Carl Zimmer's Blog

My next book, Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, is coming out March 9. You can enter a Goodreads Giveaway contest for the chance to get a free copy. Enter here. For more about LIFE'S EDGE, check out my web site .

Great news! The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine give out a prize for the best science book each year. This year, they picked She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity You can read about it--and about winners in other categories--here.

I had a delightful conversation with Bill Nye about She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity on his new podcast, Science Rules. And since we were talking about heredity, it only made sense that we were joined by one of my daughters, Charlotte. Listen here.

I'm delighted to announce that She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity is now available in paperback. If you are reading it for a book group, please check out this discussion guide. [pdf]

As a science writer, I love reporting about the many wondrous forms life can take, from brilliant cephalopods to cunning viruses. But sometimes I stop and wonder about life itself. What is it? How do we define it? How do we know it when we see it? Why does it exist at all?

To explore these questions, I hosted a series of live conversations with some leading thinkers on life—including chemists, physicists, and a philosopher — at Caveat in New York City.

Now you can now listen to these conversations in an eight-episode podcast series, “What Is Life?”

Here are a few platform links:

iTunes
Libsyn
player.fm
RSS

You can also listen to them on carlzimmer.com and Medium. On both sites I've added show notes.

If you like it, please rate and review it so others can find out about it too. Thanks!

Hooray! She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity is among the New York Times Book Review Notable Books of 2018. (By the way, the book is now a FINALIST for a Goodreads Readers Choice Award. Can I get your vote? Voting closes 11/26.)

Thanks to everyone who voted She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity into the semi-finals for the Goodreads Choice Awards! The new voting round lasts till November 11. I hope I can count on your vote once more!

Great news! She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity has been nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award in the Science & Tech category. This is the biggest prize awarded by readers rather than media and critics. Round one ends 11/4. I would really appreciate it you voted for it! Vote link here.

I'm thrilled to announce that Publisher's Weekly picked She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity for their Best Ten Books of 2018!

Here's an interview with me in the Bibliophile column for this Sunday's Boston Globe. We talked about my book diet.

BOOKS: What are you reading?

ZIMMER: I started Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. People have been talking about how this book is particularly resonant for 2018, so I thought it was high time to check it out. I’m trying to work more science fiction into my diet. The nice thing about finishing my own book is that suddenly I have crazy amounts of free time. I feel this incredible freedom to grab a whole bunch of books.

You can read the rest here...