Science Vs is a podcast by Wendy Zukerman that takes a wide assortment of questions from a scientific point of view. They have recently published an episode all about the real-life technology behind Jurassic Park and if we could really bring dinosaurs back from the dead. Experts interviewed are Jack Horner, a paleontologist who advised on the movie, and his past fossil research partner Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University. If you are curious about the headlines talking about bringing wooly mammoths back to life then you’ll want to listen to this.
The recent podcast is very interesting. There’s a discussion about how chickens have retained dinosaur-like features in their DNA and how we can manipulate them to look more like their ancient ancestors. Zuckerman does an extraordinary job at breaking things down into easy to understand language to help those of us without science degrees be able to understand the topic. The most exciting part of the episode for me was the closing segment in which they explain how DNA manipulation can be used to help threatened animals get some more genetic diversity to try to help them remain for a long time.
You can listen to it on Spotify.