My new brain column for Discover is online, and it’s about one of the weirder failings of our mind: the way our thoughts can get stuck in a traffic jam. When we are required to do two things in quick succession–like answer a cell phone and hit the brakes–our brains freeze up for an instant. Researchers have known about this so-called psychological refractory period for decades, but they’re still trying to figure out how, and why, it happens. As I explain in my column, this inner weakness may actually reveal an inner strength. Check it out. (And thanks to Slashdot for the tsunami of link love.)

Originally published November 20, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Scientists have known for decades that the genomes of animals can sometimes harbor DNA from the viruses that have infected them. When I first learned of this fact some years ago, it blew my mind. The notion that any animal could be a little bit viral blurred nature’s boundaries.

Continue reading “Your inner viruses: the trickle becomes the flood” →

I’m preparing for my first trip to New Orleans. The occasion is the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America. Steven Austad, a University of Texas biologist, asked me to come give a talk in a session he’s organized next Monday. Austad studies the evolution of aging in the hopes of finding ways of slowing the aging process. (I wrote about him in 2007 in the sadly defunct Best Life magazine–read the article here or here.) In the face of an anti-evolution education bill passed by the Louisiana legislature, Austad decided to use his trip to the state next week to organize a session on the important of a good evolution education.

Continue reading “Evolution and the citizen: Your thoughts?” →

A lovely piece from Robert Sapolsky, one of those scientists who gives us science-writers night terrors that we’ll be out of a job soon. It takes a while for Sapolsky to get to the gist, but it’s a gist worth waiting for: how we think in metaphor. So is poetry’s greatest strength the result of the social evolution of primates? Check it out.

Originally published November 15, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.