Ann Jones
speaker
552 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 11 Sep
Ann Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
They didn't have a nucleus, they didn't have organelles, they were hashtag simple life all the way.
Oh, oh, they didn't have sex either.
In fact, it's about another billion years which bubbles by as a matter of microbes line the bottom of the waters of time.
Cell division seems like a pretty good system.
You're self-reliant, you can produce as and when you want to, like the empowered, independent, single amoeba that you are.
But every system has drawbacks, and this is important.
With asexual reproduction in its simplest forms, you are cloning yourself, using exactly the same genetic material every single time.
But you do accrue mutations.
And whatever things aren't working well, you 100% are going to be passing them on to your offspring.
So what is nature's solution?
Bingo!
Yes, for well over half this here planet's existence, there was no sexual reproduction at all, which is weird considering how much of your brain it takes up right now, am I right?
But it's important to note that sexual reproduction can occur without penis in vagina.
Sexual reproduction actually refers to the combining of two sets of genetic information into a new individual.
So let me summarise the too long didn't read for the first 2.9 billion years of the gradual evolution of sex.
In its simplest form, sexual reproduction arose as a way of combining with the genetics of someone else, reducing the possibility of passing your problems on to your offspring.
On RN, you're listening to What the Duck, where we have just begun an adventure into deep time and deep into the underpants of the world, we're trying to trace the evolution of sex.
So these eukaryotes, everything that comes after them in the tree of life can sexually reproduce.
That is the start of us all, in a way.
It's the start of vixens, blowflies, boobies, and pobble bonks.
Showing 401–420 of 552 · page 21 of 28
← Previous
Next →