News & Updates
The new records of history
Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we’re alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair. Chemical damage accumulates, and decomposition brings its own kind of collapse: membranes dissolve, enzymes...
Publishers Weekly
I am completely thrilled to post this advance starred review of The Invisible History of the Human Race from Publishers Weekly. The book is out October 13!
On Lying: My School of Life secular sermon
It has been a thrill to put together a secular Sermon for the first School of Life series here in Melbourne. Under the rubric of...
“Psychopathy may be an equal opportunity personality disaster”
What kind of person calls in a bomb threat after the Connecticut tragedy? I lived in New York in 2001, and in the shaky days following September 11, a plague of hoax threats and prank calls washed over the city and then spread out over the world. I wrote about...
Not a dog
On a windy autumn day on a green hill near Gisborne in Victoria, Lyn Watson, the co-founder of the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary and Research Centre, calls out to Snapple, a male dingo. The red-blond canine trots over and sits patiently as Watson...
The Best Australian Science Writing 2012
Ned Kelly and the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine get some respect in "The Best Australian Science Writing 2012." With thanks to editors Elizabeth Finkel, and Jim Gorman.
The Limits of Biological Psychiatry
Does Autism Hold the Key to What Makes Humans Special?
Three New Books Explore the Machinery of the Mind
Maria Popova Weaves Together Stories of Human Ingenuity
‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and the History in Historical Fiction
When Language Can Hold the Answer
“The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox”
Power From the People Breaks the Hold of Batteries and Plugs
Drawing the Map of the Life by Victor McElheny
Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
Adam’s Tongue by Derek Bickerton & Finding Our Tongue by Dean Falk
Freedom from Selection Lets Genes Get Creative
The World in Six Songs by Daniel J. Levitin
Thousand Mile Song by David Rothenberg
