Jeremy's Iron

It took 4 billion years for the first cells to evolve into the talking, walking, podcast-making, online shitposting, creative and utterly insane humans that now populate the earth. BUT! Is that ACTUALLY enough time for Darwin’s theory of incremental mutation to work its slow brand of magic??? A whole lot of smart people reckon it’s not. Justin and Justin try to find out whether they have a point! Spoiler alert: they don’t. Justin Z also talks about his own recently published research looking at the health and educational deficit faced by twins. PLUS!< * What makes Malcolm Gladwell so delightful? * Survival-based selection vs Sexual selection * Was the primordial soup more of a bisque or a gumbo? REFERENCES Zeltzer, J. , Shand, A. W., Kelly, P. , Hopper, J. L., Scurrah, K. J. and Nassar, N. (2019), Early birth is a key factor in educational disadvantage of twins: a data linkage study. Acta Paediatr. Caitlin E. et al (2019) Prebiotic amino acids bind to and stabilize prebiotic fatty acid membranes. PNAS A