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New Books in Biology and Evolution

New Books in Biology and Evolution

Auteur(s): New Books Network
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 This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkNew Books Network Art Science Sciences biologiques
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  • The Vet at the End of the Earth: Adventures with Animals in the South Atlantic

    The Vet at the End of the Earth: Adventures with Animals in the South Atlantic
    Mar 5 2026
    The role of a resident vet in the remote islands of the Falklands, St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha encompasses many wonderful complexities: caring for the world’s oldest living land animal (a 200-year-old giant tortoise, denizen of the St. Helena governor’s lawn); pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces. Dr. Hollins’s tales of island vet life are not only full of ingenuity and astounding fauna—they are also steeped in the unique local cultures, history, and peoples of the islands, far from the hustle of continental life. Our guest is: Dr. Jonathan Hollins, who graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has been a working vet for four decades. Since the mid-2000s, he has spent long periods as a senior vet overseas in the South Atlantic. He has written for the British national press and presented documentary features for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He lives on St. Helena. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Doctors By Nature Just Like Family Living Night The Killer Whale Journals The Shark Scientist Endless Forms The Well-Gardened Mind Bugs: A Day in the Life My What-if Year The Climate Change Scientist At Every Depth Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h
  • Robert Endres, "The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI" (arXiv, 2025)

    Robert Endres, "The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI" (arXiv, 2025)
    Feb 24 2026
    In this episode we discuss the paper "The Unreasonable Likelihood of Being: Origin of Life, Terraforming, and AI" (arXiv, 2025) with Robert Endres. Paper Abstract: The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and algorithmic complexity. Using estimates grounded in modern computational models, we evaluate the difficulty of assembling structured biological in-formation under plausible prebiotic conditions. Our results highlight the formidable entropic and informational barriers to forming a viable protocell within the available window of Earth’s early history. While the idea of Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials might violate Occam’s razor from within mainstream science, directed panspermia—originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel—remains a speculative but logically open alternative. Ultimately, uncovering physical principles for life’s spontaneous emergence remains a grand challenge for biological physics. Full paper available here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 min
  • Ellen Clarke, "The Units of Life: Kinds of Individual in Biology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

    Ellen Clarke, "The Units of Life: Kinds of Individual in Biology" (Oxford UP, 2025)
    Feb 10 2026
    While we tend to think of biological individuals in terms of paradigmic cases – a dog, a starfish, a bacterium – our ordinary criteria for distinguishing one individual from another are inadequate for making these distinctions in general. If a starfish can literally split itself in two and each half regenerates into a new starfish, why hold that there was just one starfish to begin with rather than many? In The Units of Life: Kinds of Individual in Biology (Oxford UP, 2025), Ellen Clarke defends the idea of evolutionary individuals: units created and maintained by mechanisms that ensure the parts share a common fate. Such individuals enable good evolutionary bookkeeping, in particular our ability to predict which variations in these individuals will enable natural selection to occur. Clarke, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Leeds, considers the merits of her view in relation to alternatives, how her view explains the emergence of new levels of biological individuality, and how the need for idealization and scientific choice of individual boundaries can avoid conventionalism about biological individuals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h et 9 min
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