This is an I-Hard podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Imagine this.

You're walking through the woods by yourself.

You've been told there are dinosaurs afoot.

You hear a rustling in the brush behind you, and the hair is on the back of your neck stand on end.

What made that noise?

You start to break a swim.

You hear the noise again.

And then, out of the woods comes...

A chicken?

Well, technically, a chicken is a dinosaur.

And if you don't believe me, we have Dr. Steve Rusadi,

author of the new book, The Story of Birds,

on the show today to try to convince you.

And while I have to admit that chickens don't really inspire the same level of awe in me as

Ankylosaurus or T-Rex, neither of those species survived the catastrophic collision of an asteroid

with Earth during the Cretaceous period, but somehow birds did make it through.

So maybe birds are more interesting than I've given them credit for. And maybe those birders really are onto something. Let's see. Welcome to

Daniel and Kelly's Avian Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and if I discover a new particle, it's not getting a Latin name.

Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space, and I am part of the team that has described two species, and we gave both of them fun Latin names.

Because they need them.

...