Happy First Friday!
September hurried by in a rush as I zipped around for much of the month. One of my favorite stops along the way was the lovely English city of Bath. I traveled to the university there for a conference to celebrate the opening of the Milner Centre for Evolutionary Biology. The University of Bath has long been a powerhouse for evolution research, and I expect the new center will up their game even more.
For two days, we listened to talks on topics ranging from the evolution of deadly bacteria to the Cambrian explosion to Darwin’s finches to the domestication of dogs. At the end of the conference, I moderated a panel on the future of evolution research, talking with Patrick Goymer from Nature Ecology and Evolution, Aiofe McSlayt from Trinity College Dublin, Michael Purgannan of New York University, Roli Roberts from PLOS Biology, Nina Waddell of the University of Exeter.
They agreed that the science of evolution has been profoundly accelerated by DNA sequencing. It’s now possible to put hypotheses to the test that until now were practically untestable. As a result, a lot of arguments are getting resolved, and evolution is becoming more and more of an applied science—helping to explain precisely how HIV becomes resistant to antivirals, for example, or determining the best way to treat cancer.
While the technology we talked about might be new, it struck me that the concepts were not. The researchers talked about things like natural selection, genetic drift, character displacement, adaptive radiation—concepts that have been part of the language of evolutionary biology for decades. When I asked if the future of evolutionary biology was going to see the emergence of new concepts, the panelists shrugged their collective shoulders. They considered the conceptual toolkit of evolution to be in good shape.
More News about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh
A big highlight of the month was learning that She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is on the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford Prize, Britain’s top prize for nonfiction books! The winner will be announced next month. The web site Five Books interviewed one of the judges about their choices. I’m looking forward to reading clear the other books on the shortlist.
In other book news…
I spoke to BBC about heredity.
PBS put together a nice video about the inheritance of height, based on a chapter from the book.
The Beagle Has Landed, a podcast about clinical genetics, interviewed me about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh.
And, last but not least, it was a surreal delight to find David Quammen, a writer I deeply admire, posting a picture of my book on Twitter, posed with a tumbler of a whiskey and a python.
Colorado, Massachusetts and more: October’s Talks
For reasons unknown, I am rushing around to a bunch of talks this month–a few of which fell into place just recently. Here are the details for October. (Full calendar at the end, as usual.)
On Tuesday, October 9, I’ll be at New York University for an event called “Why You’re You: Explaining Heredity to a Confused Public.” I’ll be talking with Jennifer Raff, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, and Wall Street Journal science writer Lee Hotz.
The next day, Wednesday, October 10, I’ll be at Yale Law School to talk about the science of science communication. Why is it that science news or a visit to the doctor can change the way some people think but not others? Why is global warming controversial, but lasers aren’t? I’ll be discussing these issues with Dan Kahan and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, two of the leading researchers in this field, and Sarah Smaga, a Yale graduate student who dedicating a lot of her efforts to science outreach.
A week later, on Wednesday, October 17, I’ll be talking about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh at Colorado State University as a Murray Honors Visiting Scholar Lecture.
On October 19, I’ll be in Las Vegas to talk about heredity and its misconceptions at CSICon.
And, finally (for October), I’ll be speaking at Mount Holyoke College on October 23.
Jellyfish and Borrowed Neanderthal Genes
My batch of New York Times columns in September runs the biological gamut:
Chimps and bonobos are generous–up to a point. And being human means going beyond that point.
We don’t know much about most of our genes–and that’s a problem.
Jellyfish: It’s what’s for dinner
Neanderthals may have given us the flu, or viruses like it
Upcoming Talks
October 9, 2018 New York University: “Why You’re You: Explaining Heredity to a Confused Public”
October 10, 2018 Yale Law School: “The Science of Science Communication”
October 17, 2018 Colorado State University: Murray Honors Visiting Scholar Lecture
October 19, 2018 Las Vegas, CSICon
October 23, 2018 Mount Holyoke College
November 2, 2018 West Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Stanmeyer Gallery
November 7, 2018 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Science Reporting in the Age of Fake News
November 13, 2018 Waterstone’s, London: An Evening With The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlist
February 16, 2019 Washington DC AAAS Topical Lecture (details to come)
March 7, 2019 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Thomas M. Siebel Lecture Series in Science and Society (details to come)
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Best wishes, Carl
Originally published October 5, 2018. Copyright 2018 Carl Zimmer.