The Loom » Meet the Scientist

Losing our germs: My last podcast

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:02:25 +0000

On my new podcast, I talk to Martin Blaser of New York University about Helicobacter pylori, best known as the microbe that causes ulcers. It’s also an ancient passenger in our stomachs, and has evolved a delicate balance with its human hosts. In fact, Blaser is worried by the disappearance of H. pylori from the modern world, thanks to antibiotics and hygiene. We may have to pay a price for its extinction, in the form of higher rates of asthma, esophageal cancer, and perhaps even obsesity. Check it out.

With this episode, the American Society for Microbiology is bringing the Meet the Scientist podcast series to a close. In the coming year, they’re going to be focusing their online efforts on some new projects you can look forward to on the Microbe World web site. (And they’ll be keeping all the episodes of Meet the Scientist on the site.) I’ve had a wonderful time over the past year hosting the podcast, and I’d like to thank all the scientists who shared their work with me and all the people at ASM who made this experience possible.

I Sing The Microbe Electric: New Podcast

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:30:08 +0000

On my latest podcast, I talk to Jeff Gralnick of the University of Minnesota about electricity and life. In particular, we talk about how some bacteria generate electric currents as they feed–and how we might harness their power. Check it out.

The clouds are alive! My new podcast on aerobiology

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:34:49 +0000

On my latest podcast, I explore the invisible ocean of life through which we swim every day: the air. I talk to Jessica Green of the University of Oregon about life in the clouds, in our houses, and everywhere in between. Gee-whiz science at its finest. Check it out.

Beer, the foundation of civilization: my new podcast

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:24:02 +0000

On my latest podcast, I talk beer–that marvel of microbiology that people have been swilling for thousands of years. My guide to the brewing cosmos is Charles Bamforth, a professor of brewing science at the University of California, Davis. Check it out.

Dengue on the march: My new podcast

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:49:26 +0000

On my latest podcast, I take a look at dengue fever, a viral disease that’s infecting some 50 million people a year and is even turning up in the United States. I talk to Thomas Scott of UC Davis about how this cunning virus takes advantage of human networks to spread its aches, pains, bleeding, and death. Check it out.

New podcast: I for one welcome our digital overlords

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:34:45 +0000

On my latest podcast, I talk to Charles Ofria, a computer scientist who helped build Avida, one of the most intriguing examples of artificial life around. I wrote about Avida when it first hit the news back in 2005 in this cover story for Discover. Five years on, I caught up with Ofria for the podcast. I learned that the Avidians are evolving to be cleverer and cleverer–clever enough, in fact, to control robots. When they show up in my town, I plan on waving the magazine cover so they’ll spare me. Check it out.

Gamers > Computers: My new podcast on crowdsourced biology

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 15:20:23 +0000

On my latest podcast, I talk to David Baker of the University of Washington about a remarkable new way of studying biology: turn a problem (protein-folding) into a game, and get 57,000 people to play. Check it out.

My new podcast: The ocean’s superorganism

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:08:30 +0000

On my latest podcast, I talk to Forest Rohwer, a San Diego State University scientist, about those rain forests of the sea, coral reefs. Rohwer studies the criss-crossing partnerships that keep corals alive–the animals that build the reefs, the algae that harness sunlight for them, the bacteria that make compounds and recycle waste, the fish that scrape off parasitic algae, and on and on. When you consider the hundreds of microbe species that live in each reef, corals and our own bodies become surprisingly similar. Have a listen.

Podcasts: Microbe Time and Minimal Life

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:48:57 +0000

I’ve got two podcasts at Meet the Scientist to tell you about.

The first is a conversation with Nancy Moran, a Yale biologist who studies microbes that become essential to the survival of their hosts. In some cases, these symbionts lose just about all their DNA except for the genes that they use to be useful to their host–leading to the smallest genomes in nature.

The second is a conversation with Susan Golden of UCSD on the subject of time. We humans have a body clock, of course, but so do some bacteria. Why does a microbe need to know the time of day, when its lifespan can be far shorter? That would be like our body clock running a cycle of 1,000 years. Listen to find out.

Bonnie Bassler on Learning To Speak Microbe

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:55:02 +0000

Princeton biologist Bonnie Bassler studies the chemical conversations bacteria use to work together and (sometimes) to make us sick. She joined me for my latest podcast, bringing her trademark enthusiasm and rare skill at telling a good scientific story. Check it out.

And if you crave more, check out her excellent TED lecture last year.

36,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:18:51 +0000

36,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a big number. But that’s actually the number of microbes in the ocean. How on Earth do you comprehend that monstrous menagerie? In my new Meet the Scientist podcast, I talk to pioneering microbiologist Mitch Sogin about a major new project to census the sea’s microbial diversity. Check it out.

The Microscopic Gas Tank

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:44:26 +0000

Could E. coli some day take the place of deep sea oil wells? In my latest podcast I talk to James Liao of UCLA about engineering microbes to churn out high-performance fuel. Check it out.

