Lives on Earth

human body

  • The Evolution of Laughing and Crying

    How have we humans come to be so skillful at smiling, laughing, and crying? Other notable human behaviors – reproducing, fighting, sharing, hunting –  have easily visible predecessors among most animals. But our repertoire of daily grins, laughs, and tears… Continue reading

  • Six Interesting Ways That Cars Are Like People

    Cars are a favorite metaphor and mirror for us humans, from their vroom for the young to the creaks and breakdowns for the aging. The comparisons would seem to have been exhausted, but I keep running into new ones. Here… Continue reading

  • Walk, Run, Eat: The Evolution of Our Body

    Visualizing the evolution of our bodies from our chimp ancestors to what we see in the mirror does not come easily. But Daniel E. Lieberman’s The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease is a fine time machine. It… Continue reading

  • Breath: Divine Gas In a Smart Body

    The word breath most often refers to the air we pull in to and pump out of our lungs (or to the action of doing so) as in “Take a deep breath.” But we also give the same word loftier qualities… Continue reading

  • Black Body and Soul

    In his book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates often refers to himself and other black people as bodies. The central fear of blacks in America, he writes, is and has been that their bodies will be destroyed. The fear… Continue reading

  • The Purpose Problem

    Years ago I heard about a book on the purpose-driven life. I rushed to a bookstore (ah, bookstores), only to find that it was mostly about God. But I realized then that I had uncertainties that had snuck up on… Continue reading

  • Most of Your Cells Aren’t Yours

    “All told, the [tiny] microbes in your body outnumber your own [much larger] cells by ten to one and can weigh as much as or more than your brain—about three pounds in an average adult. Each of us is thus… Continue reading