Archaea

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the 20th century: the archaea microorganisms. In the 1970s the American microbiologist Carl Woese (1928-2012) realised that the tiny bacteria-sized organisms he was studying were not actually bacteria but from an entirely different branch of the tree of life. It became clear that archaea, as he named them, share aspects of the cells in all plants and animals even if they often live in places where other life struggles including salty lakes, acidic pools, under the sea bed and in the gut. While aspects of what followed from Woese are still under debate, further discoveries suggest that life on Earth has been on a journey of separation and reunion: that the first cells developed into bacteria and archaea billions of years ago and that some of those later combined to form the complex cells from which we are made.

With

Christa Schleper Professor of Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Vienna

Thorsten Allers Professor of Archaeal Genetics at the University of Nottingham

And

Buzz Baum Group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the evolution of complex life (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Buzz Baum, ‘I’: A Biography of the Biological Self (Allen Lane, forthcoming 2027)

Franklin M. Harold, In Search of Cell History: The Evolution of Life's Building Blocks (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Oxford University Press, 2005)

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2018)

Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis (Oxford University Press, 1994)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Their company's success helped build a nation.
0:10.9	The company is such a big part of Korea's economy.
0:13.5	But who are the family behind one of the world's tech giants?
0:17.2	They often say, look, we built the nation.
0:19.2	And without us, South Korea as it exists today,
0:22.6	would simply not be here. Inheritance, Samsung explores the real-life dramas of the Lee family
0:28.3	and their company. They are the equivalent of royalty. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hi, this is
0:34.9	Misha Gleney. Episodes of In Our Time are released weekly wherever you get your
0:39.9	podcasts. But if you can't wait, head over to BBC Sounds where you can listen to the latest
0:46.0	episodes a month earlier than anywhere else. This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive.
0:59.4	A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening.
1:04.8	I hope you enjoy the program.
1:07.3	Hello, there are some scientific discoveries that seem to change everything, and one of these is that of the Archaean microorganisms.
1:17.0	It was Carl Woz, who in the 1970s realised that the tiny bacteria-sized organisms he was studying were not actually bacteria, but from an entirely different branch of the tree of life.
1:31.4	And excitingly, those archaea, as he called them, share aspects of the cells in plants and
1:37.6	animals, including us, indicating that it was archaea, in combination with bacteria, that made complex life possible.
1:47.1	Well, with me to discuss archaea, our Christia Schleper, Professor of Genetics and Microbiology
1:52.4	at the University of Vienna, Tuustin Alice, Professor of Archaeal Genetics at the University of Nottingham,
2:00.0	and Buzzbaum, group leader at the MRC
2:03.1	Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Buzz, let me start with you. Until Woz,
2:09.7	scientists have been looking at Archaea through microscopes, but not seeing them for what they were.
	...

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