A Shooting, a Storyteller

This post first appeared in July 2016 and sadly, this is the kind of story we are still having to tell. I was with a group kayaking and camping on the coast of south-central Alaska — seven adults, five kids from four years old to twelve. One of the adults was a muscular late-20s man named Everett, […]

Climate Change: The Anti-Story?

The most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t pull any punches. The globe continues to warm, ice continues to melt at an alarming pace, and the seas continue to rise. Climate change isn’t some distant dilemma. It’s already happening. The science is solid, and the problem is urgent. “Nobody on this planet is […]

Guest Post: Postcards from Mali

Malaria causes more deaths in sub-Saharan Africa than car accidents, cancer, AIDS or war, even though the disease can be easily cured with an inexpensive pill. I find that fact incredibly disturbing, so I’ve traveled to Africa multiple times to write about this problem. But honestly, I mainly go to Africa because I like it. […]

Why More Scientists Should Tell Stories

Scientists aren’t very good at telling stories. That’s a generalization, but true. I’m constantly cajoling scientists to tell me the story — hell, any story, any anecdote, any remotely narrative nugget — of their work. More scientists than you’d expect are good at simplifying a complicated technology or theory into layman’s terms. And many are […]

Breaking Through

This past summer, I spent two weeks sitting, working and, once, sleeping next to a hospital bed, trying and failing to communicate with my father. He had called for an ambulance on the evening of July 25 because he couldn’t breathe. With end-stage emphysema, he often couldn’t breathe, but apparently that night he was frightened […]