3.77 Billion Years Under Construction | Olivia Judson | Escaped Sapiens #60

This conversation is about the history of life and earth. I speak with evolutionary biologist and author Olivia Judson, who is best known for her book 'Dr. Tatiana's sex advice to all creation''. Oliva thinks of the history of life on earth in terms of 5 energy epochs, in which life has worked out how to make use of different kinds of energy. These epochs are geochemistry, light, oxygen, flesh, and fire. Olivia explains her fascination with the transformation of life over time, and with what it means to be alive 4.5 billion years into earth's history. Olivia is currently in the final stages of authoring her next popular science book on just this topic.
►For more information about Olivias work see:
aeon.co/essays/the-insight-of...
www.nature.com/articles/s4155...
At 1:14:38 Olivia accidently says cyanobacteria instead of Coccolithophores.
At 1:57:12 Olivia accidently says 20,000 base pairs instead of 20,000 genes. Genes are sequences of base pairs. The typical Bacteria have between 2000 and 5000 genes, corresponding to several million base pairs.
These conversations are supported by the Andrea von Braun Foundation (www.avbstiftung.de/), as an exploration of the rich, exciting, connected, scientifically literate, and (most importantly) sustainable future of humanity. The views expressed in these episodes are my own and those of my guests.
The images used in this conversation were taken from:
The surface of Venus at 11;50 - From The Vera 9 team
Shark bay stromatolite 14;00 - UNSW Sydney/Brendan Burns
Coccolithophores 16;30 - Peter Miller and NEODAAS
Darwins coral reefs 22;09 - Charles Darwin
0:00 - 4 Billion year history of life and earth.
0:01:38 - What is life?
0:05:48 - What if life never existed?
0:12:10 - The impact of life on geology
0:18:30 - Are Geology and Biology distinct subjects?
0:30:55 - If life on earth ended.
0:32:30 - The history of life on earth.
0:37:35 - The rock eaters
0:40:50 - Evolution of photosynthesis
0:49:50 - The formation of Eukaryotes
0:56:45 - Why don't plants run around?
1:03:40 - Why did photosynthesis only happen once?
1:05:05 - When did predation start
1:12:20 - Is evolution terrifying?
1:15:10 - Sex.
1:19:40 - How weird can sex get?
1:24:00 - Monogamy.
1:25:40 - The benefits of sex.
1:30:40 - Battle of the sexes.
1:41:00 - Why rocks and energy?
1:47:30 - DNA (why and when?)
1:55:00 - How DNA works
1:58:30 - The Oxygen apocalypse
2:01:10 - Are we lucky to be alive?
2:12:40 - The Fermi paradox
2:17:10 - Against life on earth.
2:20:20 - The future
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[@nolongerinvolved]

Your channel is so nutritious. Thank you for these conversations.

[@EscapedSapiens]

=D It's never been described as nutritious before. Thanks for the great compliment! Welcome.

[@rthegle4432]

Wow, this was interesting conversation. I hope you interview more cognitive scientists and neuroscientists in the future like Joscha Bach and Sam Harris.
Hope you reach 1M subs ❤

[@EscapedSapiens]

Thanks! I hope I do as well :). I have a some more cognitive and neuroscience planned. Stay tuned :). Thanks for listening.

[@BTinHD]

Great interview. Thanks.

[@EscapedSapiens]

Our pleasure!