Category: Newsletter

Friday’s Elk, November 4, 2016

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

This week I revisited the science of Ebola.

In 2014, in the midst of the the outbreak in West Africa, I wrote a couple articles for the New York Times about how Ebola works and how it evolved. At the time, there were a lot of claims that Ebola was on the verge of becoming an airborne nightmare, which I tried to debunk with inteviews with virologists and evolutionary biologists. Afterwards, I wrote a new chapter about Ebola for the second edition of my book A Planet of Viruses, which came out last year. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, November 4, 2016” →

Friday’s Elk, October 28, 2016

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

This week: a look at a globalist rodent…
 

A Rat’s History of the World

A few years ago I clambered into some of the remoter corners of New York City’s parks with the biologist Jason Munshi-South. I watched him study the city’s wildlife, seeking to understand how New York was sculpting evolution. Out of that experience came an article for the New York Times. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, October 28, 2016” →

Friday’s Elk, October 20, 2016

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Last week was a lull, but this week I have a few things to share…

 

Who Were the First Farmers?

The agricultural revolution that began 11,000 years ago changed humanity as well as the planet. But how did the transformation happen? Some intriguing clues have emerged in recent months from ancient DNA extracted for the first time from the oldest skeletons of farmers. I wrote a feature for the New York Times about the new findings, and how archaeologists are folding them into their understanding of how farming began. (Image: P. Dorrell and S. Laidlaw/The Ain Ghazal Archaeological Project) Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, October 20, 2016” →

Friday’s Elk, October 9, 2016

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

Thanks to Dana Ehret for taking pictures of my talk Thursday at the University of Alabama. Before speaking about human-driven evolution, I had an excellent day talking with UA biologists about turtles and death cap mushrooms and other glories of Alabama’s biodiversity.

 

Does the Human Lifespan Have a Limit?

Aging is one of those science-journalism topics that never gets old. (Sorry.) Over the years, I’ve written a number of pieces on what happens when we get old, and why we get old in the first place. You can read some of them here here here and here. Also, you can watch this Science Happens video or this lecture I gave at Stony Brook on the evolution of aging (I wrote it up here.) Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, October 9, 2016” →

Friday’s Elk, September 30, 2016

Posted on by Matt Kristoffersen

It was a busy week for me: a talk in Boston, a shoot for an upcoming Science Happens video, and a lot of time spent burrowing deep into my next book. On Thursday I’ll resurface in Alabama to give a lecture at UA about evolution in our own time. So, Alabamians, I hope to see you there! Here are the details about this free lecture. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, September 30, 2016” →