Bonnie Bassler

speaker

763 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 20 Jul

Bonnie Bassler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas · 361 | Bonnie Bassler on How Bacteria Talk and Work Together · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

in i'm guessing you know in evolution the ability to have collective behavior you know it changes you from being a subsistence farmer to living you know in new york city right where there's the car mechanic and the grocer and the librarian you don't have to do everything yourself right i mean that's a little bit exaggerated right here if you can share and have

you know, I do a little work, it's quorum sensing.

I do some work, you do some work, and we all succeed more, right?

I think that that's an amazing step in evolution.

And of course, you know, we know that in eukaryotic, I mean, you know, our own cells, you know, your kidney cells work together, your liver cells, you know, work together, and herds of wildebeest work together, and wolves hunt, you know, and fishes.

So, you know what I mean?

And like, we understand the value of collective behaviors and

in organisms that we see with our eyes or even in cells in a higher organism.

And of course, we came from bacteria.

So these rules, your how to make collect, why wouldn't they have evolved billions of years ago?

And yeah, you and your liver cells and kidney cells have a few more bells and whistles than my bacteria do, but the bacteria made the rules, Sean.

Correct.

And it's, yeah, so there has to be, yeah.

So they're just doing it, you know, so are there leaders and followers?

We think about that a lot, right?

But in the end, it's just, you know, again, I don't want this to be thought.

I don't want this to be intelligently designed.

They are making and releasing these molecules as part of the biochemistry that happens in these simple single cells, right?

And so you can get this emergent behavior, right?

Yeah.

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