Greetings–

Times double-header this week!
 

“Just” A Theory

This week, the New York Times ran a series of articles about misconceptions. I rounded out the series with a piece on one of the biggest misconceptions about science: What’s a theory? Hint: it doesn’t involve someone’s ideas about how cats fit in boxes.
 

Not the Mailman

For my “Matter” column this week, I write about the science of cuckoldry–how researchers are using DNA to figure out just how often dad isn’t dad(Photo illustration by Stephen Webster.)
 

Talking Viruses on Inquiring Minds

I talked with Kishore Hari about viruses for the podcast “Inquiring Minds.” Listen here.

 

The Talks

April 21: New York. Fordham University. “Editing Life: The Strange Science of Engineering Humans, Altering Nature, and Bringing Species Back from Extinction” Details here.

April 23: Yale. Science & Storytelling Conference. Details here

June 17: Austin, Texas. Public Lecture for the Stephen Jay Gould Award. Details here

June 23-25: Durham North Carolina: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Here’s the meeting site.

June 29: Boston: Festival of Genomics, Plenary Lecture, “Tales from the genome beat: how journalists explore (& sometimes get lost in) our DNA.” Details here.

July 31: Keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah

January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
 

The End
 

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Best wishes, Carl

Originally published April 8, 2016. Copyright 2016 Carl Zimmer.