This subject is discussed in the pop sci work of PBS spacetime https://youtu.be/GcfLZSL7YGw with reference to articles and books if you're looking for more

I think so, I've gone back to university to study biology, and I'm encountering two complimentary perspectives on what life is, a pragmatic classification version that says: ok - of the things that we see which ones are alive and which aren't and what are the distinguishing characteristics? and a second definitional version, blending Schroedinger and Shannon, that says life seems to be information propagating itself, but we're not going examine you on that in first year genomics.

Yes, we taught this during course 3 thermo @ MIT. The mystery is how the hell the universe started at such low entropy.

We can predict the final total maximum entropy of the visible universe, we are about half way there. Life produces entropy, but not as ’efficiently’ as exploding stars.