Life in a Barrel

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life. Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own little stories until they got thrown into the studio, and had their cherished beliefs about the shape of life put on a collision course. From an accidental study of sea creatures, to the ambitions of Stephen J Gould, to an undercooked theory that captured the world’s imagination, we undo the seeming order of the living world and try to make some music out of the wreckage. (Bonus: Learn how Francis Crick really thought life got started on this planet). This episode was reported by Latif Nasser, Matt Kielty, Heather Radke, Lulu Miller and Candice Wang. It was produced by Matt Kielty and Simon Adler. Sound and music from Matt Kielty, Simon Adler, and Jeremy Bloom, and dialogue mix by Arianne Wack.Special thanks to Alan and Alida Goffinski for giving our chaos musical life in the song at the end of the episode. Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe! Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today. Citations in this episodeScientific Papers:Elisa Beninca, Reinhard Heerkloss, et al, “Chaos in a long-term experiment with a plankton community” Nature (2008)Hendrik Schubert, Reinhard Heerkloss, et al, “Chaos theory discloses triggers and drivers of plankton dynamics in a stable environment” Scientific Reports (2019) Books:Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex LifeFrancis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and NatureStephen Jay Gould: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, and The Mismeasure of ManDavid M. Raup, Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?David Sepkoski, Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N.Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.3	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:19.2	Okay, so let me just, because I also don't entirely know what's going on.
0:24.1	I'm Louie Miller.
0:25.1	I'm Lathif Nasser.
0:25.9	And we also have with us.
0:27.9	Yeah.
0:28.2	Producer Matt Kilty.
0:29.6	We have three different pitches.
0:31.5	Yeah, we're going to, you guys are them.
0:33.1	Wow, we're doing three different things.
0:34.2	Yeah, but mine's very little.
0:35.9	But I need, you got to leave me 15 minutes at the end. 15 minutes. Okay, and then, okay, a little context. A while back, the three of us found ourselves in a studio together because our editor Soren, he knew that we were independently working on these three different stories. Oh, so you don't know that, Lulu, you do know the stories or you don't know the story? No, I don't know. And unbeknownst to us at the time, he decided that each of our stories pitted chaos versus order in a way that could upend some of our deepest beliefs about how life works. Yeah. And so he wanted to just get us in the ring together. It's a cage match. It's a story cage match. Yeah, and we'll get to all that. But should I start? Yeah. Latif has got story number one. All right. Okay, so we're starting at the University of Rostock in Germany. Yeah, the story started here in Rostock. With this ecology professor named Hendrik Schubert.
	...

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