Before Trees - What Were ‘Prototaxites’?

Guest: Michelle Carr, Director of the Dream Engineering Laboratory at Montreal's Centre for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine and author of ‘Into the Dream Lab: The New Science of Dreams and Nightmares’. 

Guest: Frederic Auth, Doctoral Researcher at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt 

Guests:Hannah Lyons, Reproduction Researcher in Adelaide UniversityMatthew Campbell from Trinity College DublinDr Ruth Freeman from Research Ireland 

What do scientists think animals might be like millions of years from now? (First published in 2021) Guests: Benji Jones, senior correspondent at Vox; David Willard, ornithologist at Chicago's Field Museum; Liz Alter, marine biologist at San José State University; Jingmai O'Conno ... Show More

<h2>Where Soil Grows Above The Trees</h2><p>You might be used to the feeling of Earth under your feet, but did you know that there’s soil high above your head? Way up in the treetops, where ferns, mosses, flowers, and even trees grow on top of the forest. A new <a href="https://w ... Show More

Summer heatwaves and missed bin collections have created panic in the press that rat numbers in the UK are increasing. We ask Steve Belmain, Professor of Ecology at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich for the science. This summer Wales became the first ... Show More

Animals’ lifespans can be far shorter or much longer than those of humans. Scientists are researching creatures such as “immortal” jellyfish and long-lived tortoises and digging deep into genetic codes to figure out why animals age—and what we can do to improve longevity in human ... Show More

Animals’ lifespans can be far shorter or much longer than those of humans. Scientists are researching creatures such as “immortal” jellyfish and long-lived tortoises and digging deep into genetic codes to figure out why animals age—and what we can do to improve longevity in human ... Show More

As a young man, traveling in Africa, Tim Coulson - now Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford - became seriously ill with malaria and was told a second bout would probably kill him. Aged only 20, this brush with his own mortality led him to promise himself he would writ ... Show More

How big can animals really get before they collapse under their own weight or run out of snacks? Could a 12-foot comedian survive their first punchline without snapping in half? Listener Andrew sends Hannah and Dara on a deep dive into the science of supersized species.With evolu ... Show More

The Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, DC is sometimes called “the people’s zoo.” That’s because it’s the only zoo in the country to be created by an act of US Congress, and admission is free. But why did our federal government create a national zoo in the first ... Show More

<p>Farmed versus wild. Basement shrimp hustles. Mangrove drama. Anthropology. Animal welfare and plant-based diets. Climb aboard to meet UCSB’s super cool dude, researcher and Aquaculture Ecologist, Dr. Ben Halpern. You’ll hear about sustainable food sources, land vs. sea farming ... 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