PBS Space Time

The Physics of Life (ft. It's Okay to be Smart & PBS Eons!)

October 1, 2026·18 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE It's OK to be Smart - Where Did Life Come From? https://youtu.be/_uAJY1mqtw4 Eons - What Was the Ancestor of Everything? https://youtu.be/pk213XSSktQ Our universe is prone to increasing disorder and chaos. So how did it generate the extreme complexity we see in life? Actually, the laws of physics themselves may demand it. You can further support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Get your own Space Time t­-shirt at http://bit.ly/1QlzoBi Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Facebook: facebook.com/pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/pbsspacetime Help translate our videos! https://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?tab=2&c=UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g Previous Episode: The Unruh Effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cj6oiFDEXc How did life begin? We can seek the answer in the chemistry of the early earth, or in the biology of the first cell. In fact our friends at PBS Eons and It’s OK to be Smart will do just that in companion videos to this one. But we all know that chemistry and biology are just applied physics. So can we approach the question of the origin and the very nature of life from the point of view of physics? We’re sure going to try. Hosted and written by Matt O'Dowd Produced by Rusty Ward Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow and Linda Huang Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Special thanks to our Patreon Big Bang, Quasar and Hypernova Supporters: Big Bang CoolAsCats David Nicklas Anton Lifshits Joey Redner Quasar Tambe Barsbay Mayank M. Mehrota Mars Yentur Mark Rosenthal Dean Fuqua Roman Pinchuk ColeslawPurdie Hypernova Edmund Fokschaner Matthew O’Connor Eugene Lawson Barry Hatfield Martha Hunt Joseph Salomone Chuck Zegar Jordan Young Ratfeast John Hofmann Craig Peterson Thanks to our Patreon Gamma Ray Burst Supporters: James Hughes Fabian Olesen Kris Fernet Jane Meyers James Flowers Greg Allen TJMadison Denys Ivanov Nick Virtue Alexey Eromenko Nicholas Rose Scott Gossett Mark Vasile Patrick Murray Sultan Alkhulaifi Alex Seto Michal-Peanut Karmi Erik Stein Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell J Rejc Avi Goldfinger John Pettit Florian Stinglmayr Benoit Pagé-Guitard Nathan Leniz Brandon Labonte David Crane Greg Weiss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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