I wrote about Nucleus Genomics' "Have your best baby" ad campaign and Kris Jenner's "best version of myself" facelift, the parallels between embryo selection and cosmetic surgery, and competing definitions of "eugenics" kathrynpaigeharden.substack.com/p/have-your-...

Magic Johnson was the grand marshal of the Rose Parade today, and as someone who remembers his November 1991 HIV announcement: if you had told anybody that day that he would be alive and healthy 34+ years later, I don't think they would have believed you. Medicine and research—they work.

New: We got an internal ICE document revealing its $100 million ad plan to bring in 14,000 new hires: deals with "tactical" influencers; ads to gun & military buffs; and geo-targeting phones around NASCAR races and gun shows. A "wartime recruitment" mode with paramilitary branding: wapo.st/44QrP5j

🐦‍⬛ New paper in Animal Cognition covering our carrion crow project with partners at @Univeristy of Leon. 52 mini-biologgers were deployed on wild carrion crows in Spain — capturing 127K+ vocalizations. 🔗: www.earthspecies.org/blog/unlocki... (1/4)

I cannot tell you how angry I am right now. I can tell you that I tried to turn that anger into some constructive use. A Pox on Fools is intended to give the rest of us ammunition with which to counter the tsunami of bullshit that is MAHA. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/808113...

The faction of the GOP that pretends to like Jews to send them to hell is at war with the faction that wants to skip the "pretends to like" part.

I sat on this draft for three months and sent it out to my coauthors yesterday who for some reason still haven't returned it.

We're half a decade into studies finding that improving airflow in classrooms will reduce disease transmission enormously, and that bleaching surfaces etc. does very little. And yet nothing changes. Waves of flu and colds wash over schools, and the schools pretend it's an act of God.

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Advances in genomics are giving exciting new perspectives on biology of speech, language & reading. My latest peer-reviewed paper is a tutorial, guiding readers from different backgrounds through the history of the field, current state-of-the-art, & where we’re heading. A taster in this thread.🧪 1/n

I am recruiting graduate students to my genomics-focused lab in EEB at Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please spread the word if you know any students with an interest in a computational focus to genomics research! evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

Brunel's press release about our (@hggaddy.bsky.social @anthrolog.bsky.social) recent publication, showing that high levels of polygyny don't necessarily lock men out of the marriage market www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

I will be pinch hitting for Adi Nair at this awesome social neuro minisymposium today. Come say hi! #sfn2025

“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath 50 reasons to want more walkable cities.

Heritability found? Time to update my lectures on heritability, GWAS & polygenic scores. Anyone have good recommendations on an up to date overview of missing h2? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stopped by the always amazing @texasbookfest.bsky.social and ran into @michaelerard.bsky.social, whose new book I've been dying read.

PLEASE AMPLIFY 🔈 I hear that some staffers at Interior Department and NOAA are being called back to the office from furlough for "administration priorities." I'm on Signal if this includes you or you have more information: @clare.14

Goodbye plural data. I know your new life is singular - I just need some time to grieve.

Goodbye plural data. I know your new life is singular - I just need some time to grieve.

New paper out today with Zhian Chen. We argue that modern intensive parenting is not only exhausting for parents, but in some cases disrupts healthy child development. What is 'overparenting'? And can evolutionary theory help us understand how we got here? academic.oup.com/emph/advance...

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity! We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have: (1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs) (2) better hand dexterity (3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

Tried to sneak a photo of a cute doggo and accidentally had long exposure on and I believe I have created man’s greatest expression of art

EXTREMELY COOL BAT STUFF: A study out in Science today found that the greater noctule bat, Europe's largest, hunts and catches *migrating birds* while in flight. In at least one case, a bat climbed to more than 1200 feet, then chased a robin downward FAST until it caught it near the ground.

PhD-opening in our ancient genomics lab this year, apply below! We work on: 📜 Genetic history integrated with archaeology and history 📈 Natural selection and trait genetics 🐺 Evolutionary genomics of dogs and wolves 🦠 Ancient pathogen genomics 💀 Hominin evolution and ancient proteomics

The secret to happiness.

bioRxiv partners with Dryad to enable easier, better linking to curated datasets connect.biorxiv.org/news/2025/09...

Very excited about our new preprint, led by @gkafetzis.bsky.social /w @mikebok.bsky.social & @denilsson.bsky.social. We suggest that the vertebrate 'duplex' retina emerged from interconnecting two ancient median-eye microcircuits. Say goodbye to the 'simplex' retina - it probably never existed!

