Why is the National Science Foundation important? What is the potential impact of the proposed budget cut to the NSF? How can we stand up for federally-funded science in the US? In this episode, we talk with Bill Zamer and Sam Scheiner , two former BIO program officers at the NSF. Much of the conversation focuses on the recently proposed 56% budget cut to the NSF and what the impacts of such a spending cut would be on science in the US. We discuss how the NSF came to be, the proposal selection p...
May 22, 2025•54 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What are microplastics and why are they an issue for the environment? How can global policy address plastic pollution? On this episode, we talk with Martin Wagner , a Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. We talk with Martin about the potential harms of microplastics and plastic-derived chemicals to our health and the health of natural ecosystems. We also d...
May 01, 2025•29 min
Watch how our amazing artist Keating Shahmehri created the cover art for our last episode "Feel the heat”. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bigbiology.substack.com/subscribe
Apr 04, 2025•2 min
How do scientists measure thermal tolerance and predict organismal responses in the wild? What kind of other data is needed to make predictive models better at helping us understand species responses to high temperatures? In this special episode, roving podcaster Cameron Ghalambor went on the road to the University of Granada in Spain where he spoke about his own research in the symposium, Predictive Ecology in a Warming World . While there, Cam was inspired to get a few of the other experts int...
Mar 27, 2025•1 hr 16 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How are new technologies allowing biologists to look beyond simple genetic variation to whole genome structure? What is a pangenome? In this episode, we talk with Scott Edwards , the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Curator of Ornithology at Harvard University. On this episode, we talk to Scott about the new ways we can describe and understand l…...
Mar 06, 2025•25 min
In this post-match chat, Marty and Cam discuss our most recent episode “A direct hit”, with guest Holden Thorp. This is a quickly evolving situation, and on Friday last week, a federal judge continued to block the cut to the NIH indirect cost rate. And just a few days ago, Holden wrote another editorial Come together, right now . He writes about the continued onslaught of cuts, firings, and changes to the science system in the United States, and how members of the scientific community can respon...
Feb 26, 2025•6 min
Will a change in policy at the National Institutes of Health derail science in the US? How does the “indirect cost rate” for federal research grants fuel research? In this episode, we talk with Holden Thorp , a chemist and editor-in-chief of Science , about his recent editorial A Direct Hit . In it, he writes about the NIH announcing a significant cut to their indirect cost rate and the consequences to science in the US if this change takes effect. “Indirect” or “overhead” costs are the portions...
Feb 21, 2025•59 min
Here’s a little sneak peek into what goes on behind the scenes when we choose a title for an episode. In this snippet, Cam and Marty discuss the title of our most recent episode: “Beaks on (fitness) peaks.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bigbiology.substack.com/subscribe
Feb 20, 2025•2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com Which factors lead to the evolution of reproductive isolation? What role does hybridization play in speciation? Why are there so many bird species in the tropics? In this episode, we host Trevor Price , a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a Fellow of the Royal Society to talk about the evolutionary proce…...
Feb 13, 2025•29 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How does human behavior contribute to disease transmission? What can our history with infectious disease teach us about modern epidemics? On this episode, we talk with Sabrina Sholts, Curator of Biological Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Sabrina’s research explores the interse…...
Jan 23, 2025•23 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What role does development play in evolution? How can biology incorporate a broader, more complex definition of what it means to be an organism? In this episode, we talk with Scott Gilbert and Tobias Uller , two of the authors who wrote Evolution Evolving: The Developmental Origins of Adaptation and Biodiversity . Tobias is a professor of Biodiversity and …...
Jan 02, 2025•31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How have organisms changed the Earth and what can humans learn from its deep past? On this episode, we talk with Stephen Porder , a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and the Associate Provost for Sustainability at Brown University. Stephen is also the author of Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Futu…...
Dec 05, 2024•40 min
How do natural selection and sexual selection interact? What can observing adaptive radiation in the wild teach us about evolution? On this episode, we talk with Dale Broder , an Assistant Professor at American University, and Robin Tinghitella , an Associate Professor at the University of Denver. They study the Pacific field cricket, a fascinating organism that exemplifies both adaptive radiation and the interaction of natural selection and sexual selection. This species uses song for mate attr...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 27 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What are spiny mice and why are they so social? What about their brains makes them gregarious? Might network neuroscience be a useful framework for understanding spiny mice behavior? On this episode, we talk with Aubrey Kelly , an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Emory University. Aubrey is a behavioral neuroscientist working on many vertebrate specie…...
Oct 24, 2024•34 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What was life like in wartime England for a young female scientist? What about living and doing research for months each year with your daughters and husband on a remote island? On this episode, we talk with Rosemary Grant , Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Rosemary is best-known for her foundational research on the Darwin’s Finches of the Galapagos Islands, conduc...
Oct 03, 2024•30 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How do biologists study the influence of heat on organisms and how can this be applied to the study of climate change? What impacts mountaineer survival at high altitudes? On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Professor Emeritus at University of Washington and recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Ray Huey . Ray is well known…...
