Life is the sum total of the time we have between birth and death.

You can measure it in years or in the number of breaths you'll take.

But if I ask you, what is this thing, this gift you've been given?

What is life?

Even science can't quite answer.

Billions of years after the first organisms emerged, fundamental aspects of life remain

mysterious. But that hasn't stopped us tinkering with it. Using stem cells to breed chimeras like

humanoid monkeys or grow brains in vats or cure cancer. I'm Anne-Strain Champs. And today, onto the best of our knowledge, new technologies

of life are inevitable. To handle them, what we really need is a new story of life.

From WPR. It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strain Champs. I'm Steve Paulson. Today we're headed back to the island of knowledge.

Which, to be clear, is not an actual island. It's a small think tank in the hills of Tuscany.

We're three times a year, small groups of people, mostly scientists, some philosophers, and maybe an artist or two,

come together to talk about how some of the reigning models in science are just wrong.

This time around, it's early spring.

The orchards are green, the almond trees are blooming, bees are buzzing,

and the question on the agenda, what is life?

What don't we understand about life?

Oh my goodness, we don't understand so much about life.

This is our host, Marcelo Gleiser.

He's a physicist and astrobiologist at Dartmouth College

and co-founder of the Island of Knowledge.

Yeah, we know what life does really well, but we don't know what life is.

...