You can watch the whole first episode of HBO’s new series The Newsroom on Youtube. At no cost, you can marvel at just how awful a show about journalism can be, managing to be exquisitely sanctimonious and clueless at the same time.

Here’s the shtick: Jeff Daniels plays a cable news anchor who discovers his inner Walter Cronkite, as his new producers remember what it’s like to do real journalism. In fact, the first episode is about science journalism. In about fifteen minutes, the producers completely decipher the Horizon oil spill, down to the quality of the concrete and the physics of ruptured deep-sea drills. In the real world, journalists like Julia Whitty at Mother Jones, Richard Harris at NPR and Abraham Lustgarten at ProPublica chewed away for weeks, even months, to get the story. But in Aaron Sorkin’s twisted universe, you can figure it out based on–well, based on a volcano you made for your school science fair project.

Honest! I’ve cued up the tape for you here. Give it till 44:55 and you’ll see I’m not making this up.

Originally published June 26, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

After half a year of stormy debate, we are finally getting to see all the gory details about how two teams of scientists produced some disturbing flu viruses. I’ve written about this unfolding story previously here, at Slate, here again, in the New York Times, and back here again.

In tomorrow’s New York Times, I step back and take a look at the two published studies, and talk to experts about what those studies do–and don’t–tell us about how likely we are to face a new flu pandemic in the years to come. There’s still a huge amount about the flu that we don’t know yet, sorry to say. Check it out. (I also spoke with Times editor Michael Mason on this week’s science podcast. Listen here.)

Originally published June 25, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

Recently I stopped by the offices of PBS Newshour to talk with correspondent Hari Sreenivasan about viruses–from the bird flu that’s in the news today to the viruses that swarm the oceans. Here’s the video, and here’s their story about our conversation.

Originally published June 21, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

This month has seen a flood of new studies and reviews on the microbiome, the collection of creatures that call our bodies home. In tomorrow’s New York Times, I look at why scientists are going to so much effort to map out these 100 trillion microbes.

The microbiome is not just an opportunistic film of bugs: it’s an organ that play an important part in our well-being. It starts to form as we’re born, develops as we nurse, and comes to maturity like other parts of the body. It stabilizes our immune system, keeps our skin intact, synthesizes vitamins, and serves many other functions. Yet the microbiome is an organ made up of thousands of species–an ecosystem, really. And so a number of scientists are calling for a more ecological view of our health, rather than simply trying to wage warfare against infections.

Check it out.

Originally published June 18, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.