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Episode 1. Carlos Mariscal: What Do We Mean When We Ask, “What Is Life?”

What Is Life?

Release Date: 01/25/2019

Episode 8. Kate Adamala: Can We Make Life? show art Episode 8. Kate Adamala: Can We Make Life?

What Is Life?

Kate Adamala is a chemist at the University of Minnesota. In her Protobiology Lab, she is trying to build a synthetic cell from scratch.

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Episode 7. Donato Giovannelli: Warm Ponds Or Hellish Vents–Where Did Life Begin? show art Episode 7. Donato Giovannelli: Warm Ponds Or Hellish Vents–Where Did Life Begin?

What Is Life?

Donato Giovannelli is an assistant professor at the University of Naples “Federico II.” He travels to acid lakes and other extreme environments that are the closest thing today to what Earth was like when life began.

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Episode 6. Steven Benner: How Weird Can Life Get? show art Episode 6. Steven Benner: How Weird Can Life Get?

What Is Life?

All the life we know is the same: carbon-based, with DNA for genes. (Okay, except for RNA viruses.) But Steven Benner says it doesn’t have to be that way. Benner is a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.

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Episode 5. Jeremy England: Why Does Life Exist? show art Episode 5. Jeremy England: Why Does Life Exist?

What Is Life?

Jeremy England is a physicist at MIT. He has developed an influential theory of life as a way for matter to dissipate energy.

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Episode 4. Caleb Scharf: How Did Life Begin? show art Episode 4. Caleb Scharf: How Did Life Begin?

What Is Life?

We don’t know how life got its start. But as more evidence emerges, explains astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, only a few theories are emerging as leading contenders. Scharf is the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University.

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 Episode 3. Jim Cleaves: The Origin of Life, from Frankenstein to a Laboratory Spark show art Episode 3. Jim Cleaves: The Origin of Life, from Frankenstein to a Laboratory Spark

What Is Life?

H. James Cleaves is a professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and co-author of A Brief History of Creation: Science and the Search for the Origin of Life.

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 Episode 2. Sara Walker: If We Find Alien Life, Will We Even Know It? show art Episode 2. Sara Walker: If We Find Alien Life, Will We Even Know It?

What Is Life?

Sara Imari Walker is a physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. She studies life as a physical phenomenon, in order to develop new ways to search for it elsewhere in the universe.

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Episode 1. Carlos Mariscal: What Do We Mean When We Ask, “What Is Life?” show art Episode 1. Carlos Mariscal: What Do We Mean When We Ask, “What Is Life?”

What Is Life?

Carlos Mariscal is a philosopher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He collaborates with evolutionary biologists and astrobiologists to explore what it means to be alive. When we ask what is life, Mariscal suggests, we may be asking the wrong question.

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Carlos Mariscal is a philosopher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He collaborates with evolutionary biologists and astrobiologists to explore what it means to be alive. When we ask what is life, Mariscal suggests, we may be asking the wrong question.