From Bubbles to Brains: The Evolution of Life on Earth
Join Jennifer Joy and vocal sound FX artist Benu Muhammad as they take you on a humorous and creative journey through the evolution of life on Earth. From the first cell membranes to advanced cognition, experience entertaining soundscapes and engaging narratives that make science fun and accessible. Perfect for science enthusiasts and creative minds alike, this episode celebrates the awe-inspiring journey from simple bubbles to sophisticated brains.
Transcript
Welcome to the Jennifer Joy podcast, where science meets art.
Speaker:I am life.
Speaker:I am creativity.
Speaker:I am cooperation.
Speaker:I am intelligence.
Speaker:I am bacteria.
Speaker:I am fungi.
Speaker:I am plants.
Speaker:I am palm trees and potatoes.
Speaker:I am white clover and the honeybee pollinating it.
Speaker:I am silverback gorillas, spitting cobras, and house cats.
Speaker:I am humpback whales and horseshoe crabs.
Speaker:I am a peregrine falcon soaring through the air at 240 mph.
Speaker:An Eastern chipmunk quietly burrowing into the ground.
Speaker:I am a cheetah racing across the Namibian savannah.
Speaker:And a snail ambling through your garden.
Speaker:I am human.
Speaker:Oh, hello.
Speaker:And I am the animals humans eat.
Speaker:I am life.
Speaker:I have countless ways of being on this planet.
Speaker:I love my beautiful Earth, my home, my partner.
Speaker:We move together.
Speaker:I have changed her rocks, her water and more.
Speaker:And she, in turn, has shaped me. On this planet now so beautiful.
Speaker:I have developed cognition and consciousness.
Speaker:I think, therefore, I am. Which makes me want to know everything.
Speaker:Everything.
Speaker:Everything. I want to understand my Earth and all she is.
Speaker:I want to understand myself, life, and all the different forms that I take. Out of this
Speaker:desire to know.
Speaker:I made eyes oh, look look.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:And higher forms of consciousness.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:I said look.
Speaker:Now I even explore the stars, other planets, space, that which is beyond my planet, that
Speaker:which is the greater home.
Speaker:The dazzling, beckoning universe out of which both my Earth home and I emerged.
Speaker:There is such joy.
Speaker:There is such joy.
Speaker:Such sheer thrilling, thrilling ecstasy in knowing.
Speaker:In knowing and consciousness.
Speaker:And consciousness.
Speaker:Consciousness.
Speaker:Consciousness.
Speaker:I have faced many obstacles.
Speaker:Volcanoes that last a million years.
Speaker:Ice ages, global warming, earthquakes, asteroid impacts.
Speaker:I have gone through many major extinction periods, losing countless brothers and sisters.
Speaker:I grieve them.
Speaker:But I go on. To be life is to be both heartbroken and hopeful.
Speaker:The question at the beginning of my time remains unanswered today.
Speaker:Will I make it?
Speaker:Will I make it?
Speaker:In the end in the end in the end? In the end? In the end? I began when the Earth was 300 million years old.
Speaker:A baby, a cranky baby.
Speaker:You wouldn't recognize that earth.
Speaker:It was a tumultuous place of boiling magma, chemical oceans fizzing furiously in the acid
Speaker:rain.
Speaker:I don't remember much about that time, except that in certain places, I had the one thing
Speaker:I needed to get started. Bubbles.
Speaker:In warm places, hydrogen, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, and oxygen mixed and
Speaker:mingled, joining together gurgling and surging until bubbles formed over and over again.
Speaker:For a hundred million years, those bubbles arose and popped and changed and re-formed and
Speaker:developed.
Speaker:Some of them must have had stronger membranes.
Speaker:I think those eventually became my first cell membranes.
Speaker:All life has cells, after all, and a membrane is the first requirement for a cell.
Speaker:What came next?
Speaker:To be honest, I don't know.
Speaker:I don't really know how I went from bubbles to full fledged life in that wild chemical
Speaker:soup.
Speaker:Do you remember how you went from embryo to baby?
Speaker:All I know is that because of bubbles, I had what I needed.
Speaker:A membrane enclosing
Speaker:A space where metabolic processes could take place.
Speaker:From there, I started creating. Eureka!
Speaker:First, I am a big fan of repetition.
Speaker:Repetition.
Speaker:I really, really like to repeat myself.
Speaker:Really really really like to repeat myself repeat myself, repeat myself.
Speaker:Once I had a design that worked.
Speaker:I wanted to be able to make it again and again and again and again.
Speaker:So I invented DNA, which encoded the information of who and what I was, and RNA, which
Speaker:triggered the download of that information.
Speaker:Download complete.
Speaker:I could now make other cells that looked like me.
Speaker:The Clone Wars.
Speaker:Which is great, because I am really, really good looking.
Speaker:Also, I made sure my membrane was able to receive energy and matter that I needed.
Speaker:And release energy and matter that I didn't need.
Speaker:In other words, I invented eating and pooping.
Speaker:You're welcome.
Speaker:Lastly, I invented autopoiesis.
Speaker:An ability to make and remake myself as needed.
Speaker:I was my own personal handyman.
Speaker:I got my wrench.
Speaker:I got my toolbox.
Speaker:Well, or woman.
Speaker:I got my Bunson burner, too.
Speaker:Well, cell handy, cell.
Speaker:Hello.
Speaker:It took me 100 million years to accomplish all this.
Speaker:But on this tumultuous and unstable planet, I had to have a structure that could be
Speaker:maintained.
Speaker:And it has.
Speaker:So far, I have survived.
Speaker:At first I was afraid.
Speaker:I was petrified.
Speaker:But it hasn't been easy.
Speaker:And it's unclear whether I'll make it in the end.
Speaker:Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker:I'm Jennifer Joy.
Speaker:You can find me at jenniferjoyonline.com.
Speaker:And that's where you'll find more podcasts where science meets art.
