Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmeris a popular science writer and blogger, especially regarding the study of evolution and parasites. He has written several books and contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times, Discover, and National Geographic. He is a fellow at Yale University's Morse College...
communication heart breathing
Today, when we look at a brain, we see an intricate network of billions of neurons in constant, crackling communication, a chemical labyrinth that senses the world outside and within, produces love and sorrow, keeps our hearts beating and lungs breathing, composes our thoughts, and constructs our consciousness.
ancestors biggest book evolution evolve history human papers people questions scientific spent spring talking time walk
I read a lot of scientific papers on the history of evolution and spent time talking to scientists. I started to write it in the spring of 2004 and wanted the book to look at the biggest questions people have about human origins, such as what were the first hominids and how did our ancestors evolve to walk upright?
ancestors began birds evolved history interested life looked
I'm really interested in the history of life in general. How life began to how birds evolved to what our ancestors looked like.
successful dna viruses
Parasites are not only incredibly diverse; they are also incredibly successful. There are parasitic stretches of DNA in your own genes, some of which are called retrotransposons. Many of the parasitic stretches were originally viruses that entered our DNA. Most of them don't do us any harm. They just copy and insert themselves in other parts of our DNA, basically replicating themselves. Sometimes they hop into other species and replicate themselves in a new host. According to one estimate, roughly one-third to one-half of all human DNA is basically parasitic.
sick viruses sometimes
Viruses don't just make us sick. They can actually sometimes end up in our genomes.
cutting animal discovery
Researchers keep identifying new species, but they have no idea about the life cycle of a given species or its other hosts. They cut open an animal and find a new species. Where did it come from? What effect does it have on its host? What is its next host? They don't know and they don't have time to find out, because there are too many other species waiting to be discovered and described.
crazy writing people
If the world goes crazy for a lovely fossil, that's fine with me. But if that fossil releases some kind of mysterious brain ray that makes people say crazy things and write lazy articles, a serious swarm of flies ends up in my ointment.
christian sex kings
In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. Within months, his army collapsed and fled. It was routed not by the Italian army but by a microbe. A mysterious new disease spread through sex killed many of Charles’s soldiers and left survivors weak and disfigured. French soldiers spread the disease across much of Europe, and then it moved into Africa and Asia. Many called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian disease. Arabs called it the Christian disease. Today, it is called syphilis.
fighting years viruses
The reason that viruses are so hard to fight, the reason for example we need a flu virus every year is that they evolve very fast.
origin-of-life two giving
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitely deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more.
school technology talking
The only kinds of ways we have to deal with viruses are old school, so vaccines for example are very effective, but the first vaccines were invented in the 1700's, so we're talking about technology that is over 200 years-old.
years looks mammals
Over millions of years the viruses in our genome mutate more and more so the look less and less and less recognizable as viruses and so if there was a virus that infected our pre mammal ancestors like 250 million years ago, which it probably did, we can't see it because it just looks totally random.
sick flu viruses
When you get sick with the flu you get infected with flu viruses and they make lots of new flu viruses, but those new viruses are not exact copies of the old ones. They have mutations in them. A lot of those mutations are harmful.
strong eye medicine
Medicine allows people to live who would otherwise die, so antibiotics will let people survive infections that they might be otherwise very vulnerable to and even little things might make a big difference, so I wear eyeglasses because my eyes aren't particularly strong, before there were eyeglasses someone at my age would probably not be good for much.