Biopedia

Following another request, today we examine whether it is possible for dolphins- using their ultrasonic communication- to detect human pregnancy. The answer might be more ambiguous than you think…

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Vince here- I've written a historical fiction book set in Constantinople in 1081! Well, kind of. The first draft of the manuscript is complete at about 59,000 words across 34 chapters. I am planning to to do a reading of the prologue as it currently stands on this feed, and after that prepare the book for publication as an eBook.

So, what I am here to ask you is- is this something you would be interested in? Please let me know at the show's email address. I would love to hear your feedback.

A bit of a silly topic today. What is the average life expectancy of hobbits in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium? Along the way, we will learn something about current and historic human life expectancy.

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Sound Effect by freesound_community from Pixabay

As requested by listener GT, we are going to talk all about moles today! Join us for the evolutionary history of the Talpidae family, English prophecies about moles, how much a mole head is worth in 2026 money according to the 1533 Vermin Act, and a lot of Red List data.

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Last week we introduced some discussion on bee/pollinator declines. This week, we will discuss a perspective by Jaboury Ghazoul- a professor at ETH Zurich- who argued in a 2005 paper that labelling a pollinator decline crisis was, in fact, premature.

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Once again adapting a blog post into an episode, we are going to be examining a paper from 2016 which gives a potential new perspective on bee/pollinator declines. It argues that the contribution of non-bee pollinators to pollination services might be greater than we think.

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There is a number we use in genetics to represent how inbred a particular individual- e.g.: Charles II of Spain, Ptolemy XIII or Danaerys Targaryen- is. On today's episode, thanks to guidance from a blog post I found very helpful on the subject, we are going to take you through how this number is calculated for some simpler cases.

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The term phylogenetic tree often gets bandied about, but how exactly do you construct one? Using three exemplar snake species and the differences in amino acid sequences in a common protein, let's build one together and explore how the process works.

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We're going to be adapting an old Biopedia blog post today and examining how biofilms might be relevant in the generation of Alzheimer's.

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Happy seventh Darwin Day! Today on the podcast, we are going to examine the family tree of Charles Robert Darwin. Let's explore more than ten generations of Darwins, starting all the way back in the 16th century with William Darwin Sr.

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