Part 1 of Soup to Us starts before anything was alive. First, seven answers people give to where life came from, from special creation and intelligent design to panspermia, simulations, and unguided chemistry, each labeled as testable science, philosophy, or speculation. Then what the chemistry shows, and what it doesn't: Miller's flask, meteorites, surface pools and deep-sea vents, the RNA world and its rivals, and why nobody agrees on what "alive" means. Then the last universal common ancestor, genes that move sideways between bacteria, one cell moving in permanently inside another, and many cells, more than once.

Full script and sources: https://boringhistorypodcast.com/episodes/soup-to-us/

Part 2 of Soup to Us is about the Cambrian explosion, and how explosive it really was. First, the sea before the bang: Mistaken Point, Dickinsonia and its chemical clue, Kimberella, and things already digging. Then the record itself: small shells, trilobites, Chengjiang, Walcott and the Burgess Shale, and Hallucigenia, which had to be turned over before it made sense. Then how sudden it was, which is about twenty million years, with edges, and what molecular clocks can and cannot say. Last, the proposed causes, from oxygen and predators to eyes and the gene networks that build bodies, and the argument between Stephen Meyer and Charles Marshall over whether rewiring those networks is enough.

Full script: https://boringhistorypodcast.com/episodes/soup-to-us-part-2/