Just a reminder to residents of the Elm City and science writers converging here for their annual meeting: here are two public events you don’t want to miss…

1. Great Science Writing at Yale. Friday, 4 pm, Beinecke Library. Jonathan Weiner, Annie Murphy Paul, Richard Conniff, Jennifer Ouellette. Details here.

2. A conversation with Misha Angrist, author of Here Is A Human Being. Saturday, 6 pm, Labyrinth Books. Details here.

Originally published November 4, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

I recently served as a judge for the Imagine Science Film Festival, and Nature (one of the festival’s sponsors) asked if I’d write about the experience. I’m pretty suspicious of the whole idea of bringing movies and science together. It can be bad for science and bad for movies. Here’s how I put it in my essay:

Continue reading “Science and movies: My new essay in Nature” →

Chris Farnsworth, a seventh-grade science teacher with an awesome tattoo, has a question for which I’d also like an answer…

Do you know of a good place to find popular science writing for middle and high school students? I wind up using the same places, like Discover, or The Best American Science Writing, but I feel like I am in hit-or-miss mode. Any ideas?

Originally published November 1, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

In the New York Times, Douglas Martin has a fine obituary of one of the more intriguing figures in the history of evolutionary biology, Leigh Van Valen:

Continue reading “Leigh Van Valen, RIP: The man behind the Red Queen” →

Thanks to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Society for Microbiology for posting the video of my recent lecture in Washington DC, in which I consider how revolution in books 500 years ago can offer us some guidance in the revolution we’re in right now. Afterwards I had a great talk with the audience and people chiming in on Twitter. Check it out!

Originally published October 28, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.