Biology

As The Joy of Why podcast returns for a second season, producer Polly Stryker and host Steven Strogatz invite listeners to join them and their brilliant new guests on another voyage of discovery.

The critical brain hypothesis suggests that neural networks do their best work when connections are not too weak or too strong.

Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.

Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant's bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life.

Nikta Fakhri is adapting and extending concepts from physics to describe how tiny biological components give rise to living organisms.

Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species.

A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth.

Momentum for new ideas in Alzheimer’s research joined advances in neuroscience, developmental biology and origin-of-life studies to make 2022 a memorable year of biological insights.

The ecologist Holly Moeller studies microorganisms that expand their range by absorbing organelles and gaining new metabolic talents from their prey.