Holy shit…You can’t make this up: a plane is circling Soldier Field before the Bears home opener with a banner that reads— “HEY ICE, MASKS ARE FOR CUCKS.” Also the trolling is incredible for those that told us to stop wearing masks during the pandemic.

Whether it's Obama wearing a tan suit or Trump declaring "Chipocalypse Now" and pledging to unleash "the Department of WAR" on America's third largest city, leaders of both parties have shown disregard for presidential norms.

600k neurons, 700 probes, 140 mice, 12 labs. "visual stimuli transiently represented in visual areas at stimulus onset, spread to ramp-like activity in mid- & hindbrain regions that encoded choices. Responses correlated w impending action almost everywhere. Responses to reward also widespread."

600k neurons, 700 probes, 140 mice, 12 labs. "visual stimuli transiently represented in visual areas at stimulus onset, spread to ramp-like activity in mid- & hindbrain regions that encoded choices. Responses correlated w impending action almost everywhere. Responses to reward also widespread."

Wow. Reward and planning everywhere.

Big time congrats to @larschittka.bsky.social on receiving the Exemplar Award this year! Lars and his team has discovered several previously unimaginable cognitive capacities in the itty bitty brains of bees giving us new insights into the evolution of learning. chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk

10 years ago today, Steve Silberman's groundbreaking book NeuroTribes was published. It changed how the world discussed autism and inspired many autistic people to write their own books. Stay tuned for information on a 10th anniversary edition coming very soon.

I wrote a Comment on neurotheory, and now you can read it! Some thoughts on where neurotheory has and has not taken root within the neuroscience community, how it has shaped those subfields, and where we theorists might look next for fresh adventures. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"The choice before us is fundamental: Do we believe that knowledge should serve the common good? If so, we cannot treat this assault on science and research as someone else’s problem." thehill.com/opinion/whit... By @alondra.bsky.social

NSF is seeking a permanent Program Officer in the Population and Community Ecology cluster, Division of Environmental Biology. If you are a mid-career academic ecologist still in love with science, but not so much with academia, this could be a great position for you! 🌎 www.usajobs.gov/job/759052000

Just to give the TL;DR on this one: *The* main purpose of the EO is to move funding priorities and decisions away from experts and career professionals over to political appointees. With the ultimate power held by Vought / OMB.

In grad school I read a paper where a research team explored the functions of wolf calls by howling to an unseen wolf pack across the landscape. I couldn't shake the idea that there were competing teams of researchers just howling back and forth to each other, frantically taking notes.

#MartyMakary is a peddler of misinformation. A study came out on Monday saying: "In this nationwide cohort study, no increased risk of 29 adverse events was observed after vaccination with the updated COVID-19 mRNA vaccine [...] in approximately 1 million adults." Trust the data, not this fool. 1/

🤯

Like humans, capuchins are curious, manipulative, almost obsessively social and not to be messed with, and there is a lot we can learn from them on how culture, including our own, evolves.

Here's an illustration showing the anatomical similarities between structures of the clitoris (on the left) and penis (on the right), going for a little walk together.

Interested in love and mate preferences? Our dataset includes responses from 117,293 participants across 175 countries. You're welcome to use it for your own research! Paper and dataset linked below. @ with amazing collaborators from the large-scale cross-cultural consortium <3

A new peer-reviewed open access article by me, all about ritual last words in five major religions. "Ritual last words" are sacred sounds, prayers, songs, names of deities, etc., prescribed to be spoken at the very end of life, ideally at the moment of expiry. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Extremely excited to share the first effort of the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium: A highly-powered, comprehensive GWAS of the Big Five personality traits in 1.14 million participants from 46 cohorts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It is now possible to submit public commentary on the proposed changes through the close of the business day (5 p.m. EST) next Monday, July 14th. www.fda.gov/news-events/...

This link is making the rounds in my frantic network of biologists and it desperately needs context. NIH has NOT announced plans to eliminate animal research, but we have real and urgent concerns about the future of animal research.🧪 www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/nih-announce...

This link is making the rounds in my frantic network of biologists and it desperately needs context. NIH has NOT announced plans to eliminate animal research, but we have real and urgent concerns about the future of animal research.🧪 www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/nih-announce...

Mechanisms and control of a novel vocalization: The Alston singing mouse song is a whistle that depends on the inflation of the ventral pouch –an enlarged intralaryngeal air sac– laryngeal airflow, and cricothyroid muscle action By ⁦ @evolbrain.bsky.social et al. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...