Jul 30, 2015
Shrink
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?
Join Jad and Robert 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.
