It's a little disturbing to realized that this is my last newsletter of July. Time is moving too fast. But at least I have accumulated a few things to offer you from the past week...
I'm forever grateful that the good folks at Stat let me go a bit crazy in writing about my genome. Now at last the whole three-part beast is online, complete with my Neanderthal genes and inner viruses. If you haven't read it yet, now you can just binge through it like a night of "Breaking Bad."
For the scientific backstory, be sure to check out the supplementary data site.
I was also interviewed about the whole experience by Hank Green for his great Youtube series SciShow.
I've been fascinated for a long time about how we define species. Species are not fixed from time immemorial; they're the product of evolution and are themselves continuing to evolve--to split, to merge, to split again. In 2008 I wrote in Scientific American about the species puzzle, with wolves as my prime example.
Eight years later, wolves continue to challenge our typological thinking. A new study on wolf genomes may lead to a new way of drawing the line between wolf species--with major implications for how we conserve them. I have the story in my column this week in the New York Times.
Hypnosis exists in that fuzzy space between stage performance and medical treatment. To figure out what is really going on when people get hypnotized, some scientists have turned to brain scanners. I wrote a piece for Stat about what they found.
I talked to WNPR about how global warming is changing the map of nature. (Here's a column from last year I wrote on the oceans in particular.)
I talked to WBEZ about an important new brain atlas. (Here's my column on the research.)
Should We Re-Engineer Humanity? A Video
As I mentioned in an earlier edition of Friday's Elk, I talked at the Strand Bookstore in New York with the historian Daniel Kevles about the past and future of gene editing. We asked each other a series of questions, and you can watch the video of our answers here.July 31: Plenary lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah: "Plants Are Weird: Epigenetics, Journalism, and the Alien Beauty of Botany"
September 8: University of Nebraska. Lecture: A Journey to the Center of the Brain. Details to come
January 28-29, 2017 Rancho Mirage Writers Festival
You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.
Best wishes, Carl
If you'd like to learn more about my books, you can visit my web site
"Friday's Elk" is free. If you'd like to support my writing, you can pay what you'd like for an optional subscription