Old Charles Darwin Had A Farm…

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:00:50 +0000

In my new podcast I take a look at Darwinian agriculture–how farmers can improve their crops by taking advantage of evolutionary history. I talk to Ford Denison of the University of Minnesota, who has done fascinating work plants such as soybeans and the bacteria that live in their roots and supply them with essential nitrogen. It’s a complicated relationship, full of cooperation, conflict, cheating, and punishment. Check it out.

A Hundred Years Without A Malaria Vaccine

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:00:52 +0000

When I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve gotten my share of jabs for hepatitis and other diseases. But for malaria, the best I could hope for was to take malaria-blocking drugs like Lariam, which gave me weird dreams at night and made me feel as if someone was tugging my hair all day.

For people who live in countries with malaria, these prophylactic drugs just aren’t practical. Given that 800,000 people a year die of malaria, why don’t we have a good vaccine for it? It’s not for lack of trying–in fact, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first attempts to make a malaria vaccine.

To understand this epic fail, I talked on my latest podcast with Irwin Sherman, a malaria expert and author of The Elusive Malaria Vaccine: Miracle or Mirage?.

Check it out.

Pneumonia’s Happy Ending?

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:38:53 +0000

In my lastest podcast, I talk to Keith Klugman of Emory University about pneumonia–how its devastation worldwide is worse than we once thought, and how vaccines are proving surprisingly effective at keeping it in check. A pneumonia vaccine may even prevent a replay of the 50 million deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Check it out.

The Infected Wilderness

Carl Zimmer — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:41:23 +0000

Did pregnancy tests help drive frogs extinct around the world? In my latest podcast, I talk to wildlife disease expert Peter Daszak about his research on how germs can drive animal species to extinctions, and jump from animals to us. Check it out.

Evolved For Sushi

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:11:27 +0000

Ed Yong, thankfully, is all over a new study on how the microbes in the guts Japanese people acquired genes from ocean germs to digest sushi. It’s yet another example of the mind-blowing science emerging from the study of our microbiome–the trillions of non-human organisms that share our body with us. For more on the microbiome, listen to my recent podcast with microbiomist (I just made that up, but it feels so right) Rob Knight.

I’d have blogged on this too, but I’m busy with something in the works for tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Your Viral World

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:49:09 +0000

Line up all the viruses on Earth end to end (go ahead, I’ll wait), and they’ll stretch over 10 million light years. In my new podcast, I talk to Curtis Suttle of the University of British Columbia about what it means to live on a virus-dominated planet.

Synthetic Biology: Ten Years Old, Ten Years On

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:45:02 +0000

E. coli that can count? In my new podcast, I talk to James Collins, an engineer-turned-biologist who helped usher in the science of synthetic biology ten years ago. We talk about the challenges of getting cells to do what you want them to, and what synthetic biology will look like in 2020. Check it out.

A Viral Indiana Jones

Carl Zimmer — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:11:50 +0000

In my newest podcast, I talk to a kind of viral Indiana Jones. Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona chases down the evolutionary origins of viruses such as HIV and the flu no matter what it takes–including getting dangerously ill in the middle of a civil war. Check it out.

Your Inner Amazon

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:03:43 +0000

One of the most mind-blowing things I learned about while writing my book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life was the incredibly diversity of microbes that call our bodies home. These microbes outnumber our cells by about ten to one, and collectively they have thousands times more genes than found in the human genome. E. coli may be the most familiar of these lodgers, but it is just small player in an inconceivably complex ecosystem on which our health depends.

So I was very excited to interview Rob Knight of the University of Colorado, a biologist who’s been co-authoring a string of stunning papers recently on the thousands of species that live on our skin, in our mouths, in our guts, and elsewhere on or in our bodies. Our conversation is now available on the latest “Meet the Scientist” podcast. We talk about how microbes help each other thrive in our bodies, the way bacteria in our guts release neurotransmitters, how microbes may regulate your weight, and much more. Check it out.

Do You Speak Antibiotic?

Carl Zimmer — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:33:23 +0000

Are antibiotics weapons of war, or a microbial language for cooperation? In my latest podcast, I talk to Julian Davies about the history and future of antibiotics, the marvelous yet mysterious creation of microbes that changed the course of medicine. Check it out.

Our Little Green Lungs

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:12:27 +0000

In my latest podcast, I speak to Penny Chisholm, an MIT microbiologist who studies the marine microbes that make a lot of the oxygen on which we survive, and who sees the ocean as a giant sea of virus-shuffled genes for harvesting sunlight. Check it out.

The Protein Universe

Carl Zimmer — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 03:59:52 +0000

How does a scientist study a million genes? In my latest podcast I talk to John Wooley, a leading figure in the new science of metagenomics. Check it out.

Pandemic in a Petri Dish

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:28:44 +0000

My latest podcast is about the ways viruses jump the species fence and give rise to new diseases. I talk to evolutionary biologist Paul Turner, who runs experiments in which viruses evolve to attack new hosts. Plus, how viruses have sex and why.

For more on Turner’s work, here’s an article I wrote about him a few years back.