Carl Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. He is an author and also lectures regularly at universities, medical schools, and museums. His books include; Soul Made Flesh, a history of the brain, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, At the Water's Edge, a book about major transitions in the history of life, The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins and Parasite Rex, a book capable of changing how we see the world."
His latest book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life, is a biography of the best-studied creature on Earth. While most people may only know E. coli as a lethal germ, we actually carry hundreds of billions of these bacteria in our bodies for our entire lives. Over the past fifty years, E. coli has been poked, probed, and dissected by thousands of biologists who seek answers to the most fundamental questions of biology, a number of whom have won Nobel Prizes for their work.