Jon Mooallem is fascinated by the relationships between humans and other animals, a topic he explores in his 2013 book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at […]
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum’s five books have immersed her in the worlds of animal rights, the psychology of affection, the neurology of sex, the search for paranormal phenomena, and the chemistry of poisons. Her New York […]
The lionfish, a common aquarium fish native to the Indo-Pacific region, has become an invasive species in the Caribbean and southern U.S. Atlantic coast, where its voracious appetite for young grouper and snapper is endangering populations of these economically-important […]
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, hijackers commandeered U.S. flights on an almost regular basis. And the hijackers themselves were usually American: often idealistic and sometimes mentally unstable protesters, or, later, the down-and-out intent […]
Peggy Battin, a bioethicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, has long believed that the chronically ill and suffering should be able to choose to end their lives. She spent decades writing […]
On dozens of islands throughout the world, a little-known group of conservationists is waging a high-stakes war against invasive species in an effort to restore frayed and altered ecosystems to their once-upon-a-time states. But this […]
In 1973, Richard Todd was a young editor at The Atlantic. His boss, The Atlantic‘s editor-in-chief Bob Manning, had just handed him a manuscript with a note scrawled across the top, “Let’s face it, this fellow […]
In 2005, Kendall Powell founded SciLance, an online community of 35 science writers, as a way to keep in touch with the colleagues she had met at conferences. The initial invitation to the group described it […]
The criminal justice system has long relied on scientists—and especially psychologists—to make some of the most crucial assessments about defendants. Is this person fit to stand trial? Should the so-called insanity defense be applied? In […]
A dinosaur known as Tarbosaurus bataar once roamed what is now Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. About seventy million years later, its fossilized bones turned up at an auction in New York City, placing it at the […]
Some people fret over the chances that lightning might strike the same place twice. After three summers trailing lightning-chaser Tim Samaras on a unique photographic quest, science writer George Johnson would perhaps have been content […]
Scientists’ students grow up to be scientists in their own right and train students to follow in their own footsteps. This sociological fact of science gets lost in most journalism. Ed Yong decided to rectify this wrong with a Nature piece in which he profiled ecologist Robert Paine, who in the 1960s changed the way we think about the natural world, and who also trained some of the most influential ecologists of later generations. Here, Yong talks about the challenge of the task.
Science journalist Maryn McKenna has covered the infectious diseases beat for more than a decade. During that time, she’s written countless articles and two award-winning books on the subject. Through her reporting, she developed an interest […]
Last week, we published the transcript of a discussion between David Dobbs and David Quammen that we sponsored at last year’s National Association of Science Writers meeting. Today, we present Part II of the […]
On Tuesday, we posted an edited transcript of an interview that TON contributor David Dobbs conducted with author David Quammen. This conversation took place before a live audience at a TON event at the ScienceWriters meeting in […]
David Quammen has been one of the world’s leading science writers for over a quarter century, with eight acclaimed nonfiction books, including the iconic The Song of the Dodo, as well as four novels. […]
While Cynthia Graber isn’t new to reporting on regenerative medicine, her interview with Tufts University biologist Michael Levin led to some unexpected stories. In research that recalls the toils of Dr. Frankenstein, Levin uses […]
When Washington Post science writer Brian Vastag found Ray Stanford, an amateur dinosaur footprint tracker in the Washington, DC suburbs who had found an unusual baby dinosaur footprint, he thought he had stumbled upon a […]
“For such an enormously popular feature of the human race,” writes Florence Williams in Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, “it’s remarkable how little we know about their basic biology.” Breasts make us mammals, says […]
Of all mental disorders, none elicits more revulsion or less sympathy than psychopathy. Psychopathy is widely considered incurable, but some researchers have theorized that it might be possible to treat “fledgling psychopaths” if they can be identified early enough. In a much-discussed 2012 New York Times Magazine story, journalist Jennifer Kahn examined this controversial idea. Here, she tells the story behind her story.
For many people in the developing world who are mentally ill, psychiatric care is little more than a prison sentence. In one corner of Indonesia, that’s beginning to change, thanks in part to the 2004 […]
A good profile of a scientist goes beyond the science itself—and that’s why Helen Pearson’s ears perked up when she learned the personal story of Joe Thornton, a University of Oregon evolutionary biologist whose first […]
The three cosmologists who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for the 1998 discovery of the accelerating universe were only a few of the dozens of scientists, working on two competing teams, who contributed […]
Clever Apes, a science series that airs on the Chicago public radio station WBEZ, won the 2011 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Radio category. Gabriel Spitzer, host and founder of the show, created […]
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 1, 2020
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