Shrink

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

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

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking.

Viruses are supposed to be sleek, pared-down, dead-eyed machines. But when one microbiologist stumbled upon a GIANT virus, hundreds of times bigger than any seen before, all that went out the window. The discovery opened the door not only to a new cast of microscopic characters with names like Mimivirus, Mamavirus, and Megavirus, but also to basic questions: How did we miss these until now? Have they been around since the beginning? What if evolution could go … backwards?

In this episode from 2015, join former co-hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich as they grill Radiolab regular Carl Zimmer on these paradoxical viruses – they’re so big that they can get their own viruses! - and what they can tell us about the nature of life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Lulu Miller. If you joined us last week you met the hidden body part stowing away inside
0:06.8	your body and today we have another hidden story about life and non-life and how the line in between them is way
0:17.8	bluer than we might think. We are talking about viruses today. This episode is a rewind but it's a lovely one. It's called
0:26.0	Shrink and what I love about it is not just that it busts a binary between life and non-life that I always thought was hard and fast, but also
0:37.0	that as you listen, it really feels, at least to me, like Robert Krollich and Jad Abumrod, O.G. hosts that they kind of shrink down into these
0:48.1	little boys who are so giddy with questions for Carl Zimmer.
0:53.4	It's like they're, I picture them like two little boys
0:55.9	at Santa's knee, just taking in the knowledge.
0:59.7	And it's a really raw, lovely glimpse,
1:01.9	I think, at what this show does best when it when it does its best which is to make space for for questions and for real listening so I hope you enjoy this kind of giddy a romp through the evolution of life and non-life and all the
1:16.8	places where that line blurs out a bit. Here we go.
1:21.3	Yeah, wait, you're listening.
1:23.0	Okay.
1:24.0	All right.
1:25.0	Okay.
1:27.0	You're listening to Radio Lab.
1:31.0	Radio.
1:32.0	From W N N. Weiss.
1:33.0	Rewind.
1:40.0	Come on.
1:41.0	You guys came saying we want to talk to you about three things.
1:44.0	Okay, okay, let's do it, let's do that.
	...

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