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Discussion thread: Tardigradology! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-18 20:30:29
Edited:
2024-09-18 22:17:29
Imported:
2026-06

Content

This is NOT a call for questions. Tardigradology is live and ready to listen to. Discuss the episode below! I love to chime in.

Dr. Paul Bartels is wonder-filled, enthusiastic, and full of dad jokes and facts about Tardigradology (TINY SEMI-INDESTRUCTIBLE WATER BEAR MOSS PIGLET CREATURES CALLED TARDIGRADES.)

Had you heard of them before this? I'm assuming you had. What did you think? Let's talk.

Focusing my microscope,

Ol' Ward

Files

Tardigradology (TINY SEMI-INDESTRUCTIBLE WATER BEAR MOSS PIGLET CREATURES CALLED TARDIGRADES) with Dr. Paul Bartels - alie ward

Smaller than you can imagine. Potato-shaped. Mysterious. Romantic. And tough enough to survive the vacuum of space or decades of desiccation. Join professor and confirmed Tardigradologist Dr. Paul Bartels to saunter into a microscopic wonderland of bizarrely long naps, foreign genomes, moon landings

Comments

Iris Clover

Someone who is full of dad jokes is doing a podcast with dad ward?!! This will be fun

Rob Harbers

Or Tardigradology perhaps, like your title doesn't say...😄

GreenVHSTape

I had no idea tardigrades are so diverse! Absolutely love all the different ways they reproduce 😆

Koda

It’s just a typo on Patreon, not anywhere else.

Margaret Downs

Hearing him talk about trehalose and the heat shock and intrinsically disordered proteins made my little biochemist heart SING!!

Jenny Lowe Rhodes

Was so excited to hear the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory mentioned, I have contributed to it through iNaturalist!

Jacintha Jaa

Do scientists who study water bears know much about their evolution? Are they found in every environment and continent on earth? Could water bears be from outside earth?

Alie Ward

Fixed it. Don't make fun of your dad.

Alie Ward

Not a call for questions! The episode is up and ready to be listened to! Please do enjoy <3

Alie Ward

you're about to know them even bettah

Alie Ward

fourteen hundred, can you even?

Rob Harbers

Sorry Alie, my nerdy brain that can't help but spot a typo couldn't restrain itself!

Mykenzie King

Tardigrades was one of those things I always wanted to look up but could never spell well enough for google to know wtf I was trying to say.

Dylan V

When I saw this episodes topic, I'll be honest I wasn't that enthused. I thought the click bait articles and pop culture references of the last 10 years had taught me all I needed to know about tardigrades. Then, 5 minutes into the episode, Dr. Bartles tells me there are over 1,400 species and I immediately remembered that I know nothing about anything. The rest of the episode was awesome and dispelled some of the things those click bait articles 'taught' me. What a fantastic show, this is why I love Ologies!

Emily Weiss

I could not stop thinking about the number of species that have yet to be discovered…and that led me to think how fun it would be to organize an Ologies group to help in the discovery. Who is in?!

Darren Bush

I went to the Microbe Museum in Amsterdam a few years ago with my adult daughter science teacher. They have a giant tardigrade in the lobby where you can sit it its lap and take a picture. It was my Christmas card photo. Long live tardigrades! Not that they need any luck...

Alie Ward

Right?? I thought I knew. We all thought we knew. Paul knew.

Yuri

Alie, I looked at the episode page but I didn't see this, but do you have any links to accurate pictures of tardigrades? Is it there and I missed it? I did a search but I can't tell what's correct and what's not. Also, 10 minutes in and this is officially my most favorite episode ever!

Emily Weiss

I think we have the power to make it happen! Crowd sourcing across Ologists and Ologists… let’s figure it out!

Remnant Muse (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-06 05:00 Fan-freaking-tastic episode. I was super thrilled to listen, and enjoyed it a lot ❤️ Short, tiny, funny but maybe tmi story... I'm 36 weeks pregnant, had an appointment yesterday. My only complaints right now involve varicose veins, and some uh... issues... that require more fiber and water, and some medicated pads. I went to the store this morning to follow my lovely midwife's recommendations on products. Where this episode stopped and picked back up upon my return to the car happened to be during the explanation of what Paul's favorite tardigrade was. I've never felt so seen by a microscopic lifeform before. And it made me feel better about myself... because if a tardigrade with balloons coming out of his rear can be someone's favorite... Maybe I'm still my husband's favorite.
2024-09-19 18:44

Sebastienne Grant

I was at Warren Wilson College many years ago as a student while Dr, Bartles was teaching there. I heard about (and fell immediately in love with) tardigrades from him, and have loved them ever since. Many a late-night rabbit hole adventures. So fun to have him resurface on my all time favorite podcast!

Patricia Evans

This was just an awesome episode. As you said: a classic, favorite!

Hannah nolen

Wow! What an incredible episode, I so wish I had taken a class with him when I went to warren Wilson!

Kathleen C

What a great episode! I thought I knew at least one or two things about tardigrades but actually I found out that I knew nothing at all! And now I do! I enjoyed every minute.

