Paul Sutter explores the origins of life, and DNA versus RNA

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link)

After spending three episodes looking to the heavens—first at dark matter, then Mars, then black holes—our intrepid host Paul Sutter now turns his gaze to a more terrestrial topic: Why are we here?

And I don't mean in a Nietzschean sense (and if it's Nietzschean discussions you want, Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson has you covered in his upcoming book on Nietzsche!)—Paul's question is much more physical. Why are we here, specifically—we complex, multicellular sentient beings made of gobs and gobs of proteins and self-replicating DNA? Why is life a thing? How, billions of years ago, did Earth go from a planet devoid of life to a planet festooned with it?