Biology Baubles

‘Feminist’ Bacteria

Often times I sit back and reflect on the late-stage capitalist world we are living in. The environment! The child labour! The lack of free handouts for lazy podcasters! In this episode, I am joined by Professor Adam Chippendale to talk about some surprising subjects of eons of persecution: Mitochondria, as well as their radically feminist “kill-all-men” cousins, the bacteria Wolbachia. Disclaimer! We at Biology Baubles (by ‘we’ I mean Thor, Thor writes this and does everything), as well as our guests fully understand that feminism is a movement about equality, not creating a utopian world of ecologically woke Amazon warriors- as nice as that would be.

A Crash Course in Environmental Racism

Since the George Floyd protests and the movement for self-education, many horrific aspects of society were revealed to those willing to look. Today, Thor van Walsum is joined by Roshni Desai to talk about the fundamentals of one of the less visible forms taken by society’s deep set discrimination- environmental racism and environmental racialization.

Turnt Goldfish

Life. Air. Breath. Oxygen. They seem to go hand in hand- as, indeed, we have assumed for millenia-  but, as we all know, don’t. Why is that, and what adaptations do the creatures that creep the earth have to accommodate anoxic life? The answer will take your breath away. Truck yeah.

Valentine’s (G)ay

Any time you experience nature, be it through the lens of a nature documentary or a guided fungus walk, you are experiencing the world as it is translated to you by our human understanding. In this episode we discuss this phenomenon with regards to human and animal sexuality, as well as the moral, philosophical, and sociopolitical meanings therein. In other words, gay animals.

Gasping Glass

Take a breath. Take another. Take as many as you like, but the truth of where what you’ve breathing has been is just the tip of this episode’s iceberg as we explore the deep and diverse world of diatoms.