This week I went to Minneapolis to speak about science writing at a conference at the University of Minnesota. I wanted to mention one of my favorite novels in the talk, Moby-Dick. My view of Melville's book has evolved from my days as a college English major to my current existence as a science writer. I've grown increasingly fond of the "cetology" chapters, in which Melville veers away from the story of Ishmael to explore the biology of whales. In 2013, I was asked by the Los Angeles Public Library to write an essay on the subject for an online celebration of the novel. I wanted to put a link to the essay on a slide for my Minnesota talk, but I discovered that the whole site for the project had disappeared. Such is the tenuous legacy of writers in the digital age. So I fished the piece out of my hard drive and revived it on Medium. You can read it here.
As for fresh writing, I've published my first three New York Times columns of 2018 since my last email.
The first one is about fiber. We always hear that dietary fiber is good for us, but scientists are still figuring out why. We don't get direct benefits, because we can't digest it. But our microbes can--and it may fuel their good works in our bodies.
The second column is about one of the great human migrations: the arrival of people in the Americas. Three years ago I wrote about the remains of an 11,500-year-old infant found in Alaska, from which scientists succeeded in extracting bits of DNA. Now another team has managed to get the whole genome out. They've discovered that this infant girl belonged to a previously unknown, early-branching population of Native Americans. Her genome provides a lot of new clues about the Asian roots of Native Americans, and how they branched into different lineages as they moved into the Americas.
On Wednesday, I published my latest column on lakes and rivers in a greenhouse world. As we put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, some of it is getting into inland waters. It may alter the chemistry of some lakes and rivers, in a way that may seriously alter freshwater life. As I tried to convey in the column, this is a pretty new field of research, and so there are a lot more questions than answers at this point.
Finally, I'm happy to report that a couple more writers have had nice things to say about She Has Her Mother's Laugh:
“Carl Zimmer is not only among my favorite science writers—he’s also now responsible for making me wonder why there is more Neanderthal DNA on earth right now than when Neanderthals were here, and why humanity is getting taller and smarter in the last few generations. She Has Her Mother’s Laugh explains how our emerging understanding of genetics is touching almost every part of society, and will increasingly touch our lives.” —Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter Faster Better and The Power of Habit
"Carl Zimmer lifts off the lid, dumps out the contents, and sorts through the pieces of one of history’s most problematic ideas: heredity. Deftly touching on psychology, genetics, race, and politics, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is a superb guide to a subject that is only becoming more important. Along the way, it explains some remarkably complicated science with equally remarkable clarity–a totally impressive job all around.” —Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
We're now less than five months away from publication! Pre-order your copy here.
January 18, 2018 Guilford CT: Guilford Free Library. "Can We Edit Life? Should We?" Details here.
February 15, 2018, Rochester, NY: Neilly Series Lecture. "A Voyage to the Center of the Brain."
More to come--stay tuned!
You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads. LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.
Best wishes, Carl
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