Season 5 of Big Biology starts next week, so this week we are thrilled to highlight Genetics Unzipped, another one of the great science podcasts out there. Genetics Unzipped is the official podcast of the Genetics Society, one of the oldest learned societ

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 be

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

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 a powerful punch and why we shou

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 s

How do we properly study complex traits? How does organismal function relate to how organisms evolve? All animals use oxygen to convert sugars and other substrates into energy using a multi-step pathway called the oxygen cascade. This cascade involves man

What’s behind the infamous zombie ant story? How does a fungus take control of an insect? Are zombies common in nature? How do biologists study the phenomenon of adaptive manipulation? Interns RB Smith and Natasha Dhamrait hijack the Big Biology channel t

What makes a mammal a mammal? How did mammals survive the KT event when dinosaurs mostly went extinct? And why did mammals become so dominant? When we think of the Cretaceous, or the Jurassic, we immediately think of dinosaurs. But mammals were there too!

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?  On this episode, Art and Marty talk to Fred Tauber, a professor emeritus of m

What do plants, animals and even river systems have in common? Branching networks are a universal element of life on Earth. Networks of veins, roots, xylem, phloem, and nerves – they all have large components that branch, usually repeatedly, into smaller