Charles Kazilek (a.k.a. Dr. Biology) - School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
48 episodes listed below
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You have been reading about the biologists behind the Ask A Biologist website. Now you can listen to them on our popular biology podcast show. Dr. Biology has been speaking with many biologists who are discovering new worlds and exploring new frontiers in biology. There are over 100 episodes and we continue to add more interviews. Each show includes a full written transcript and content log. But wait, there's more. Many episodes also have companion content including stories, games, and activities that are available on the Ask A Biologist website to help educators integrate content from each show into the classroom...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Ask A Biologist turns direct interviews and vivid field examples into clear accounts of how biological research is actually done.
Dr. Biology builds each conversation around a concrete biological puzzle, then lets a working scientist explain how the evidence comes together.
A giraffe gets iced water, and your next biology rabbit hole has begun.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded PlayNext review of wildlife medicine, alligator fieldwork, and early winter brumation research in Texas.
Wildlife medicine turns into a road job in this PlayNext review of Sarah Wyckoff's work with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. As one of two veterinarians covering animals across Texas, she is framed less as a clinic-bound specialist than as a field operator, hauling…
A personal Alzheimer's story opens into a clear, humane guide to glial cells, dementia figures, and Lewy body symptoms.
A personal family history gives the episode its emotional center: the host traces his mother's Alzheimer's from nearby independence to living in his home, and later to memory care.
A clothesline and a donut diet make locust science vivid without losing sight of the stakes.
Locusts can seem like background noise until they gather in numbers large enough to darken the sky. This single episode keeps that transformation in view, using it to explain why swarms become so damaging while also giving the insects their place in a wider ecosystem. Dr.
A coffee-shop bot skit leads into a clear look at how AI reshapes trust, hiring, and evidence.
Artificial intelligence arrives at Ask a Biologist through a coffee-shop exchange between two bots, then opens into the messier human questions behind machine fluency. Dr.
A measured look at how RNA, evolution, and disease connect.
Ask A Biologist treats DNA as the information store and RNA as the work that carries those instructions forward, and Brandon Obunu fits that frame well as a computational biologist and writer moving between ecology, evolutionary biology, and disease.
Animal play, enrichment, and the careful work behind a strong zoo habitat.
Animal play is treated as a real force in behavior, not a curiosity. The discussion links it to skill building, fitness, stress relief, and cognitive growth, while widening the frame to primates, birds, cetaceans, reptiles, and insects.
A wide-ranging conversation about evolution, climate change, and why scientific credibility depends on communication.
Ask a Biologist uses a talk about evolution to open onto science communication, filmmaking, and climate change. Dr. Biology and Randy Olson move from Darwin's anniversary year into the harder work of explaining science, and Olson's path from marine biologist to filmmaker gives…
A clear, approachable look at metabolism, then a practical discussion of sleep loss.
Ask A Biologist makes the metabolome easier to grasp by leaning on a workshop-and-tools analogy, which keeps the idea concrete while showing how metabolites help with energy, cell growth, and waste removal.
Science education between theory and classroom reality.
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Sarah Wyckoff, a wildlife veterinarian at Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and an alumna of Arizona State University, describes work that ranges from bighorn sheep and Texas horned lizards to alligators.
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This episode introduces a conversation with entomologist Robert Page about his 40-year research on honeybees, including their biology and his scientific career.
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Ask a Biologist opens on Cayo Santiago, the Island of the Monkeys.
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Ask A Biologist Podcast talks with Rick Overson and Mira Ward-Reese of Arizona State University’s Global Locust Initiative about why locusts are a special grasshopper form, not a separate insect, and how some species shift from solitary to gregarious swarms.
Ask A Biologist returns to coral reefs with Lisa Roger, who studies how environmental change shapes corals, anemones, and upside-down jellyfish.