Interviews Archives - The Open Notebook

Interviews

Juli Berwald

Juli Berwald’s Life on the Rocks Meditates on Coral Reefs, Motherhood, and Battling the Unknown

In Life on the Rocks, scientist-turned-writer Juli Berwald paints a bittersweet portrait of coral reef loss and the scientists working against all odds to stop it. As she writes about corals, she weaves in pieces of her own life, as her work mothering a daughter battling mental illness becomes harder to separate from the science. Celia Ford spoke with Berwald about how to introduce personal narrative and vulnerability into science writing.

by Celia Ford · May 17, 2022 · 0 comments

Rachel E. Gross’s Vagina Obscura Traces the Scientific and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Anatomy

Rachel E. Gross’s Vagina Obscura Traces the Scientific and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Anatomy

In Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, Rachel E. Gross traces what science and medicine have gotten wrong about the vagina and its typical companion organs in the pelvis. In doing so, she took a linguistic journey of her own, navigating uncharted waters of the English language and retracing the racist and gendered history of how science and medicine have viewed the vagina and other organs of the pelvic region.

by Emily Willingham · March 29, 2022 · Comments are Disabled

Mahdi Garba and Modupe Abidakun on the Tragic Origins of Vaccine Hesitancy in Nigeria

Mahdi Garba and Modupe Abidakun on the Tragic Origins of Vaccine Hesitancy in Nigeria

In Kano State, Nigeria, vaccine hesitancy can, to some extent, be traced back to experiences people had during a 1996 meningitis outbreak, a drug trial, and the decade-long legal battle that followed. Nigerian journalists Mahdi Garba and Modupe Abidakun delved into this story for their 2021 feature in Unbias the News, “Vaccine Hesitancy—the Pfizer Kano Case.” Abdullahi Tsanni spoke with Garba and Abidakun about how they pitched, developed, and reported the feature together, and why the story was important to tell.

by Abdullahi Tsanni · March 15, 2022 · Comments are Disabled

Fredrick Mugira

Fredrick Mugira “Defamiliarizes” Stories of the Nile

Ugandan journalist Fredrick Mugira’s Water Journalists Africa network offers more than 700 members the opportunity to cover underreported stories on the continent, especially in the conflict-prone Nile region. InfoNile, the network’s flagship project, funds journalistic works that would have otherwise been difficult to produce due to economic constraints. InfoNile also mentors and encourages journalists to use data visualization, maps, and other multimedia approaches to contextualize stories related to the river that traverses 11 countries.

by Abhaya Raj Joshi · February 1, 2022 · Comments are Disabled

Rosanna Xia

Rosanna Xia Unearths the Story of a Decades-Old DDT Dump off California’s Coast

The waters off Southern California’s picture-perfect Catalina Island conceal a toxic cache from decades ago: submerged barrels seeping DDT on the seafloor. In a longform story for the Los Angeles Times, Rosanna Xia explores the forgotten history behind this pesticide-polluted waste, which might number up to half a million barrels. Her story spotlights scientists’ emotional reactions to the scale of the pollution and compels readers to sit with the uncertainty surrounding legacy contamination.

by Carolyn Wilke · January 18, 2022 · Comments are Disabled

Chris Muronzi

Chris Muronzi on Covering the Women Battling “Man-Made Starvation” in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean journalist Chris Muronzi shares his journey of writing about a group of Mwenezi women who tackled food insecurity in their region. His story for Climate Home News chronicles resilience and community-based solutions in the face of climate change, hunger, and an oppressive economy.

by Aishwarya Jagani · December 14, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Emily Atkin Talks about Objectivity and Covering the Climate Crisis

Emily Atkin Talks about Objectivity and Covering the Climate Crisis

Catastrophic flooding in Germany, China, and the East Coast of the United States. Record-setting wildfires from California to Greece. Heat domes cooking marine life to death. All of these are signs that climate change is already here. How to report on it is a question that environmental writer Emily Atkin has been asking herself for nearly a decade. Atkin, founder of the newsletter Heated, shares her thoughts on what it means to report truthfully on a global crisis.

by María Paula Rubiano A. · October 26, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Frank Matt

