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The biggest biology podcast for the biggest science and biology fans. Featuring in-depth discussions with scientists tackling the biggest questions in evolution, genetics, ecology, climate, neuroscience, diseases, the origins of life, psychology and more. If it's biological, groundbreaking, philosophical or mysterious you'll find it here. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bigbiology/support
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Big Biology Presents: The Naked Scientists Podcast
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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 T…
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Biology as its own metaphor (Ep 119)
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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 Biolog…
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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 tal…
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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…
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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 herpetologi…
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Does a porpoise have a purpose? Agency and goals in evolution (Ep 115)
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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 level…
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Follow the data: the search for COVID’s origin (Ep 105)
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On this episode, we talk with Alina Chan, postdoc at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and co-author with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 could have plausibly jumped into humans in Wuhan via one of two paths. The first is zoonotic transfer from wild bats to humans, possibly via an intermediate animal hos…
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Cooperation versus conflict and the path to multicellularity (Ep 107)
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How can we reconcile the evolutionary problem of cooperation? What can social amoebae tell us about the origins of multicellularity? In this episode, we talk to Joan Strassmann and David Queller, professors at Washington University in St. Louis, about the evolution of cooperation and conflict. From social insects to humans, we can find instances of…
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How power explains the history of life (Ep 114)
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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 …
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Cephalopods: aliens among us (Ep 113)
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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 studyi…
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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…
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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 expe…
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Tempest in a barcode: how rapidly can we (and should we) identify new species? (Ep 110)
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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 ca…
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Nothing in biology makes sense except through time (Ep 109)
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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 rec…
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The dialectical biologists: challenges of studying evolution in nature (Ep 108)
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How has evolutionary biology evolved over time? What does it take to study evolution in natural populations? On this episode, we talk with Erik Svensson, an evolutionary biologist at Lund University, Sweden. Historically, evolutionary theory has focused largely on population and quantitative genetics, but the complexity of interactions between gene…
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Long-term experimental evolution in the wild (Ep 106)
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Can we predict evolutionary outcomes if we know starting conditions? Do the products of evolution in nature differ from those studied in well-controlled lab experiments? On this episode, we talk to Katie Peichel, head of the Division of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Andrew Hendry, professor in the Department of Bi…
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Season 6 of Big Biology will kick off at the beginning of September - woohoo! Before then, we have a quick message to share: We’re looking for a new producer to join the Big Biology team! If you are a passionate team player with experience in podcast production, then please consider applying! The producer position is a part-time, remote position. P…
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Little Biology: Why can’t I regrow my arm?
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Why can some animals regrow limbs while others can’t? Will understanding regeneration in other vertebrates help us regrow arms one day? Our intern team has taken over the channel to talk about one of their favorite biology topics, limb regeneration! In the episode, Dayna and Kyle break down the mechanisms of regeneration and discuss why some animal…
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Sleeping beauties: the mystery of dormant innovations in nature and culture (Ep 104)
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Where does biological innovation come from? Why do some innovations wait millions of years for their spotlight? Life must constantly innovate for evolution to occur, but many forms of biological innovation often lie dormant, sometimes for millions of years. In this episode, we speak to Andreas Wagner about his recent book, Sleeping Beauties: The My…
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Pest-o, change-o: how culture shapes our view of animal commensals (Ep 103)
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What makes a pest? Why are some animals revered in one culture and vilified in another? How do our ways of life bring us into conflict versus companionship, and what do these interactions mean for us and them? Rats, squirrels, coyotes, pigeons...often, we view animals like these as pests. We usually don't like them, even try to get rid of them…but …
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What is inherency? What are the potential flaws with our understanding of biological function? On this episode, we talk with Stuart Newman, professor at New York Medical College. In his recent paper, “Inherency and agency in the origin and evolution of biological functions,” Stuart argues against the commonly held view that functions of traits nece…
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NEON: The promises and challenges of large-scale ecological research (Ep 101)
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What is NEON? What hopes and concerns do we have for large-scale research projects in ecology? On this episode of Big Biology, we talk about the challenges of doing…big biology! The National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, is a US National Science Foundation-funded project that has started collecting massive amounts of data from terrestria…
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Big Biology celebrates its 100th episode! You’re only 100 once, and though we hope there will be many more episodes to come, we wanted to celebrate this milestone with something special. A recurring theme from many of our conversations with guests on the show has been agency. This is a BIG and oftentimes controversial topic in biology, and in this …
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Creativity and passion in science communication (Ep 99)
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On this episode, we take a break from the regular format to talk with Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher of The Night Science Podcast, a show that explores the creative side of science with guests from across the globe. Itai is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the NYU School of Medicine, and Martin is a profess…
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There’s a thousand genes for that! (Ep 98)
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What is the “infinitesimal model”? How has our understanding of complex traits changed recently? On this episode, we talk with Nick Barton, an evolutionary quantitative geneticist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Quantitative genetics has changed a lot in the past 30 years, driven by massive advances in DNA sequencing power and b…
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