Episodes
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The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies
S4 E40 - 8m 13s
This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…
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How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked
S4 E39 - 9m 49s
Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?
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Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?
S4 E38 - 7m 40s
There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.
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Why Does Caffeine Exist?
S4 E37 - 8m 29s
Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?
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How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles
S4 E36 - 12m 34s
Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still visible - and even striking - if you know where and how to look for it.
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When Giant Millipedes Reigned
S4 E35 - 7m 2s
This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big?
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Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not
S4 E34 - 9m 19s
In 2003, microbiologists made a huge discovery. One that would force us to reconsider a lot of what we thought we knew about the evolution of microbial life: giant viruses.
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Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years
S4 E33 - 9m 42s
Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the organism itself. So… what could it be?
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We Can “Bring Back” The Woolly Mammoth. Should We?
S4 E32 - 6m 40s
In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.
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Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?
S4 E31 - 6m 37s
Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.
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The Curious Case of the Cave Lion
S4 E30 - 8m 9s
A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?
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When Ants Domesticated Fungi
S4 E29 - 9m 5s
While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 million years. So when, and how, and why did ants start … farming?
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