S08:E02, “Venomous” Edition, with Christie Wilcox (video)

Posted by jnshaumeyer on 31 August 2016

Streamed live on 24 August 2016.

There are a lot of venomous creatures on Earth, way more species than most of us realize, and they’ve invented an amazing and vast array of venoms and technique for injecting it into their enemies, and their dinners. Still, scientists are learning interesting and wondrous things from venomous animals, and also using their knowledge to create new drugs that work in marvelous ways.

In this episode we talked about all these things with Christie Wilcox, author of Venomous : How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry and enthusiastic scientist who studies venomous creatures. We even learned what “sodium channels” are, what they have to do with nerve cells and pain, and how they can be blocked. It was another fascinating hour that went by much too quickly.

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