Evolution
It’s been over 150 years since "On the Origin of Species" was published, but we’re still fighting over Charles Darwin’s big theory. One of Darwin's descendants, Ruth Padel, writes poems about her...
View ArticleHomo-Thespian
The play "Hominid," by Ken Weitzman, reenacts a violent incident that took place in a chimpanzee colony. Primate expert Frans de Waal and the play's actors describe what it took to stage a chimpanzee...
View Article"Alpha"
Novelist Lydia Millet imagines a future where a genetic engineering accident has wiped out much of the earth's plant life. When a few blades of grass appear on a remote island, a scientist goes to...
View ArticleDarwin’s Life in Verse
Charles Darwin's great-great-granddaughter Ruth Padel tells her famous ancestor's life story in verse in her book "Darwin: A Life in Poems." One poem describes Darwin's awe at the sea life that washed...
View ArticleYou’re a Good Man, Charlie Darwin
"Set the sails; I feel the winds a-stirring." So begins the song "Charlie Darwin" by the rock band The Low Anthem. Frontman Ben Knox Miller describes how the band came up with the tune and its darker...
View ArticleWhere Do We Come From?
Where did we come from? Evolutionary biologist Spencer Wells is pretty close to the answer. He's the founder of a National Geographic initiative called the Genographic Project. By collecting DNA...
View ArticleThe Art Instinct
Denis Dutton was a professor of the philosophy of art who took an interest in evolutionary biology. In his controversial book “The Art Instinct,” he argued that certain tastes in art are genetic....
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Museum of God
Amateur paleontologist Jon Halsey isn't afraid to turn over a few rocks. By digging in areas near his home outside of Dallas, he's been able to amass an extensive collection of fossils which he stores...
View ArticleAparna Nancherla’s Failed Science Career
Aparna Nancherla is a comedian who has appeared on “Inside Amy Schumer” and written for “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” She was also a smart kid in high school....
View Article360 Live: Wyatt Cenac Drives Drunk (for Science)
Wyatt Cenac is a comedian and former correspondent for The Daily Show. He’s no scientist – but while completing a community service requirement in high school, he conducted a little experiment to...
View Article360 Live: Herman Pontzer Ends Up in the Hot Seat
Herman Pontzer is a professor of anthropology at Hunter College, where he investigates human and ape evolution. A few years ago, while studying the Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe, Dr. Pontzer’s experiment...
View Article360 Live: Dr. Rachel Yehuda Misses Her Rats
Rachel Yehuda is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For years, Dr. Yehuda researched PTSD by measuring stress hormones in lab rats. But when she...
View ArticleGoing Viral
How does a deadly plague inside “World of Warcraft” spread like a real virus? Also, rabies experts connect the dots between “The Iliad,” “Twilight,” and Louis Pasteur. And an apocalyptic world where...
View ArticleOur Computers, Our Viruses, Our Selves
Computer viruses have evolved from an annoyance to a national security threat. In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security told us to disable Java on our home computers (a thing that few of us knew...
View ArticleThe Flame Alphabet
William S. Burroughs famously said that “language is a virus.” Novelist Ben Marcus took Burrough's line as inspiration for “The Flame Alphabet.” In the book, the language of children has become...
View ArticlePlaying Against the Virus
Lately, viruses have been spreading through the gaming world. In the online game “Pandemic 2,” you play the virus, aiming to wipe out humanity. In “The Great Flu,” you control an international health...
View ArticleReconstructing Viruses
Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University has done groundbreaking research on reconstructing the DNA of viruses (sort of like microbial “Jurassic Park”). The method was used to re-create the...
View ArticleWhat Does Going Viral Mean?
Computer viruses emerged in the 1980s. In the internet era, we decided not to beat viruses, but to join them. “Going viral” became the goal of any piece of content, from a movie to a Facebook post....
View ArticleDoes Your Zombie Have Rabies?
Long before science explained rabies, the virus showed up in folklore and literature. "The vampire myth, the werewolf myth, and the zombie myth are all saliva-born infections that manifest as a...
View ArticleViruses at the Movies
What radiation was to the 1950s — a real but poorly understood menace that served as an all-purpose plot device — viruses have become for our era. Viruses explain vampires in “Blade” and zombies in “I...
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