What Is Life? #1: What Do We Mean When We Ask, “What Is Life?”

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, via RSS, etc.) For the first episode, I spoke to the philosopher Carlos Mariscal.

Mariscal, a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, collaborates with evolutionary biologists and astrobiologists to explore what it means to be alive. When we ask what is life, Mariscal suggests, we may be asking the wrong question.

Update: If you’d like to learn more about scientists exploring the borderlands between the living and nonliving worlds, check out my new book Life’s Edge: The Search For What It Means To Be Alive.

Links:
Carlos Mariscal at UNLV.
“Life and Only Life: A Radical Alternative to Life Definitionism.” Synthese 2018. You can grab this paper, and others, on Mariscal’s research page.

If you enjoyed this episode, listen to Episode 2 or check out all eight episodes on the main podcast page. And please spread the word however you can, such as reviewing it on Apple and elsewhere!

What Is Life? was recorded in front of a live audience at Caveat in New York and is supported by a grant from Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative. Artwork by Caryn Audenried.