Sep 12, 2024•32 min
Can we study evolution in the wild? Are some species “super-evolvers”? On the episode, we talk with Alison Derry , a professor of biology at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and Andrew Hendry , a professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University, Canada. This episode is the second we’ve done on the team’s work, and Andrew was also a guest on our first episode in the series. This conversation was recorded live in front of an audience at Kenai Peninsula College, in Soldotna, Alaska....
Aug 22, 2024•44 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What is mutation bias and how can scientists study it? How does changing a population’s mutation bias influence its evolutionary trajectory? In this episode, we talk with Deepa Agashe , an Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. We first talk with Deepa about mutation bias and how she uses E. coli to understand it. We then focus on a 2023 PNAS paper about the fitn...
May 02, 2024•29 min
This week on Big Biology we're sharing an episode from The Naked Scientists Podcast about how humans lost their tails. Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans do not have tails. It sets us apart from other primates, but suggests that our shared evolutionary ancestors had them. So why did we lose them, and how? Speaking with Chris Smith, from The Naked Scientists Podcast, NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Itai Yanai explains that the way this study began was literally a pain in the &...
Apr 18, 2024•6 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com At what levels does causation happen in biology? Are metaphors useful for understanding biology? In this episode, we talk with Phil Ball , a science writer who was also an editor for the journal Nature for over 20 years. Phil has written over 25 books, but our conversation focuses on his most recent: “ How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology .” In the book, Phil covers a wide-range of topics from cell...
Apr 04, 2024•34 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How should biologists deal with the massive amounts of population genetic data that are now routinely available? Will AIs make biologists obsolete? In this episode, we talk with Andy Kern , an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon. Andy has spent much of his career applying machine learning methods in population genetics. We talk with him about the fundamental questions that population gene...
Mar 21, 2024•22 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How should we study complex biological networks? How do cells keep time and stay in sync? What does it mean for a network to be resilient? In this episode, we talk with Rosemary Braun , Associate Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and a member of the NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology. Rosemary is broadly interested in learning whether “more is different” whe...
Mar 07, 2024•26 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How do biologists strike a productive balance between descriptive natural history and manipulative experiments in the lab or field? Should we bring back species to areas where they’ve gone extinct and what values do we use to make these decisions? What is wildness and how do we cultivate it? On this episode, we talk with Harry Greene , a herpetologist and adjunct professor of Integrative Biology at the Universi...
Feb 22, 2024•31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com What is an agent, and does an organism have to be conscious to be one? How does organismal agency affect evolution? In this episode, we talk with Samir Okasha , a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. Samir studies fundamental philosophical questions in evolutionary biology, most notably how selection acts on various levels of biological organization. Our discussion focuses on his boo...
Feb 08, 2024•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com If the tape of life were replayed, how recognizable would today’s species and ecosystems be? How and why does power increase over evolutionary time? How have humans unleashed so much power, and what are the consequences of that power for life on Earth? In this episode, we talk with Geerat Vermeij , a paleoecologist and evolutionary biologist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis. He is a...
Jan 25, 2024•27 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How are cephalopods like us, but also completely alien? How can they become so intelligent when they have such short lives? How do they coordinate a distributed set of brains? In this episode, we talk with Danna Staaf , a science communicator and marine biologist with a lifelong love of cephalopods. Danna earned a PhD from Stanford University studying baby squid, and she has written several cephalopod-themed bo...
Jan 11, 2024•33 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com Does biological plasticity have a cost? Are there evolutionary consequences of plasticity and of organisms acting on their environments? In this episode, we talk with Sonia Sultan , the Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science in the Department of Biology at Wesleyan University. Sonia has spent her career studying the interplay between organisms and their environment. Specifically, she studies how environmental condi...
Dec 14, 2023•34 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How do small, founding populations establish and thrive in new places? What is biocontrol, and how is it carried out responsibly? In this episode, we talk with Ruth Hufbauer , a Professor of Applied Evolutionary Ecology at Colorado State University about the ways that organisms successfully establish new populations in new places. Ruth uses lab experiments o n Tribolium flour beetles to understand how evolution...
Dec 12, 2023•32 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How do biologists categorize species? What’s the best and quickest way to describe millions of unknown species? On this episode, we talk with Michael Sharkey , an entomologist and taxonomist who spent much of his career at the University of Kentucky, and is now the director of the Hymenoptera Institute. Since its inception, taxonomy has relied on careful morphological analysis of specimens to delineate species....
Nov 29, 2023•30 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com How do living things exert agency in a world of strict physical and chemical laws? Do humans have free will? In this episode, we talk with Kevin Mitchell , an Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. The question of free will has been debated for decades by thinkers in physics, philosophy, psychology, and, more recently, biology. In his new book, Free Agents: How Evolution Gav...
Nov 02, 2023•32 min
