Our Immune Systems Are Full of Ancient Weapons

About this episode

The episode discusses how ancient battles between bacteria and viruses have shaped the evolution of our immune system.

Billions of years ago, battles between bacteria and viruses wrote the rulebook for how hosts and pathogens behave. Today, our immune system follows suit. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Viviane Callier about how recent discoveries could shape how we think about the evolution of immunity. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine. Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.

People in this episode

Host: Samir Patel

Guest: Viviane Callier

Topics covered

• immune system
• evolution
• pathogens
• bacteria
• viruses
• science

Keywords

• immune system
• evolution
• pathogens
• bacteria
• viruses
• Quanta Magazine

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Quanta Magazine

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