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Life tries again

After the extinctions at the end of the Cambrian, the Ordovician once again came with a sudden increase in the amount and variety of life. This time, those who survived the end of the Cambrian would diversify, so life didn’t quite start over. This period saw the armored jawless fish, and just before it’s end, some fish with jaws, which is as far as vertebrates got so far. There were also giant relatives of octopus and squid, with shells that got anywhere from 20 to 40 feet long, and the very first land plants make their appearance.
Continue reading Ep 264: Life tries again →

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a bevy of beasts

About 451,000,000 years ago, there was a sudden increase in the number of different types of animals in the fossil record. The animals that came before didn’t stand a chance. The new kids had hard shells, eyes, jaws and teeth. Join us for a chat about the Cambrian period.
Continue reading Ep 263: a bevy of beasts →

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itty bitty chatty: cells, signals, and communication

From Bacteria coordinating their attack, to brain cells trying to figure out how bacteria coordinate their attack, today we look at how cells signal and communicate with one another, for better or worse. No hippos were harmed in the making of this episode.
Continue reading Ep 262: itty bitty chatty: cells, signals, and communication →

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Sex

Parental guidance is advised as we examine the strange, sometimes fatal, always messy world of sex. Queue the sax and have a look at fish joined in a special bond, single celled yeast, bugs with a mathematical sense of timing, and females that make a meal of their suiters.
Continue reading Ep 261: Sex →

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The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life

When does cooperation become identity? How and why did single celled life, which was doing just fine, end up forming plants and animals made up of trillions of cells? By taking a look at birds, army ants, coral reefs and giant jellyfish, we try to understand multicellular life.
Continue reading Ep 260: The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life →

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The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells

If your cell’s nucleus was about as tall as Brad, your DNA could stretch for more than 200 miles. How do such long molecules fit inside such tiny cells? While we’re on the subject, just how much information is in DNA? Join us for a look at your chromosomes, and cellular nucleus.
Continue reading Ep 259: The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells →

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Living cells that make their living inside other living cells

Inside the membrane of most of your cells are what look like little cells, with their own membranes and DNA. These little cell like things do important things, without which your cells couldn’t function, and you couldn’t live. The thing is, once upon a time, they really were cells in their own right, cells that one day moved inside of another cell, and never left.
Continue reading Ep 258: Living cells that make their living inside other living cells →

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Comes the oxygen

When oxygen first began to accumulate in our oceans and our atmosphere, most of what was alive at the time couldn’t take it. The oxygen was a terrible poison. Even those life forms that could stand the extra O2, had trouble when the oxygen reacted with the iron in the ocean, and took away much of what had been food. If that wasn’t bad enough, a long ice age got started, all because of tiny microbes, too small to see with the naked eye.
Continue reading Ep 257: Comes the oxygen →

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Brad got older, and Phil got bolder. Since the one brother had a birthday and got all lazy, the other brother made a new show, and went all crazy. Join us while the inmate, (Phil) takes over the asylum, (the podcast.) No animals were provably harmed in the making of this show.

Continue reading Episode 1: take 8 →

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What was the first food?

The energy we need in order to live comes from the food we eat. Other organisms use other forms of energy. But what about the first organisms? Where did their energy come from? Along with a look at how living cells use energy, we try and figure out what was the very first food.
Continue reading Ep 256: What was the first food? →