Frank Matt on Visualizing the Scale of the World’s Water Crisis

Frank Matt is a producer of the documentary series Explained from Vox and Netflix. In this interview, Pedro Márquez-Zacarías asks Matt about his work on “World’s Water Crisis,” an episode of the series, to explore aspects of the craft of science video journalism. For Matt, a key to tackling such a global issue is to anchor the story in local struggles, which can make the story more personal.

by Pedro Márquez-Zacarías · October 19, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Geoffrey Kamadi

Geoffrey Kamadi Looks into a Threatened River Ecosystem in Kenya

In December 2020, Kenyan freelance science journalist Geoffrey Kamadi won the gold award in the small-outlet category of the 2020 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards for his investigative story for Science Africa, “Tana River Basin under Threat.” For his story, Kamadi traveled to the Tana River Delta, where he meets farmers whose livelihoods have been greatly damaged, listening to their stories of yellowing banana plants and reduced rice production.

by Abdullahi Tsanni · June 1, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Latria Graham

Latria Graham Rewrites the Narrative on Being Black in the Outdoors

Two of Latria Graham’s best-recognized stories detail, for Outside magazine, her personal reckonings with being a Black woman experiencing and writing about the outdoors. The second, entitled “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream,” is a piece that “cost me a piece of my soul that I will never get back,” she says. Here, Graham speaks with science writer Eva Legge on how she balances her well-being with the emotional toll of reporting on race.

by Eva Legge · May 25, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

David Quammen

David Quammen on Traveling into the Past to Cover the Pandemic

No journalist understands the complexities of zoonotic diseases quite like David Quammen. In 2012, he published Spillover, a book predicting the arrival of a terrible pandemic, spurred by a novel virus passing from animals to humans. For that project, he traveled to remote villages, walked through forests, and crawled in caves looking for answers. But when the world-changing pandemic finally arrived, it brought a new challenge: He had to cover it from home.

by María Paula Rubiano A. · May 18, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Sarah Zhang

Sarah Zhang Probes the Dwindling Number of Children Born with Down Syndrome

Rapidly advancing prenatal testing technology may soon hand parents the routine decision of what kind of child they will, or won’t, bring into the world. A prime example is Down syndrome, where in countries like Denmark, a majority of families who receive a prenatal diagnosis of the condition decide to end their pregnancies. Atlantic reporter Sarah Zhang recounts how she found a fresh way to report on Down syndrome and how she got parents to open up to her.

by Jeanne Erdmann · April 6, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Jessica Wapner’s Wall Disease Unravels How Border Walls Affect the Mind

Jessica Wapner’s Wall Disease Unravels How Border Walls Affect the Mind

In her short book Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border, published in October 2020, science journalist Jessica Wapner explores how living by a border changes people. In this interview, Wapner talks with Rodrigo Pérez Ortega about her motivation to disentangle the effects of walls on people’s brains, the process of writing a book during a pandemic, and the many shades of “wall disease” that affect the communities that live near walls.

by Rodrigo Pérez Ortega · March 2, 2021 · Comments are Disabled

Shayla Love Tackles the Biggest Taboo of All

Vice staff writer Shayla Love was surprised to hear about the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial of a treatment for pedophilia. To learn more about why it had taken so long to reach this milestone, she contacted researchers and reached out to pedophiles who had pledged to never abuse children. Her resulting article provoked outrage. This backlash mirrored the stigma and isolation experienced by people who desperately want help but are unable to access it.

by Christine Ro · December 8, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character Recounts the Story of J.B.S. Haldane, Whose Life Was Torn between Scientific Integrity and Political Loyalty

Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character Recounts the Story of J.B.S. Haldane, Whose Life Was Torn between Scientific Integrity and Political Loyalty

For a large part of his life, J. B. S. Haldane was an unwavering devotee of science. Then, in 1948, as one of the foremost geneticists on the planet, Haldane was called upon to comment on a shaky Soviet scientist. Haldane picked political loyalty over scientific integrity. Through this puncture, Subramanian peers into Haldane’s life and chronicles his ideas about sciences, politics, and the vast and vivid sweep of his life.

by Pratik Pawar · October 27, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Meehan Crist

Meehan Crist Explores the Ethics of Having Children in the Era of Climate Change

In March, a lecture Meehan Crist had given in London was adapted into an essay called “Is It OK to Have a Child?” In the piece, which grapples with the ethics of having children in the era of climate change, Crist embarks on a fraught discussion about parenthood, crisis, and, ultimately, individual empowerment. Here, she discusses her inspiration, the stumbling blocks she hit along the way, and the process of grounding the difficult subject of climate change in personal narrative.

