What Is Life?
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Episode 8. Kate Adamala: Can We Make Life?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Adamala is a chemist at the University of Minnesota. In her Protobiology Lab, she is trying to build a synthetic cell from scratch. Protobiolog...
Episode 7. Donato Giovannelli: Warm Ponds Or Hellish Vents–Where Did Life Begin?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Donato Giovannelli is an assistant professor at the University of Naples "Federico II." He travels to acid lakes and other extreme environments that a...
Episode 6. Steven Benner: How Weird Can Life Get?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
All the life we know is the same: carbon-based, with DNA for genes. (Okay, except for RNA viruses.) But Steven Benner says it doesn't have to be that ...
Episode 5. Jeremy England: Why Does Life Exist?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy England is a physicist at MIT. He has developed an influential theory of life as a way for matter to dissipate energy. England's MIT lab site ...
Episode 4. Caleb Scharf: How Did Life Begin?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We don't know how life got its start. But as more evidence emerges, explains astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, only a few theories are emerging as leading ...
Episode 3. Jim Cleaves: The Origin of Life, from Frankenstein to a Laboratory Spark
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
H. James Cleaves is a professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and co-author of A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for...
Episode 2. Sara Walker: If We Find Alien Life, Will We Even Know It?
28 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Imari Walker is a physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. She studies life as a physical phenomenon, in order to develop new wa...
Episode 1. Carlos Mariscal: What Do We Mean When We Ask, "What Is Life?"
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Mariscal is a philosopher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He collaborates with evolutionary biologists and astrobiologists to explore wh...