Let’s just pretend for a moment that this theater is showing a thrilling movie about Cambrian fossils, shall we? And to further that dream, join me in October for “Celluloid Science,” a talk about science and the movies at the New York Academy of Sciences. It’s part of the NYAS “Science & The City” series.

Here are the details from the event web site…

Celluloid Science: Humanizing Life in the Lab
Thursday, October 20, 2011 | 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
The New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center

If you know anything about science, you understand that it is a highly complex human endeavor that mixes perseverance and luck, eccentricity and training, feasts and famines. As a medium, film has the potential to bring us into the inner world of science, breaking down misconceptions about the nature of science by creating an alternative narrative.

Science & the City teams with the Imagine Science Film Festival (ISFF) to present a panel discussion about telling the stories of science through film. Moderating this panel will be author Carl Zimmer. On the panel will be Sean Carroll, PhD (evolutionary biologist and founder of the Howard Hughes Medical institute’s Documentary Institute); David J. Heeger, PhD (neuroscientist who studies the brains under the influence of cinematic stimuli); Darcy Kelley, PhD (biologist at Columbia University); and Valerie Weiss, PhD (scientist and award-winning writer and director, Losing Control).

It’s a ticketed event, but you, my dear Loominaries, can get $15 off full-price tickets by using the promo code SPKR15. Register here.

[Image: Photo by Kevin H./Flickr] 

On Monday, I’ll be speaking at a master’s tea at Morse College at Yale at 4 pm about outbreaks–real and fictionalized, viral and bacterial. It’s free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, I’ll be participating in Story Collider, a marvelous series of performances in which people tell stories about science. I am a bit nervous about this one for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I go on stage after Bora Zivkovic. I’ve sat in Bora’s car, listening to his stories, which he tells with one hand on the wheel and the other sweeping around in operatic gestures. I know what I’m up against.

The fun starts at 8 pm in Brooklyn. Details are here.

I’m heading to New York this evening for an exciting conversation about the future of books, hosted by Science Online New York. We’ll be talking about the new opportunities opened up by ebooks and apps, as well as some of the problems they will bring with them. There’s now a waiting list to get into the room, but you can watch it livestreamed here, starting at around 7 pm EST. What makes the event particularly exciting for me is that you could pick any five members of the audience as the panelists, and the conversation would be just as interesting. So the prepared remarks are going to be short (just long enough to show off a few examples of new kinds of science books), and then we’re going to plunge into a wide-ranging, room-wide exchange. We’ll also be tracking questions with the #sonyc hashtag on Twitter, so feel free to join in the conversation.

After a fairly quiet summer, I’m going to be giving some talks this fall, starting around my neighborhood and then radiating outwards. Here’s a preliminary list of public events. I may be adding extra ones as the launch of Science Ink approaches. You can find the most up-to-date information on my talks page.

September 15, 2011
Guilford CT
Guilford Free Library
“A Planet of Viruses”

September 19, 2011
New Haven CT
St. Anthony Hall
“A Planet of Viruses”

September 20, 2011
New York, NY
Science Online New York
(We’ll be talking about making ebooks about science–it’s free but only 9 tickets are left)

September 26, 2011
New Haven CT
Morse College Master’s Tea, Yale College, 4 pm
“Confronting Contagion: Myth and Reality”

September 27, 2011
Brooklyn, NY
Story Collider

October 14, 2011
Louisville, KY
University of Louisville
“Crossing the Divide: On the Adventure of Getting Science Across to the Public”
Brochure (pdf)

October 20, 2011
New York City
New York Academy of Sciences, 7 pm
“Celluloid Science: Humanizing Life in the Lab”

November 2-4, 2011
San Francisco
Bay Area Science Festival

November 15, 2011
New Haven, CT
O.C. Marsh Fellows Program
Peabody Museum of Natural History

December 12, 2011
Brookline, MA
Coolidge Theater
“Science on Screen”
(This series pairs speakers with science-themed movies. I’ll be talking about viruses for a screening of 12 Monkeys.)

April 28, 2012
Washington DC
USA Science and Engineering Festival

Before Irene takes away my Internet connection, let me point you to part two of my interview on Science Talk, the podcast of Scientific American. (If you missed it, here’s part one.)

Talk you on the other side of the maelstrom.

[Update: Part one linked now fixed]

Steve Mirsky, host of the excellent Science Talk, a podcast at Scientific American, talked to me the other day about all sorts of things. Part one of our talk is now online. We talk about my recent story about evolution in New York City. (Scientific American has a special issue dedicated to cities this month.) Listen to the podcast here.

Steve will be posting the second part of the talk soon.

I’m going to talk about viruses on the Joy Cardin show on Wisconsin Public Radio tomorrow (Thursday, July 7) at 8 am CST (9 am EST). Listen here!

Update: the show is archived for your listening pleasure here.

You can listen here to a fun talk I had with Robert Pollie at KUSP in Santa Cruz on my recent visit to the Bay. We spoke for an hour about A Planet of Viruses, and so we had the luxury of delving into the fun questions, like whether viruses are alive. Check it out.

Here, for your viewing pleasure (I hope), is my recent talk about time and viruses, at the Long Now Foundation. I turn up after a short video, and then after the lecture Stewart Brand and I have a fun conversation about how viruses will not infect you with superpowers.

I’ll be on “Think,” an hour-long talk show on Dallas’s public radio station KERA at 2 pm EST, to talk about A Planet of Viruses.  Listen live here.

I just got back from San Francisco, where I had the privilege to speak at the remarkable Long Now Foundation. Stewart Brand, the head of the foundation, invites people to talk to the group about topics that stretch our conception of time over long scales. So I spoke about viruses and time–how they exist at scales ranging from minutes to eons. The Long Now folks have just posted the audio, which I’ve embedded below. I’ve also embedded the slides for my talk, too.

If I can win the battle against an army of deadlines this week, I’ll try to write out the entire talk as I did with “The Human Lake.” But I’ve learned not to make hard promises.

Audio:

Slides:

Last week I was thrilled to moderate a World Science Festival panel about the mysteries of sleep and dreams. The video is now up here. I’m also embedding it below (if WordPress plays nice with the code…). Be sure to watch till the end, when you can learn about snore-gasms.

I’ve actually written about Niels Rattenborg, one of the panelists before, in a piece for the New York Times. I also wrote about the researchers he’s now collaborating with, who put transmitters on birds that go on ultra-long migrations.