#123 – Manolis Kellis: Origin of Life, Humans, Ideas, Suffering, and Happiness

Manolis Kellis is a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group.

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00– Introduction
06:20– Epigenome
10:28– Evolution
15:26– Neanderthals
27:15– Origin of life on Earth
43:44– Life is a fight against physics
49:56– Life as a set of transformations
51:35– Time scales
1:00:31– Transformations of ideas in human civilization
1:05:19– Life is more than a rat race
1:13:18– Life sucks sometimes and that’s okay
1:30:16– Getting older
1:36:21– The best of MIT
1:49:01– Poem 1: The Snow
2:01:52– Love
2:06:16– Poem 2: The Tide Waters