You asked, I delivered! In a sequel to our discussion in episode 58, we're going to shine a spotlight on two more thinkers during the Islamic Golden Age. Along the way we'll also see connections with later thinkers and a cameo from episode 69…
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Darwin Day is upon us for the fifth time! To celebrate, let's follow Charles Darwin on the first part of his famous voyage between late 1831 and early 1832. We'll see him pour over cuttlefish, travel with veterans of the Napoleonic Wars and arrive in a young Brazilian Empire…
Sources for this episode:
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A series of 5000 flowers pressed in the 16th century near Bologna have given scientists an opportunity to see human impacts and the rise of alien species. All while giving us an excuse to touch on what the Columbian exchange actually is…
Sources for this episode:
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Buldrini, F., Alessandrini, A., Mossetti, U., Muzzi, E., Pezzi, G., Soldano, A. and Nascimbene, J. (2023), Botanical memory: five centuries of floristic changes revealed by a Renaissance herbarium (Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1551-1586). Royal Society Open Science 10(11): 230866.
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McCook, S. (2011), The neo-Columbian exchange: the second conquest of the Greater Caribbean, 1720-1930. Latin American Research Review: 46(S1): 11-31.
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It takes our sun 220 million years to orbit around the middle of our home galaxy. But that kind of timescale can be difficult to picture. So, using the International Stratigraphy Chart as a guidance for what different time periods mean in terms of millions of years, let's zoom out to the scale of a galactic year and see what happened in Earth's prehistory one cycle ago, two and so on.
Sources for this episode:
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Most people will have come across this term before, but what does it actually mean? Today, we'll be dissecting the terms microbiome and microbiota and looking at what can impact them.
Sources for this episode:
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Saint Helena is an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps most famous as the final residence of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814 and again briefly in 1815. However, there is also plenty of interesting ecology and anthropogenic impact to talk about. Join myself and my co-host on an old episode of Island Folk to find out more!
The episode can be found at the following link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1yP66nlH0ReAaZUWETXEHp?si=e894e255600c4bc0
This episode discusses what it says on the tin- two different models of the pace at which evolution happens. Punctuated equilibrium comes to us courtesy of Niles Eldredge and Steve Gould in the 1970s. We won't do a deep dive on which model is considered correct in this episode. However, punctuated equilibrium was appropriated by creationists in the 1980s as this issue became political- leading us to a convenient tangent on what exactly creationist philosophy is.
Woolly mammoths are an iconic feature of the Ice Age in popular imagination. However, on today's episode, we will also see that they are the basis of a fun fact that may change your perception of the past…
Sources for this episode:
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A throwaway comment on Big Bang Theory got me thinking- could hybrid animals such as the griffin and the hippogriff be possible from a biological viewpoint? Using these two examples, we will explore the chromosome number of hybrid animals and see what it means for our mythical friends…
Sources for this episode:
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Introducing my newest venture- being one half of the Autocrat podcast! Autocrat is a podcast which aims to explore Roman civilisation from beginning to end. Beginning with the mythology and the stories of Aeneas and Romulus, the podcast will trace the journey through the Roman Kingdom, the Republic, the Empire and all the way to 1453 and beyond. Who knows if we'll make it that far, but we hope to have fun with it!
The podcast can be found at https://open.spotify.com/show/30Muilr1O66yA4UDcj76SW?si=891136d533c446a5 or on YouTube at youtube.com/@autocratpodcast. If the show sounds fun, feel free to come and join us!
