Carl Zimmer

In this engaging talk based on his new book, AIR-BORNE, Carl Zimmer takes audiences on an odyssey through the most mysterious ecosystem on the planet, which extends from our lungs to the top of the stratosphere. His talk leaves audiences looking at the aerobiome with new eyes—as a realm into which oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the sky, where microbes eat clouds, and where the next pandemic may be lurking.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives, from planning vacations to editing photos. But biologists are using the same underlying software to explore some of the deepest mysteries of life. These foundation models, as they're called, can learn by themselves how proteins fold into their intricately complex structures. They can make up new proteins from scratch. Even more ambitiously, foundation models are making sense of how thousands of genes work together inside our cells to keep us alive. In a few weeks, computers can analyze data from millions of cells and teach themselves some of the most fundamental principles of biology. What will they discover next? And will they put biologists out of a job? In this talk, Carl Zimmer draws on his reporting for the New York Times and in books like Life Itself to take his audience on a mind-bending trip into the not-so-distant future, when computers can discover how to make new kinds of cells, and maybe new kinds of life.

In his 2011 book A Planet of Viruses, Carl Zimmer warned that a virus that lived in a bat or some other animals would adapt to humans and sweep across the world. "We don't know which virus will create the next great epidemic," he wrote. "But that doesn't mean that we can simply ignore them. Just the opposite: there are the viruses we need to block before they get a chance to make the great leap into our species." A decade later, the Covid-19 pandemic matched that prediction. At the New York Times, Zimmer published a string of front-page stories on the race to understand the new coronavirus, to create drugs to stop infections, and to develop vaccines in record time. In this lecture he talks about what we need to learn from this experience how to become better prepared for the next virus waiting to create the next great epidemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic fueled a surge of disinformation about science on social media, podcasts, and newsletters. This talk will survey the precarious state of public understanding of science, and why it is crucial to meeting humanity’s greatest challenges, from emerging diseases to global warming.

In this lecture, Carl Zimmer explores the most fundamental question in biology: what is life? The answer remains surprisingly elusive. In Zimmer’s widely acclaimed book Life’s Edge, he explores the nature of life and investigates why scientists have struggled to draw its boundaries. He handles pythons, goes spelunking to visit hibernating bats, and even tries his hand at evolution. Zimmer visits scientists making miniature human brains to ask when life begins, and follows a voyage that delivered microscopic animals to the moon, where they now exist in a state between life and death. From the coronavirus to consciousness, Zimmer demonstrates that biology, for all its advances, has yet to achieve its greatest triumph: a full theory of life.

In this lecture, Carl Zimmer redefines heredity, weaving together historical and current scientific research, exemplary original reporting, and his own experience as a parent of two daughters. Introducing audiences to the not-too-distant future, Zimmer explores the ways in which DNA editing with the powerful new tool CRISPR may change our world—and ourselves. He fearlessly examines controversial topics (Do races actually exist? Is success inherited?) in light of current advances in DNA analysis, and discusses the ways in which heredity has historically been used to justify racism and social inequality. By challenging long-standing presumptions about heredity, Zimmer takes audiences on a journey of discovery about who we really are, where we came from, and what we can pass on to future generations.

Our brains are the foundation for who we are—they store our memories, give rise to our emotions, and enable us to look to the future. But our brains remain terra incognita, an inner continent that remains barely explored. Only now are scientists beginning to map the brain in its full complexity, mapping some of its 80 billion neurons and their trillions of connections with each other. The results, while early, are mind-blowing to contemplate. Already, brain-mapping has improved people’s lives, enabling scientists to implant electrodes in the brain to help people with Parkinson’s regain their ability to walk, and also to give paralyzed people the power to control computers. In the future, mapping the brain may point to better ways to treat disorders such as autism, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease. And, ultimately, we will gain an inner map of human nature itself.

Companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com are introducing millions of people to the history inscribed in their DNA. Over hundreds of generations, our ancestors accumulated mutations that can reveal astonishing secrets, from unknown cousins to ancestral homeland to interbreeding with Neanderthals and other extinct kinds of humans. The science of molecular ancestry is now showing scientists how our ancestors evolved the features that made us uniquely human. But as we encounter these astonishing insights, we must also be aware of the limits of this research, and not try to use it to justify long-refuted myths about ethnicity and ancestry.