We’re so pleased that Emma Marris — author, journalist, interesting thinker, and LWON guest poster — has agreed to join us as a regular contributor. Emma is the author of Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, and she’s written for National Geographic, Nature, Slate, and other publications. She recently gave an excellent TED…
Recently, and to much engagement-baiting fanfare, the New York Times published its list of the best books of the 21st century. As with any such list, it was riddled with omissions, both benign (whither Anthony Doerr, Madeline Miller, and Lauren Groff?) and insidious (outrageously, not a single Native American author made the cut). I was…
Bryn Nelson is a Seattle-based science writer whose book, Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure, came out September 13. Yes, that’s right–it’s a book about poop. So of course, Helen and Cameron wanted to take a deep dive into this important (seriously!) topic. Here’s our conversation with Bryn, which has been lightly edited…
Just before the turn of the new year, E.O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy, two of the world’s most celebrated biologists, passed away within a day of each other. That they left the world together felt fitting, given the extraordinary interplay between their work. It was Wilson, after all, who, in a series of mad, ingenious…
We’ve done this before, talked about the books we’ve liked. Here are our lists from years gone by. And if you should be so moved, we also offer books we ourselves have written. Helen: The most entertaining reading I’ve done lately is a pair of young adult novels set in the near future: Catfishing on…
Two weeks ago, late to the zeitgeist as ever, I watched My Octopus Teacher, the Oscar-winning documentary about a relationship between a human and a cephalopod. Probably you’ve seen it (and if not, you should!), but, in brief, it’s about the yearlong friendship filmmaker Craig Foster strikes up with a female common octopus who lives…
The world feels more dizzying every day. Last weekend, I sat in front of my computer, scrolling through article after article detailing massive societal problems: police brutality and system racism; this pandemic; another pandemic brewing in pigs?; rising sea levels; corrupt government officials and what appears to be the sun setting on democracy. Welp, I…
Yesterday we turned 10, which is like 120 in blog years. We’re celebrating all week with postcards we wrote to ourselves in May of 2010. Today Ann, Emma, and Cassie report back on the present to their younger selves, or at least offer a warning. Ann Finkbeiner In May, 2010, I was wondering whether the…