Episodes List

Ep.1 How our deadliest parasite turned to the dark side

Air Date: 2022-01-11

Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa, a microscopic parasite made a huge leap. With a little help from a mosquito, it left its animal host - probably a gorilla - and found its way to a new host: us.

Ep.2 Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)

Air Date: 2022-01-19

The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates, including us - an evolutionary consequence of the danger snakes have posed to us over millions of years.

Ep.3 How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs

Air Date: 2022-01-27

We often think of dinosaurs as either preying on other dinos or mammals, or as plant-eaters -- but in ecosystems today, those aren’t the only two options. So why would we expect dinosaurs to have only been carnivores or herbivores, with the occasional omnivore thrown in the mix?

Ep.4 How Vertebrates Got Teeth... And Lost Them Again

Air Date: 2022-02-08

As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?

Ep.5 How Horses Went From Food To Friends

Air Date: 2022-02-16

Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it turns out, the history of humans and horses has been a pretty wild ride.

Ep.6 Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It's a Long Story)

Air Date: 2022-02-23

Today, all mammals from humans to bats have five fingers or fewer. Yes, even whales, whose finger bones are hidden in their fins. Birds have four or fewer and amphibians get the best of both worlds, often having four digits on their “hands” and five on their “feet.” But no species of vertebrates have more than five digits, let alone eight!

Ep.7 Sharks nearly went extinct 19 million years ago #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-02

There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?

Ep.8 Dire wolves aren’t wolves at all #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-03

Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.

Ep.9 Could humans survive if they traveled back in time 3 billion years? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-04

Could humans survive during the Precambrian?

Ep.10 Some trees are more closely related to broccoli than to other trees #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-07

Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.

Ep.11 Human knees are the worst and we have evolution to thank for that #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-08

Why do human knees suck?

Ep.12 A crater in Turkmenistan has been on fire for about 50 years #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-10

And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?

Ep.13 When a Giant Pterosaur Ruled the European Islands

Air Date: 2022-03-15

The ecological niche of apex predators was empty on Hateg Island, waiting to be occupied by something large, mobile, and powerful enough to fill it.

Ep.14 Only one human has been excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-17

Ep.15 Could humans survive a giant space rock colliding with Earth 66 million years ago? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-18

Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?

Ep.16 The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal

Air Date: 2022-03-22

A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years of taking to the water - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.

Ep.17 The Tasmanian tiger is definitely extinct. So why do people keep report sightings of them? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-25

Thylacines are definitely extinct!

Ep.18 The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last

Air Date: 2022-03-29

Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.

Ep.19 Who forged one of the most famous fake fossils of all time? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-03-31

Ep.20 After this bird went extinct the first time, evolution just hit replay #shorts

Air Date: 2022-04-04

The bird that evolved twice!

Ep.21 Someone lost the only fossil from what might’ve been the biggest dinosaur ever #shorts

Air Date: 2022-04-05

Ep.22 Would you have survived the biggest mass extinction of all time? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-04-06

Ep.23 An ancient insect trapped in amber has a parasitic mushroom erupting out of it? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-04-08

I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks

Ep.24 How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple

Air Date: 2022-04-13

We tend to think that evolution only goes in one direction— toward getting bigger and more advanced. But that’s not always the case. This tiny, simple animal, the Myxozoans, (yes, animal!) evolved from something bigger and more complex.

Ep.25 We know a lot about dinosaurs but...what was the first dinosaur? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-04-14

Ep.26 Why Sour May Be The Oldest Taste

Air Date: 2022-04-20

While sour taste's original purpose was to warn vertebrates of danger, in a few animal groups, including us, its role has reversed. The taste of danger became something it was dangerous for us to avoid.

Ep.27 The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body

Air Date: 2022-04-27

Only a handful of Denisovan fossils have been identified. In the absence of actual body fossils, it’s impossible for us to reconstruct their morphology, right?

