t's tough to impress one's in-laws. Though it's the wife-mother-in-law relationship that hogs all the limelight, husbands find it equally challenging. My in-laws are into molecular biology. And I am into communication. You can imagine how tough it has been for me to impress them.

On one of my visits to their home, I picked up The Fifth Extinction, a book by Robert Leakey. It was one of my first formal readings in evolution. What started out as a tool to impress my in-laws turned into something else. ... more