Organic Free-Range Lily

This was an amazing episode - and he's so incredibly cool for offering his personal support to everyone who wants to join his field!! (I can't recall any other ologist making such an offer.) There was just one minor cringe when he said "funguses" instead of "fungi" - but that's the copy editor in me. 😅 (I've long made peace with folks confusing meteors and meteorites haha)

Amber McIntyre

This one had me out loud laughing on the spin bike at the gym “my kids would say “that’s f’ed up. They weren’t raised right.” Same, Dr. Paul, same. Such a fun and intriguing episode!!!

Jessie Crawford

Where can we find images of all these other, less famous, tardigrades??

Sarah Chaney

Love this episode and as soon as I finished listening I wrote to a teacher who runs a NASA club at my son’s school and proposed that we find ourselves some moss piglets and get more future tardigradologists in the pipeline! Hope this becomes a Smallogies episode too!

Kieran H

This episode was absolutely DELIGHTFUL. The oologist was really fun and engaging to listen to, on top of tardigrades being such fascinating creatures. I’m very relieved to hear that tardigrades don’t actually look like that scary pink electron microscope image and are actually much cuter. I googled “actual tardigrade pictures” and came up with some good ones 😄

Jen O

I just had to note: I find it interesting that tardigrades and axolotls (two recent features on this podcast) are known as "water bears" and "water dogs," respectively. I know the show isn't accepting questions, but does anyone out there know of another animal that is a "water [insert animal here]" ?

Kim

Hippo - water pig.

Jen O

nice - good one!

Alaina Watt

I think manatees are sometimes called water cows.

Nathalie Jones

I just started listening but paused to share that I think my cat is traumatized by Alie's voice. The few times we have had to either go down to the basement or hunker down in the bathtub due to tornado warnings (yayyy Illinois), I've played Ologies out loud because how better to distract than to learn about stuff. However, I was playing this one out loud anticipating to fold some laundry peacefully and looked over to see my cat just frozen in a crouched position looking rather uneasy. Grabbing headphones now lol.

Mona Finlayson

Halfway through, really awesome episode, but I just have a hard time believing that there's only 1400 species especially if these friends are so old, small and wide spread.

Hope J 🏳️‍🌈

Never thought I would find myself at work, on Wikipedia, watching a video of a Tardigrade swimming and trying not to squeal with how cute it looks

Zinc

amazing ep, but im so sad that you didn’t mention mulholland from kipo and the age of wonderbeasts, for tardigrades in shows!

Alie Ward

Yay! We posted some great video at our Instagram page @ologies!

Alie Ward

AAHAHAHAAH! Oh my word bless you. Also I just interviewed a vascular surgeon for an upcoming Spooktober epiosde and PLEASE wear compression socks! Soem doctors can even get you an Rx for them so they are cheaper!

Alie Ward

Another reason why I must visit Australia (also coffee and wombats.)

Alie Ward

He is just the perfect peach of an ologist

Alie Ward

Right?! So much flim flam. And he was so thrilled to bust it.

Alie Ward

Is it possible it's an octopi octopusses situation? Or if it's orders of fungus it's funguses?

Alie Ward

Oh my WORD I was cackling at that

Alie Ward

I saw Science Sam post that as a Dune scene and I love her for that

Alie Ward

What a myth to bust! I loved his ire about it.

Alie Ward

These are all so good. We need hippo and manatee episodes.

Alie Ward

Please tell he rI love her and I come in peace.

Alie Ward

There is SO much more to discover! That's just what we know about but the great point he made is that the smaller the animal, the fewer we have described!

Alie Ward

RIGHT?!?! Bring it up at the next staff meeting. People need to know.

Alie Ward

I have no idea what you're talking about! But I did my best with the time we had ahahaha

Organic Free-Range Lily

Just double-checked - and no, "octopus" is a Greek-Latin hodgepodge word, while "fungus" is old-school Latin haha. All the sources I've checked say that using "funguses" is "rare and non-standard," aka a polite sort of boop on the snoot. :) To me, it feels like folks saying "criterions" or "millenniums" - most folks wouldn't notice, but copy editors do. 🙃

Kate Gav

Fell in love with tardigrades in a workshop with Dr. Bartels in the Great Smokies! We scraped and collected lichen, prepped our samples, and ba-bam–found tardigrades under the microscope. Such an interesting bit of fieldwork.

Katy

I hope I was not the only one who kept thinking about 'Three Body Problem' during the discussion of cryptobiosis.

Lexi Gutshall

Could you elaborate? I'm not familiar enough with the TBP to understand haha my bad

Lexi Gutshall

I couldn't help but wonder if he'd be willing to adopt me.

Katy

It's just a phenomenon that comes up in the book, so it was cool to see it discussed here.

Jan Vilhuber

I was a little sad not hear a mention of this when Dr. Bartels was asked about tardigrade-related songs! It's one of my favorites. Freaky trivia: Nick Beggs was also part of kajagoogoo of "you're too shy shy" fame!

Breahna Lesemann

I would just thought I would drop the fact that build a bear now has tardigrade plushies though I do believe they are in inaccurate version.

Bel Jensen-Hill

I just want to share that today I bought the tardigrade from build-a-bear and named him Wardigrade, and also the tiny version of it and named it Wardigrade Jr (Juniorgrade for short).