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Sleeping beauties: the mystery of dormant innovations in nature and culture (Ep 104)
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Where does biological innovation come from? Why do some innovations wait millions of years for their spotlight?
Life must constantly innovate for evolution to occur, but many forms of biological innovation often lie dormant, sometimes for millions of years. In this episode, we speak to Andreas Wagner about his recent book, Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture. Andreas is a professor at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. In the book, Andreas explains how novel traits sometimes have to wait until the environment changes to become useful, leading to speciation or offering novel solutions to ecological problems. These long fuses are also evident in our own history, namely the life-changing technologies that we invent but don’t fully exploit until the right social or economic context arises.
Cover art by Keating Shahmehri
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bigbiology.substack.com
159 episodi
Fetch error
Hmmm there seems to be a problem fetching this series right now. Last successful fetch was on September 26, 2024 03:21 ()
What now? This series will be checked again in the next day. If you believe it should be working, please verify the publisher's feed link below is valid and includes actual episode links. You can contact support to request the feed be immediately fetched.
Manage episode 366187644 series 3385605
Where does biological innovation come from? Why do some innovations wait millions of years for their spotlight?
Life must constantly innovate for evolution to occur, but many forms of biological innovation often lie dormant, sometimes for millions of years. In this episode, we speak to Andreas Wagner about his recent book, Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture. Andreas is a professor at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. In the book, Andreas explains how novel traits sometimes have to wait until the environment changes to become useful, leading to speciation or offering novel solutions to ecological problems. These long fuses are also evident in our own history, namely the life-changing technologies that we invent but don’t fully exploit until the right social or economic context arises.
Cover art by Keating Shahmehri
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bigbiology.substack.com
159 episodi
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