Life's Edge The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

Carl Zimmer, Joe Ochman

eAudio - 2021

“Carl Zimmer is one of the best science writers we have today.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world—from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses—the harder they find it is to locate life’s edge. Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of soci...ety’s most charged conflicts—whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. ... more