2023-11-29
42 分钟Brian and Robin are joined by palaeontologist Dr Susie Maidment, evolutionary biologist Dr Tori Herridge and comedian Dave Gorman to pitch giant creatures against tiny creatures in their bid to avoid extinction. They explore the scale of life and ask why some organisms are large and some small and what the optimum size for successful survival is. From the prokaryotic cell to the grandest dinosaur, how does the modern synthesis explain the huge variation in scale, form and function? What are the advantages and disadvantages to being huge like the dinosaurs, or was it their size that really did them in, in the end? New episodes released Wednesdays. If you're in the UK, listen to the newest episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyF Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
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Hello, I'm Brian Cox.
And I'm Robin Ince.
Welcome to the infinite Monkey Cage.
Now, today we are exploring the scale of life.
Why are some organisms large and some small?
From the prokaryotic cell to the grandest dinosaur?
How does the modern synthesis explain to the observed variation in scale, form and function?
Eloquently put, and I presume that everyone who ever listens to this knows that we spend most of our time, you know, exploring deep questions and carefully formulating our prose to transfer these ideas to listeners with economy and precision not dissimilar to the ideas of the Darwin paradigm.
It didn't go like that, did it?
We've actually spent the whole afternoon after about five minutes of, you know, doing some research, talking about, why do big things always talk like this if you have a big elephant?
And all the little things always talk like.