Carl Zimmer: What It Means to Be Alive

Life is everywhere. From birds in the sky to bushes on the ground to the humans who surround our everyday lives. We assume life is easily identifiable, yet as scientists learn more about the living world, they find life to be a difficult word to define. In his new book Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, acclaimed scientific author Carl Zimmer seeks to answer one of biology’s greatest questions: What is life? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts—whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.

Life’s Edge explores lab experiments attempting to create life, poses questions of what life is like in our grand universe, and offers insight into scientific developments shaping the way we understand living beings. Charting the obsession with Dr. Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.

Join us as Carl Zimmer explores life and investigates why scientists have struggled to define the boundaries of the word.

SPEAKERS

Carl Zimmer

Columnist, The New York Times; Author, Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

In Conversation with Rachel Becker

Environment Reporter, CalMatters

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our live programming via YouTube live stream. This program was recorded via video conference on March 10th, 2021 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices