This is an I-Hart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

You've heard us say many times that we're kind of amazed that our complicated bodies ever work well.

There are countless cells that are born in your body and will die in your

body. And from an evolutionary perspective, all of those cells are working their tails off to help

a particular group of cells kickstart the next generation. And even then, just a few, if any,

sperm or eggs will get a chance to come together to make a baby.

But you don't hear about eggs creating a roadblock in the fallopian tubes as they all race out in a mad rush to be the egg that gets picked that month.

Many of our cells do coordinate nicely to give sperm and eggs a chance to strut their stuff.

But all of those cells are carrying around the same genetic information,

so they all benefit from the sperm and the egg knocking it out of the park when their time comes.

But what happens when cells need to come together to complete a selfless task, and those cells are

not 100% related to each other? Today we're going to talk about social amoeba, who will sometimes join together by the tens

of thousands to help a subset of the amoeba get to a new and better environment.

In the process, about 20% of the amoeba need to give their lives so the rest of the amoeba can

get transported to somewhere,

hopefully much better.

So how the heck do you convince someone

who isn't related to you

to give their life for you?

And how do you prevent cheaters

from avoiding their fair share of the costs?

...