic Science
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do mantis shrimp punch as fast as a bullet… underwater? How do they break open one of the toughest materials on earth?
Tune into this podcast to hear Art and Marty talk to Sheila Patek about how mantis shrimp pack such ... Read More
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Episode 005: Please don't kill the bats!
Art Woods and Marty Martin
How do diseases spread from animals to humans? Is it possible to forecast where disease outbreaks will occur and when they will blow up into major health crises?
Tune into this podcast to hear Marty and Art talk to Barbara Han about ... Read More
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Episode 004: The Science and Politics of Basic Biology
Art Woods and Marty Martin
Is there a role for basic research in our society? Do scientists studying animals waste tax-payer money? How does learning about evolutionary biology benefit humans? Tune in to this episode to hear science journalist and writer Carl Zimmer talk about the importance ... Read More
