Big animals evolve to be small on islands, while tiny ones get large. The dodo, for example, was a massive pigeon, while Sicily used to be home to miniature elephants. Why does this pattern emerge? Tim and Syma talk to Tim’s wife, Sonya Clegg, about her career exploring oceanic islands in search of odd birds in an attempt to explain why evolution works like this.

Tim and Syma talk to Isabel Smallegange who is interested in tiny little eight-legged animals called mites. Why would anyone study these things and what can they tell us about how the world works?Could they even have agency?These little animals are more fascinating than you might imagine, and Isabel does an amazing job in bringing their world to life.Isabel's Website: https://isabelsmallegange.com/If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.comAdvertising via podcasts is a cost efficient way of reaching a wider market.

Your heart will beat between 2.5 and 3 billion times over the course of our life, and many of us will become ill, and potentially die, from heart disease. Our hearts are not only critical to each of us but have also played a key role in cultures across the globe for centuries.

Tim and Syma talk to Robin Choudhury, a scientist trying to understand heart disease, a clinician who treats people with heart disease, and an author who has woven together our scientific, cultural and artistic understanding of the heart in a fabulous new book “The Beating Heart: The Art and Science of our Most Vital Organ”

In this episode Tim and Syma talk to Adrian Woolfson about his new book, “On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence” in which he makes the case that we can now edit genomes and will soon be able to design new species.

These could help humanity eliminate disease and feed the world.

Link to book: https://amzn.eu/d/03pbwIWp

If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.com
Advertising via podcasts is a cost efficient way of reaching a wider market.

Badly behaving billionaires can spark scandals that help democracy thrive!

Tim and Syma talk to Pepper Culpepper about his new book in which he argues that corporate scandals might just save democracy.

Learn about how political science works, and how misbehaving billionaires can generate a backlash from the public with profound political consequences.

Link to Peppers book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Billionaire-Backlash-Corporate-Scandal-Democracy/dp/1399424106

If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.com
Advertising via podcasts is a cost efficient way of reaching a wider market.

Happy Christmas everybody! Syma and Tim discuss the science behind Christmas. From too much port to the way that reindeer survive in the cold, this is an episode not to miss.

If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.com
Advertising via podcasts is a cost efficient way of reaching a wider market.

Tim and Syma chat with Jamie Woodward, Professor of Physical Geography, at the University of Manchester about the history of our home planet.

They cover 4.5 billion in 30 minutes, discussing snowball earths, the emergence of life, how earth shaped and vice versa, and a little on what the future might hold.

Jamie’s new book “A little history of the earth” is published by Yale and is available from all good booksellers. And Amazon.
https://amzn.eu/d/6EttzXL

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Tim and Syma chat with Henry Gee about his two most recent books “The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why our Species is on the Edge of Extinction” and “A (Very) Short History of Life On Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Chapters”. We learn about giant lizards, the dinosaurs they evolved to become, and how we came to be, before discussing how it all might end. Will be it next week or thousands of years?
Listen to find out.

If you are a business and would like to take advantage and leverage the power of the fast growing podcast ad stream market, and in particular sponsoring 'Science Of The Times', please drop us a line - streamingspirespodcasts@gmail.com
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