This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 they conscious? On this episode, we talk with Lars Chittka, a biologist at Queen Mary University of London who studies the evolut...
Aug 27, 2020•15 min
This podcast was originally broadcast by Complexity, a podcast from the Santa Fe Institute on April, 20 2020. Big Biology has featured several scientists connected to the Santa Fe Institute, and now SFI has its own podcast called Complexity. You can listen to all of their episodes here: https://complexity.simplecast.com/ This episode, as well as show notes, are available here: https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/29 Complexity features wide-ranging conversations with the Santa Fe Institute...
Aug 26, 2020•44 min
The first episode of season three is coming out later this week. Here's a taste of what's coming up. Right now, we're looking for a few interns to join our team. If you love Big Biology and you're interested in science communication send us an application at www.bigbiology.org/jobs 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...
Aug 24, 2020•3 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com Today we’re replaying of our discussion with science writer David Quamme n. We talked with him in 2018 about his most recent book, the Tangled Tree , which explores the influence of horizontal gene transfer on the evolution of life on Earth. But right now, it’s one of his previous books that is essential reading. In 2012, he published a book called Spillover that described the risk of new diseases jumping from ...
Aug 06, 2020•30 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com This episode was originally published in 2018. It's one of our most popular episodes of all time, so we decided to run it again while we're in between seasons. Look for new Big Bio episodes in August. 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 Ariz...
Jul 23, 2020•34 min
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 we called the Student Spotlight. On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with four students who submitted the best audio clips for that project. We talked about their science, and also asked them...
Jun 25, 2020•1 hr 8 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 hagfish slime. Over the past 20 years, Doug and his lab and collaborators have figured out how and why hagfish produce slime, how the slime’s remarkable propert...
Jun 12, 2020•27 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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? On this episode of Big Biology, we talk with Martin Wikelski, the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Beha...
May 28, 2020•32 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Queensland and the director of research for the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve, about the history and distribution of the fungus, how it’s killing so many species, and what we ...
May 15, 2020•21 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Dobson, a disease ecologist at Princeton University who studies epidemics like the current COVID-19 outbreak. We talked with him about the possible animal origins of the virus, t...
Apr 30, 2020•21 min
We’re getting ready for season three next fall. We already have a bunch of great guests lined up to talk about the evolution of venom, insect intelligence and human evolution. But we need your financial support to make that happen. Our goal is to raise at least $1,500 from listeners. If we aren’t able to accomplish that, we’ll need to drastically scale back production for season three. We know this is a tough time to ask for your help, but if you’re able, we would really appreciate your financia...
Apr 21, 2020•2 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 mates? In this episode, we talk with Ellen Ketterson, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University, Bloomington, about her work ...
Apr 16, 2020•36 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 how electric fields inside animals guide cells during development and regeneration. His work shows that electric fields play fundamental roles in structuring...
Apr 02, 2020•31 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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, the Director of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia, who has been working with the CDC to understand the dynamics of the COVID-19 outb...
Mar 17, 2020•16 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Eva Jablonka from the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv, and Moncy Ginsburg, a neurobiologist formerly from the Open Universit...
Mar 13, 2020•32 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 of Environmental Science and Forestry. Scott’s book, Purpose and Desire , discusses how holes in standard evolutionary theory might be productively fi...
Feb 27, 2020•46 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 several problems. On this episode, we talk with Dan Bolnick, Editor-in-Chief of The American Naturalist, one of the jou...
Feb 17, 2020•15 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Biology Annual Meeting, we talk with Molly Cummings, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. We discuss the balance anim...
Feb 13, 2020•19 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. His recent book, "The Demon in the Machine," tackles Schrodinger's big question "What is life?," arguing that i...
Jan 30, 2020•33 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Ostfeld, two disease ecologists working at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. Felicia is a professor at Bard College, and Rick is a staff s...
Jan 16, 2020•21 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Dan Nussey, scientists at the University of Edinburgh who study why some organisms age at different rates and what phenotypic plasticity might have to do with this with variation....
Dec 30, 2019•33 min
Make a donation to Big Biology through Patreon at Patreon.com/bigbio or at bigbiology.org 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
Dec 14, 2019•7 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 Samantha Esselmann and Ruth Tennen, product scientists at 23andMe, about how the company uses its massive trove of data to help people learn about the geneti...
Dec 06, 2019•24 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 epigenetic marks and how those marks are passed from one generation to the next. We asked her how those marks influence rat behaviors,...
Nov 22, 2019•25 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 decades studying finches on the Galapagos Islands. Their work on bird beaks provides some of the strongest evidence for how fast natural selection can occur and more recently the genes involved....
Nov 08, 2019•22 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 at Caltech who uses robots to study how insects fly. More recently, he has focused on insect neurobiology and behavior. On this episode, Art and Marty talk with Mich...
Oct 24, 2019•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 poisonous plants? Anurag Agrawal is a biologist at Cornell University who studies plant-insect interactions, including monarch butterflies. He ...
Oct 10, 2019•36 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 this episode to hear Marty and Art discuss these questions as well as Pat's new book "Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intu...
Sep 26, 2019•38 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 practice of medicine. In his latest book, “Good Reasons for Bad Feelings,” he discusses how natural and sexual selection may have shaped o...
Sep 13, 2019•35 min
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bigbiology.substack.com 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 UC Davis, where she studies how individual variation in animal signaling and communication affects mate choice and reproductive success. Gail...
Aug 29, 2019•32 min
