About this episode
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the discovery of archaea microorganisms and their significance in the tree of life.
Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the 20th century: the archaea microorganisms. In the 1970s the American microbiologist Carl Woese (1928-2012) realised that the tiny bacteria-sized organisms he was studying were not actually bacteria but from an entirely different branch of the tree of life. It became clear that archaea, as he named them, share aspects of the cells in all plants and animals even if they often live in places where other life struggles including salty lakes, acidic pools, under the sea bed and in the gut. While aspects of what followed from Woese are still under debate, further discoveries suggest that life on Earth has been on a journey of separation and reunion: that the first cells developed into bacteria and archaea billions of years ago and that some of those later combined to form the complex cells from which we are made. With Christa Schleper Professor of Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Vienna Thorsten Allers Professor of Archaeal Genetics at the University of Nottingham And Buzz Baum Group leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list…
People in this episode
Host: Misha Glenny
Guests: Christa Schleper, Thorsten Allers, Buzz Baum
Topics covered
- archaea
- microorganisms
- Carl Woese
- evolution
- scientific discovery
Keywords
- archaea
- Carl Woese
- microbiology
- evolution
- scientific discovery
- microorganisms
- genetics
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: University of Vienna, University of Nottingham, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Books & works: One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the evolution of complex life, 'I': A Biography of the Biological Self, In Search of Cell History: The Evolution of Life's Building Blocks
More episodes of In Our Time
- The Garamantes · June 11, 2026 · 58 min
- Joseph Roth · June 4, 2026 · 55 min
- Cybernetics · May 28, 2026 · 53 min
- Indian Indentured Labour · May 21, 2026 · 52 min
- M.C. Escher · May 14, 2026 · 55 min
- Handel's Messiah · May 7, 2026 · 54 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the In Our Time podcast page.