How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?

<p>Birds are not merely descendants of dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs. For Yale evolutionary biologist and ornithologist Richard Prum, birds have been a lifelong passion and a window into some of evolution’s most intriguing mysteries.</p> <p>In a wide-ranging conversation with co ... Show More

<p>Every time data travels — from smartphones to the cloud, or across the vacuum of space — it relies on a silent but vigilant guardian in the form of error-correcting codes. These codes, baked into nearly every digital system, are designed to detect and repair any errors that no ... Show More

<p>Most cosmologists agree that our universe had a beginning. But the finer details about the Big Bang remain a mystery. A history of everything would explain all, or so theoretical physicists hoped. In his final years, Stephen Hawking working with Thomas Hertog proposed a striki ... Show More

<p>The guests today are co-authors of a new paper in <em>Science Advances</em> titled: "A reassessment of the 'hard-steps' model for the evolution of intelligent life."</p> <p>Jennifer Macalady is a Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research is fo ... Show More

What would you like to see more of? Let us know!In this episode of Discover Daily, we explore LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Scientists have dated this single-celled organism from which all modern life descends, to 4.2 billion years ago - just 400 million years after E ... Show More

Titans of Science continues with the microbiologist who discovered how an extraordinary relationship between two methane-eating seafloor species has shaped the world we know today. To explain that and much more is the ocean aficionado Antje Boetius... Like this podcast? Please he ... Show More

<p>Evolution is sometimes described -- not precisely, but with some justification -- as being about the "survival of the fittest." But that idea doesn't work unless there is some way for one generation to pass down&nbsp;<em>information</em>&nbsp;about how best to survive. We now ... Show More

<p>Living organisms seem exquisitely organized and complex, with features clearly adapted to serving certain functions needed to survive and procreate. Natural selection provides a compelling explanation for why that is so. But is there a bigger picture, a more general framework ... Show More

<p>Randomness plays an important role in the evolution of life (as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/10/05/117-sean-b-carroll-on-randomness-and-the-course-of-evolution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">my evil twin</a>&nbsp;will tell you). ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond ... Show More

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond ... Show More

00:50 Fossilised faeces give news insights into dinosaurs’ diets and riseA huge collection of fossilised digestive contents has provided clues as to how dinosaurs grew to become the dominant animals on the planet. Why these animals rose to dominance has been unclear, with one the ... Show More