The Last Word On Nothing | "Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing" - Victor Hugo

Redux: Climate Change: The Anti-Story?

By: Cassandra Willyard | February 22, 2016

This interview with Radiolab’s senior editor (also my husband) focuses on why the show hasn’t done a story on climate change. It originally ran on May 22, 2014. Since then, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad has spoken the words “climate change” on air . . . as part of an episode on nihilism. Progress? (The show is actually one of my very favorites. You should listen.)

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 going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri at a news conference in March. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Jessa Gamble | February 20, 2016

February 15-19, 2016

Sea glass: a reworked human product returned to the sand from whence it was wrought. There’s less of it now, but you can tell a lot about its origins if you know what to look for.

Designer and writer Matt Steel is working on a simplified version of Thoreau’s Walden, and Michelle supports the experiment.

Ann’s husband died last month, and the empathy she received was an elixir that gave her pain meaning.

It’s disappointing when you’re onto a great story and a new source tells you why it’s not a story at all. Rose argues the lesson to take is to seek out those killjoys on every assignment.

The Arctic Circle is a group that has met monthly for 70 years. I attend for a talk about mercury.

Image: Grains of sand from Ireland, candlelit, arranged with an acupuncture needle Jenny Natusch, www.sandgazer.com

The Arctic Circle

By: Jessa Gamble | February 19, 2016

On a slushy Ottawa night last week, I tromped into the Officer’s Mess of the Royal Canadian Air Force, here to attend the 513^th meeting of the Arctic Circle. When I moved north to Yellowknife ten years ago, my Aunt Diana wrote that her husband Graham would have been pleased I was living in the land he loved so well. He had been an Arctic explorer, as they called northern geographical and archaeological activities in those days. Diana said she had a group of friends who met every month to discuss the Arctic, and she encouraged me to attend if I had the chance.

It turns out her monthly meeting has been taking place since 1947 – almost 70 years! – and features speakers from every discipline relevant to the region. Around 30 people were ranged behind heavy wooden tables and the lecturer, Alexandra Steffen, was here to induct us into the secrets of quicksilver – specifically the methylated form of mercury that causes havoc in growing human brains after bioaccumulating in the marine food chain. Continue reading →

The Story I Never Wrote

By: Rose Eveleth | February 18, 2016

Syrian tower

Last year, I abandoned a story. It happens, journalists don’t write every story they think they might. But this one I still think about.

It started innocuously enough. A paper caught my eye about looting and archaeology. The premise was somewhat counterintuitive: the author argued that in places where the economic situation was particularly dire, looters were looting because they had no other way to make money. I started reading other papers on looting and ethics. His cut against a lot of the arguments, and it appealed to my upper middle class liberal sensibilities. How dare we, in the West, sip our Starbucks and pass judgement on what people should and should not do with their own heritage, when they have nothing else to live on?

I talked to the author of the paper over Skype chat. He was nice and clear and convincing. It was a good conversation. Everything was going well. Continue reading →

What Happened Next

By: Ann Finkbeiner | February 17, 2016

My husband died. He wasn’t young any more and was sick and weak but we weren’t expecting his death to come as quickly as it did, within a few days, almost overnight. He just went away. Maybe there are worse things than a quick, quiet death.

Here’s what happened next.

My brother and sister-in-law (who live a couple of hours away) called: We’ll be there tonight, and we’re staying until you make us leave.

A friend: I have some lentil soup, may I bring it over? And may I bring the rest of my family and we’ll all eat it together?

A neighbor: When you need to start sorting through things, may I help?

A friend: The kids and I are coming to Baltimore for the weekend. May I bring them and some pies, and come sit by the fire?

Empathy. Continue reading →

Simplify, Simplify

By: Michelle Nijhuis | February 16, 2016

I’ve owned only one copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and I’ve owned it since high school. It’s a 1980 Signet Classic paperback, original price $1.75. Inside the creased front cover, in ballpoint pen, a long-ago student has scrawled, “I want to go to sleep. I’ll never last 1 hr + 20 min reading!”

I wasn’t that student—I swear!—but I could have been. I love Thoreau like I love certain smart, cantankerous elderly relatives: I respect his brilliance, his mischief-making, and his preternatural foresight. I appreciate his sometimes obscure humor. I make allowances for the years between us. But even so, I sometimes have to stifle a yawn. I mean, the guy does go on.

Continue reading →

With the Grain

By: Cameron Walker | February 15, 2016

177718874_bfa2b98848_z There is a blue velour–covered box in my house marked with the face of a pirate and the word “Plunder.” Like any piratical treasure trove, there are golden coins inside. There are also marbles, leftover buttons, and crow feathers. Sometimes, I’m not quite sure what makes some of the things inside the box so valuable. But there are a few small bits of colored glass in there that give me the itchy fingers a pirate might have had when discovering a map with a large X on it and a promise of doubloons.

Sea glass comes from shards of glass—from bottles, from jars, from shipwrecks—that have been tumbled by waves, sanded by stone, and corroded by saltwater. Seeing a piece of glass on the shore feels like a kind of luck. Here’s something that the sea has worked so long to create (it may take 30 years or more). And it’s a journey completed: the glass in my hand was made with silica, the main ingredient of the sand to which it returned, in a different form. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Ann Finkbeiner | February 13, 2016

February 8 – 12, 2016

C’mon, Hollywood, get real, says Erik. Even a 12-year old can get out of those rope knots, let alone some grownup damsel on the railroad tracks, let alone Indiana Jones.

New era, new climate, so we need some new words. Michelle makes up some of such quality that they rival “subnivium;” she also wins Title of the Week: Antevernals in the Anthropocene.

Helen’s got the first runner-up for Title of the Week: Part 3 of the 2-part series on urban lichens. She just couldn’t let her go of her obsession, and now I do find myself looking closely at the neighboring trees.

Heard the claim of that our own immune systems can defeat our own cancers once too often? This time, says Jenny, it’s got a shot at being true.

Bride and groom plan destination wedding in the Domincan Republic. Zika virus shows up. What should bride and groom tell guests? Bride and groom learn risk analysis.