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So Annie, a few months ago, I think you were out that day.

Yeah.

I found a tiny little maggot here in the recording.

Gross.

I didn't find it gross. I found it cute. I took a lot of pictures.

I did wonder, though, how it got in here. We don't usually eat in here. We don't eat in here.

I do have a little chocolate wrapper. Ignore that. But if you were to tell me that that maggot popped into existence inside the booth, just materialized. I would say that was ridiculous because we know that life does not spontaneously appear willy-nilly. Except for a long time,

we did believe that life could spontaneously arise. We called it spontaneous generation.

Spontaneous generation is your textbook example of an idea that was wrong and that scientists with their brilliant experiments disproved.

At least that's how I thought this story went.

Earlier this year, I went on Science Friday where Irafledo and I talked to a science historian,

and we learned that how we came to believe what we believe today about spontaneous generation,

it actually has as much to do with science as it does with religion.

Here's that story.

This is Science Friday.

I'm Ira Flato, and for the rest of the hour, we're diving into the vaults of science history

because the hosts of our podcast Undiscovered are working on a new series.

It's all of one of my favorite subjects, all about science history.

And co-host Ella Fedder is here to tell us about it.

Hey, Ella.

Hey, Ira.

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