What Is Life?

Episode 8. Kate Adamala: Can We Make Life?

Kate Adamala is a chemist at the University of Minnesota. In her Protobiology Lab, she is trying to build a synthetic cell from scratch. Protobiology Lab Adamala's TEDx talk, "Life But Not Alive"

Episode 7. Donato Giovannelli: Warm Ponds Or Hellish Vents–Where Did Life Begin?

Donato Giovannelli is an assistant professor at the University of Naples "Federico II." He travels to acid lakes and other extreme environments that are the closest thing today to what Earth was like when life began. Giovannelli's web siteGiovannelli on Twitter

Episode 6. Steven Benner: How Weird Can Life Get?

All the life we know is the same: carbon-based, with DNA for genes. (Okay, except for RNA viruses.) But Steven Benner says it doesn't have to be that way. Benner is a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. Benner at FFAME

Episode 5. Jeremy England: Why Does Life Exist?

Jeremy England is a physicist at MIT. He has developed an influential theory of life as a way for matter to dissipate energy. England's MIT lab site An article about England in Quanta

Episode 4. Caleb Scharf: How Did Life Begin?

We don't know how life got its start. But as more evidence emerges, explains astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, only a few theories are emerging as leading contenders. Scharf is the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University. calebscharf.com