Hello, UK!
This week, She Has Her Mother's Laugh came out in the UK. Many thanks to Ravi Mirchandani and the rest of the team at Picador for this lovely edition. (Amazon UK link)
The writer Philip Ball interviewed me for the Sunday Observer. You can read our Q/A here.
I had a great chat with Michael Ian Black, host of the podcast "How to Be Amazing." You can listen to our conversation about science writing here.
The cosmologist Sean Carroll and I have known each other for eons, ever since we discovered each other through our blogs. (Remember blogs?) Now Sean is diving into the next big thing--podcasts--and invited me to chat with him for his latest episode of "Mindscape." It's my favorite kind of conversation--more like a talk at a bar than a job interview. We talk about quantum epigenetic yoga, whether designer babies are inevitable, and much more.
Two Decades of Following Life into the Water
It's been twenty years since I published my first book, At the Water's Edge. It grew out of my earliest feature writing at Discover, where I had the privilege to report on some of the most exciting fossils discoveries in the history of paleontology--like whales with legs. In 1998, when I published my book, scientists had only barely started to look at the DNA of whales for clues to their evolution. But it was clear that genes could have a lot to say. For one thing, they suggested that hippos were the closest living relatives of whales--something that paleontologists had not guessed at looking at fossils alone.
In the two decades since, paleontologists have found many more transitional fossils. And geneticists are pinpointing some of the molecular changes that occurred when mammals took to the sea. This week a particularly intriguing study came out, showing that whales, seals, and manatees repeatedly lost the use of the same gene. While this loss may have been significant for taking up a marine life, it may now put these animals at risk, as they are exposed to modern pesticides. I take a closer look at the study in my column for the New York Times.
September 20, 2018 University of Bath (UK), Evolution in the 21st Century
October 4, 2018 92nd Street Y, New York: "What Makes Us Human? Panel with Maria Konnikova, Nathan Lents, and Sebastian Seung.
October 17, 2018 Colorado State University: Murray Honors Visiting Scholar Lecture (details to come)
October 19, 2018 CSICon, Las Vegas
October 23, 2018 Mount Holyoke College
November 7, 2018 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (details to come)
November 13, 2018 House of Speakeasy, New York
November 14, 2018 Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ (details to come)
If you've enjoyed reading She Has Her Mother's Laugh, please rate/review it on your favorite book site, such as Goodreads or Amazon. Thanks!
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Best wishes, Carl
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