Tiny Living Beings
Episodes
Introducing the Fire Amoeba
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eukaryotes are "complex" organisms with nuclei and membrane-bound organelles: plants, animals, fungi, and protists. Protists include many understudied...
Parasites in our pets' poop
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Microbes are everywhere, including inside our pets! This week, Ben Alverson comes on to give us a crash course in veterinary parasitology. He discusse...
Is science political? - with Kevin Bird
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
American science has been under attack since this Trump administration began. Tens of thousands of scientists and federal workers have lost their jobs...
The Diatom Detective - with Kirstie Scott
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you tuned in last week, you'll know that diatoms produce one quarter of the air we breathe (and they produced this podcast's logo), but did you kno...
Diatoms and dinoflagellates and dinotoms, oh my! - with Brittany Sprecher
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Diatoms are beautiful (and weird). Dinoflagellates are weird (and beautiful). They are completely different organisms but both are protists that can b...
Sharks of the plankton - with Matt Johnson
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know that some organisms, from protists to sea slugs, steal photosynthesis? This week Dr. Matt Johnson is on the podcast to talk about his wor...
Urine for a treat - with Owen Hale
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Newsflash! Urine is not sterile! This week we have Owen Hale on the podcast to talk about the urinary tract microbiome, which is really understudied. ...
Where did plants come from? - with Blair Young
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bryophytes are an ancient group of plants that include hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. They are the evolutionary link between land plants and the g...
4.5 billion years of Earth history in one hour - with Bolton Howes
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know the continents move at the same rate as your fingernails grow? Welcome BACK to Tiny Living Beings after a couple years off! For the first...
Life is beautiful - with Ursula Goodenough
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ursula Goodenough has a scientific career that spans six decades, numerous accolades, and is a writer of both textbook and popular science books. ...
Choanoflagellates and animal evolution - with David Booth
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Choanoflagellates are unicellular protists but they also happen to be the closest living relatives to animals. This week, David Booth discusses what c...
Getting to know lichens - with Dennis Waters
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Do you ever walk past an old building or a tree or a big rock and notice splotchy green or orange or yellow blobs growing all over it? Well, these are...
Fungi are everywhere - with Kaydubs the hiking scientist
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is fungi everywhere? Is it on our eyeballs and in our nose hairs? Yes, yes, and yes! This week I talk to Dr. Kristen aka Kaydubs about fungi in genera...
Tardigrade takedown - with Chloé Savard
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tardigrades aka water bears aka moss piglets are extremely popular! This is due to their tolerance of harsh environments and because of their perceive...
The gut microbiome - with Haley Hallowell
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What are the microbes in our gut up to? And how does their life affect our lives? This week, Dr. Haley Hallowell teaches us all about the gut microbio...
Polar microbes - with Jaz Millar
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know there are microbes living in holes in glaciers? What are they doing there and what can we learn from them? Quite a lot actually! This wee...
The Great Oxygenation Event - With John Encarnacion
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How do we know what the Earth was like billions of years ago? And where did all the oxygen come from? Spoiler alert: it's microbes! This week I speak ...
Hobby microscopy - with Lena Struwe
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How can you get started with hobby microscopy? What products and practices do we recommend? Why do we have a conflict with the Unicode emoji consortiu...
Hot springs archaea - with Arthur Charles-Orszag
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why don't we ever talk about archaea? What can we learn from this domain of life? Why would someone want to cook a chicken in a Yellowstone National P...
Genetic engineering of algae - with Kyle Lauersen
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What can we get algae to do for us (other than be beautiful and produce half of our oxygen)? How can we engineer different algae to create products an...
Glaucophyte algae - with Debashish Bhattacharya
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What the heck are glaucophyte algae? And where are they found? Spoiler alert: everywhere and nowhere. This week, Prof. Debashish Bhattacharya talks ab...
Photosynthetic amoeba - with Arwa Gabr
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
"Photosynthesis is very important if you care about breathing." Half of the oxygen on the planet is produced by microbes. Dr. Awra Gabr talks about th...
Cassava viruses - with Alvin Crespo
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As a society we have (rightly) spent soooo much time talking and thinking about SARS-CoV-2 but what about the billions of other viruses out there, mos...
The microbes transforming our food system - with David Zilber
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Did you know that one third of the food we eat is transformed by microbes? Why did people start eating sauerkraut? Will veggie burgers ever taste bett...
Slime molds - with Kyle David
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What do some amoebozoans and the urban planners of Tokyo have in common? And who is smarter? What even is intelligence? Find out by learning about Phy...
Leptospira bacteria - with Kyra Hartog
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you have a dog, you'll want to listen to this one! Leptospira is a genus of spirochete bacteria that can infect many different mammals, from rats t...
Deadly amoeba - with Seth Bromagen
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Naegleria fowleri is a Percolozoan flagellate protist known as the "brain-eating amoeba". While fatal to humans, this microbe doesn't have a sinister ...
Tiny Living Beings: Trailer
26 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings." -Lynn Margulis Tiny Living Beings is a weekly podcast where listeners get to...