The Body as a Planet
Like Duolingo, but for The Body as a Planet. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Living Landscape and Cosmic Forces. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in The Body as a Planet
- The body is a collection of trillions of independent living units
- Individual cells and microbes have their own life cycles within the body's 'planet'
- The conceptual shift from seeing the body as a single object to a populated ecosystem
- Cells have specific jobs that keep the 'planet' functioning
- Different cell types work together like a society's workforce
- The specialized roles of different cellular 'workers' in the body's infrastructure
- Enzymes speed up reactions that would naturally take too long to sustain life
- The internal surface area of the body is vast compared to the size of a single microbe
- Enzymes act as tools or machines that perform specific chemical tasks repeatedly
- Different organs represent distinct 'climates' and 'terrains' for microscopic citizens
- Enzymes as industrial machinery
- The 'self' includes both human cells and beneficial microbial guests
- The role of enzymes as the body's automated industrial machinery
- Microbes are not just 'germs' but necessary citizens for the planet's health
- Understanding the vast scale of the body's internal geography from a microbe's perspective
- The collaborative nature of the 'self' involving both human and non-human residents
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Body as a Planet the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Imagine the microscopic inhabitants of your skin. What is true about these tiny citizens and the microbes living among them?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where The Body as a Planet takes you
Explore your anatomy as a vast, living ecosystem where cells are citizens, blood is a transit system, and light sets the planetary clock.
- 1
The Living Landscape
- Citizens of the Flesh
- Highways and Security
- 2
Cosmic Forces
- Light, Space, and Time
- The Alien Invasions
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
The Body as a Planet is taught in the The Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
More Science on Tomo
Living on a Giant Spaceship
Discover how our planet works as a perfectly balanced life-support system. Learn to read the landscape, predict the weather, and understand the massive forces moving beneath your feet.
Biology in Your Daily Life
Discover how the invisible machinery of life explains everything from why you get hungry to how your body fights off a cold.
Gravity's Extremes: From Big Bang to Black Holes
Explore how the curvature of spacetime dictates the birth of the universe and the mysterious physics of its most dense objects.
Navigating the Cosmos
Move beyond the names of planets and dive into the mechanics of space travel, the life cycles of stars, and the strange behavior of time and gravity in the deep universe.
The Night Sky for Beginners
Stop looking at a random blur of lights and start recognizing the cosmos. Learn to navigate the stars, track the planets, and understand the scale of the universe from your own backyard.
The Physics of Your Senses
Discover how your brain translates the raw forces of the universe—like light waves and gravity—into the world you actually experience.
Start The Body as a Planet today.
Download Tomo, search The Body as a Planet, and play your first lesson in under a minute.