Greetings! I’m back from my break and putting the finishing touches on my heredity book. This is the anxious stage when I have to try to artfully slip late-breaking news–such CRISPR-edited human embryos (shown above)–into the manuscript. Everyone who writes a book about science silently wishes that scientists would halt all their relevant research once the book goes to the printer. After the book has safely made it to the paperback edition stage, I think it would be okay for the research to start again…

Speaking of CRISPR, I talked this week to Michael Barbaro of “The Daily,” the New York Times podcast. In a week dominated by talk of nuclear war, I was grateful to get a chance to chat about biology. Here’s the episode. My portion starts around 7:00.

For my first post-break “Matter” column for the New York Times, I write about some beautiful new fossils that tell us something new about the history of mammals. In the Age of Dinosaurs, a number of them glided overhead.

Also, I’m going to be giving a lot of talks this fall–in New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere. I’ve added some new entries below, and I have a few more to pass along once they get officially locked down. Stay tuned.
 

Upcoming Talks

NEW: September 6, New York, Rockefeller University. “Science, Journalism, and Democracy: Grappling with a New Reality.” I’ll be giving the keynote lecture for this day-long meeting. You can watch in person or via livestream. Details here.

NEW: October 4, Boston, Festival of Genomics. “Game of Genomes: How the Public Can Learn About Genomics Through about Their Own Genomes.” A panel discussion with some of the scientists who helped me with my series for Stat.

October 11, Stony Brook University, New York: Provost’s Lecture

October 28 & 29, San Francisco. World Conference of Science Journalists. I’ll be speaking at two sessions. Details here.

November 15, University of Oxford. Twelfth Annual Baruch Blumberg Lecture

January 3-7, 2018 San Francisco: Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting, Plenary Lecture
 

The End
 

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Best wishes, Carl

Originally published August 11, 2017. Copyright 2017 Carl Zimmer.