Welcome to the After-On podcast. I'm your host, Rob Reed.

And this is a series of conversations with thinkers, founders, and scientists.

Take a little time and stretch out because these talks are unhurry and meant to bring you

to a top percentile understanding of something important.

Also, whether you're ready to start up score ideas, a techie or a lit major, take your

time, engage your mind, and you'll be glad you did it.

Especially this week, when we'll be talking to...

Chemist and pioneering DNA Architect Floyd Roomsburg.

For billions of years, all life on Earth, in all of its mad diversity, has been encoded

in the four-letter alphabet of DNA.

ETG and C. That's all it takes.

Bacteria, wasps, polar bears, ragweed, octopuses, palm trees, four letters is all it takes

to enable the full range of life we share our planet with.

Those four letters are all it takes to transmit the blueprints of beings and species across

generations.

And they're all it takes to create the instruction manuals for each of the billions of chemical

reactions that occur in each of your cells, your trillions of cells every minute.

This was true for the dinosaurs.

It was true for the earliest bacterium.

It was indeed true for every critterware aware of, clear back to the common ancestor of

all earthly life.

All beings operated from that four-letter alphabet until just a few years ago, when Floyd

...