by Katherine J. Wu · August 4, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Stephanie Lee

Stephanie Lee Unravels the Conflicts of Interest Behind a Controversial COVID-19 Study

In May, BuzzFeed News reporter Stephanie Lee broke a massive story based on a whistleblower complaint, filed with Stanford University, criticizing the researchers behind a controversial study on COVID-19 antibody testing. The lengthy document revealed that JetBlue’s founder, a known critic of ongoing economic shutdowns, had financially backed the research. It also noted that the scientists who had compiled the data had ignored concerns from their colleagues about the reliability of the antibody test their results were based on. Here, Lee explains how her story unfolded—and why she can’t reveal much about the original tip.

by Katherine J. Wu · June 23, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

A.J. Hostetler on Mentoring Interns and Writing for Tony Fauci’s Aunt

A.J. Hostetler on Mentoring Interns and Writing for Tony Fauci’s Aunt

“Tell stories like you’re writing for Tony Fauci’s aunt.” That advice from my first mentor, A.J. Hostetler, has stuck with me for more than 20 years. And these days it comes to mind whenever I see Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in the news talking about coronavirus.

“It’s my first law of science writing,” A.J. told me recently.

by Siri Carpenter · June 17, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Amber Gibson (left) and Cassandra Willyard

Amber Gibson and Cassandra Willyard Investigate Abuse of Medical Residents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In some academic hospitals, medical residents treating COVID-19 patients have faced an overwhelming caseload of patients, working brutally long shifts with inadequate protective gear and little to no help from supervising physicians. Journalists Amber Gibson and Cassandra Willyard teamed up to investigate abuse of medical residents in “COVID-19 Crisis Exposes Resident Abuse,” published at Medscape on April 28.

by Jeanne Erdmann · June 8, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Amy Maxmen Unveils Scientific Roadblocks Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

In covering infectious disease, Nature senior reporter Amy Maxmen keeps the focus on the scientists behind new discoveries. Six years after she wrote about the Ebola outbreak that began in West Africa in 2014, Maxmen is once again writing about a viral pandemic. Here, she tells Katherine J. Wu about finding unique angles on COVID-19, how her experiences with Ebola reporting have informed her journalism, and how a borrowed Chihuahua is helping her get through the pandemic.

by Katherine J. Wu · June 2, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Taylor Quimby

Taylor Quimby Burrows into Lyme Disease in the Podcast Patient Zero

When reporter Taylor Quimby delved into the confusing, complicated world of Lyme disease for his documentary podcast Patient Zero, he learned a lot about what tracing a disease looked like. The goal of Quimby’s seven-part miniseries was to explore Lyme and how the medical establishment handled it, while lending sound to what has often been called a “silent disease.” Quimby spoke to Shira Feder about how he gained sources’ trust, how he employed sound effects, and how he figured out how to tell the story of a complicated medical mystery in audio form.

by Shira Feder · May 19, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Lane DeGregory

Lane DeGregory Follows a Family Waiting for a Medical Miracle

Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory spent three years with a family as they waited for a medical miracle. DeGregory shares how she distilled 42 legal pads of reporting into “Lincoln’s Shot,” an eight-part series that is intimate yet comprehensive.

by Jennifer Lu · May 12, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Martin Enserink

Martin Enserink Discusses the Sobering Impact of Covering Disease Research

These days, Science staff editor Martin Enserink is busy editing stories about COVID-19, but two years ago he was immersed in writing a feature about a Spanish doctor’s efforts in Papua New Guinea to eradicate an infectious disease called yaws. This is a scourge many people haven’t even heard of, but for those affected, it can be devastating. Enserink didn’t know how long or emotional the journey would become.

by Sally James · May 5, 2020 · Comments are Disabled

Annie Jacobsen on the Stories behind Secretive Government Research Programs

Annie Jacobsen on the Stories behind Secretive Government Research Programs

Annie Jacobsen’s reporting has illuminated some of the more clandestine—and sometimes scientifically and ethically murky—research projects undertaken by the United States military and intelligence agencies. Here, she talks with Greg Miller about cultivating sources with knowledge of secretive government programs, using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to get documents declassified, and writing for television.

by Greg Miller · April 28, 2020 · Comments are Disabled