Ep 7 - The Great Oxygenation Event

Any thoughts? Text me!Oxygen — the thing keeping you alive right now — was once a toxic waste product that triggered the first mass extinction in Earth's history. In this episode we're talking about the Great Oxygenation Event: the day cyanobacteria accidentally poisoned the planet, possibly froze it solid, and somehow set the stage for everything that came after. Including you.We cover why early Earth had basically no oxygen, how a tiny bacterium changed everything by figuring out photosynthesis, why oxygen was a death sentence for most life at the time, and how the survivors didn't just cope with this new toxic world — they figured out how to weaponize it.Plus: why you are technically on fire right now, what free radicals are actually doing inside your body, why aging might just be the damage winning, and a February 2026 paper out of Cambridge that just made the RNA World hypothesis a whole lot more likely.It's a lot. But so was the apocalypse.From Cells to Us... How?! is the podcast where we figure out how life went from a single cell to complex creatures like us — using analogies, humor, and the occasional Bond villain reference.Episode includes: The Great Oxygenation Event, cyanobacteria, Banded Iron Formations, Snowball Earth, aerobic respiration, ATP, free radicals, oxidative stress, antioxidants, and QT45.