Krebs Cycle: Why It Matters - Prof Nick Lane

The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates Inside Science Series

Understanding the Krebs Cycle

Welcome to The Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates series on radio and podcast. I’m Paul Vogelzang, and as part of our Inside Science interview series with Smithsonian Associates, our guest today is author and scientist Nick Lane. Nick Lane will be appearing at the Smithsonian Associates and you can check out more details in our show notes today.

Generations of students have learned how the Krebs cycle generates the building blocks of life and fuels the furnace of respiration. Biochemist Nick Lane is among the vanguard of researchers who ask how this complex, contradictory pathway of creation, destruction, and renewal within our cells could help us understand questions from the origins of life to the devastation of cancer.

In an animated conversation with us today, Nick Lane guides an exploration through the “conflicted merry-go-round of energy and matter” that is the Krebs cycle. Along the way, he recounts the scientific detective work that discovered this process while deconstructing textbook views about metabolism.

Nick Lane will tell us about how he traces the primacy of the Krebs cycle—and its reverse—from deep-sea hydrothermal vents and the “Cambrian Explosion” to the individual, yet universal, experience of aging. By distilling and humanizing complex research, Lane offers an essential overview for anyone fascinated by biology’s great mysteries. What this means to our lives, our death, disease, and the origin of life…I’ll let Nick Lane tell you himself, but first, let’s hear Nick Lane read a passage from his new book, ‘Transformer.

That of course, is our guest today, Prof Nick Lane reading from his new book ‘Transformer’

Please join me in welcoming to The Not Old Better Show on radio and podcast author, scientist, and Smithsonian Associate, Nick Lane.

My thanks to author and scientist Nick Lane for his time and patience with me and our audience about the Krebs Cycle. Nick Lane will be appearing at the Smithsonian Associates and you can check out more details in our show notes today.

Talk About Better™ The Not Old Better Show on Radio & Podcast!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Formats And Approaches | Podcraft S10E04