Ep.28 Are there dinosaur fossils in space? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-05-02

Ep.29 Why don’t rabbits get really, really big? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-05-03

Ep.30 An extinct human species was discovered deep within a cave system #shorts

Air Date: 2022-05-04

Ep.31 When Ants Domesticated Fungi

Air Date: 2022-05-10

While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 million years. So when, and how, and why did ants start … farming?

Ep.32 The Curious Case of the Cave Lion

Air Date: 2022-05-17

A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?

Ep.33 Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?

Air Date: 2022-05-26

Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.

Ep.34 Why did so many predators die at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-05-27

There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.

Ep.35 What is the most successful human species? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-05-31

Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?

Ep.36 Sharks have antibacterial skin. Can we use that to save lives? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-06-01

Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.

Ep.37 This Ice Age pup's last meal was a woolly rhino #shorts

Air Date: 2022-06-02

What was this ancient pup’s last meal?

Ep.38 What came first, the sabertooth or the cat? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-06-03

The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal

Ep.39 How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)

Air Date: 2022-06-08

In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.

Ep.40 Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years

Air Date: 2022-06-15

Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the organism itself. So… what could it be?

Ep.41 Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not

Air Date: 2022-06-29

In 2003, microbiologists made a huge discovery. One that would force us to reconsider a lot of what we thought we knew about the evolution of microbial life: giant viruses.

Ep.42 This new giant bacterium is visible to the naked eye #shorts

Air Date: 2022-07-06

Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!

Ep.43 Another Spinosaurus study, another opportunity to debate if Spinosaurus was aquatic #shorts

Air Date: 2022-07-07

Spinosaurus had dense bones!

Ep.44 There were dinosaurs with basically no arms at all, just hands! #shorts

Air Date: 2022-07-08

Guemesia: a new no-arm dino

Ep.45 When Giant Millipedes Reigned

Air Date: 2022-07-13

This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??

Ep.46 How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles

Air Date: 2022-07-21

Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still visible - and even striking - if you know where and how to look for it.

Ep.47 Why Does Caffeine Exist?

Air Date: 2022-07-28

Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?

Ep.48 This was the biggest earthquake humans ever experienced #shorts

Air Date: 2022-08-03

One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.

Ep.49 Someone stole two of the most important documents in the history of science #shorts

Air Date: 2022-08-03

We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.

Ep.50 You can thank evolution for flesh-eating bees #shorts

Air Date: 2022-08-05

Flesh-eating bees exist!

Ep.51 This is one of the oldest art workshops ever discovered! #shorts

Air Date: 2022-08-05

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop

Ep.52 Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?

Air Date: 2022-08-11

There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.

Ep.53 How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked

Air Date: 2022-08-18

Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?

Ep.54 The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies

Air Date: 2022-08-23

This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…

Ep.55 Did you know that fossils can get sick? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-08-31

Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease

Ep.56 A supervolcano in Idaho once caused a disaster 900 miles away. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-08

Disaster in the great plains!

Ep.57 A bunch of very important fossils disappeared during WWII. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-09

80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.

Ep.58 Did this animal poop cubes? Giant cubes? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-13

Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.

Ep.59 Are wisdom teeth a problem for us because of evolution? Or because of our development? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-14

Wisdom teeth can be such a pain

Ep.60 Our extinct relative was an ancient leopard’s lunch. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-16

Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard

Ep.61 When did we start wearing clothes? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-17

We didn’t always wear clothes!

Ep.62 Did Megalodon go after whale faces specifically? #shorts

Air Date: 2022-09-22

Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board

Ep.63 Where Did Water Come From?

Air Date: 2022-09-27

Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We think our water came from a few unlikely sources: meteorites, space dust, and even the sun.

Ep.64 Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Life On Land

Air Date: 2022-10-04

Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.

Ep.65 Imagine a cat's mouth fully covering up their saber teeth. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-10-05

We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked

Ep.66 Darwin correctly predicted an animal existed without ever seeing it. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-10-07

Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.

Ep.67 Neandertals weren’t dumb cavemen. In lots of ways, they were just like us. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-10-10

Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends

Ep.68 Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you. #shorts

Air Date: 2022-10-14

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.