This is Clara Moscoots and you're listening to the Science Quickly Podcast from Scientific

American.

Today, we're talking about life as we don't know it.

Sarah Skolls just wrote a piece for us in our February magazine on that very subject.

Sarah, hi.

Hi, Clara.

I'm great.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So what exactly is life as we don't know it, or as you brilliantly call it in the story

Laudeke?

Yes, I'm glad we like the acronym that I just made up, but I think to talk about life as

we don't know it, it's important first to talk about life as we do know it, because

we really only think about life as life, biology as biology, but life as we do know it

is really just a specific instance of one kind of biology that could exist, you know,

where most things kind of breathe oxygen rely on DNA and RNAs, genetic material, and

kind of share a common what they call, what scientists call biochemistry.

And so that is life as we know it.

And life as we don't know it, I guess I'm procrastinating saying what it is, because

the point is that we don't know what it is.

It is something that is biological, but does not necessarily rely on the same elements

and compounds or ways of transferring information.

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