What is Life?

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All we can ever hope for, because we're never going to build that time machine, is to have an intellectual framework. We go from a sterile, inorganic planet to living cells as we know them. And so if you, if you come up with a, you know, it's a long hypothesis. Nobody in the field would agree on the order in which these things happened. It feels like there's a direction to the thing. They seem to be building something always better and improving. Maybe it's not to perception.

Nick Lane is a biochemist at UCL and author of Transformer, The Vital Question, and many other amazing books on biology, chemistry, and life. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:45) – Origin of life
(19:31) – Panspermia
(25:05) – What is life?
(38:20) – Photosynthesis
(41:55) – Prokaryotic vs eukaryotic cells
(51:56) – Sex
(59:39) – DNA
(1:06:51) – Violence
(1:17:25) – Human evolution
(1:23:21) – Neanderthals
(1:26:53) – Sensory inputs
(1:37:43) – Consciousness
(2:09:17) – AI and biology
(2:38:36) – Evolution
(2:59:07) – Fermi paradox
(3:12:27) – Cities
(3:20:14) – Depression
(3:22:50) – Writing
(3:30:49) – Advice for young people
(3:37:57) – Earth