In May of 2025, I went to Mountainfilm in Telluride with my BFF Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. We watched numerous amazing films, but there’s one that continues to haunt me, eight months later. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a documentary filmed by Pavel (Pasha) Talankin. Here’s the synopsis published in the festival guide: Pasha is a […]
Conversations
A conversation struck up at a writing workshop a few weeks ago between me and a computational biologist who studies the molecular biology and population genetics of the HIV virus and other virulent diseases including Ebola, Hepatitis, and Covid. She’s what you would call a veteran virus tracker, compiling and interpreting viral genetic sequences and […]
Hillary Rosner is a science journalist and editor who teaches journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also a friend and fellow member of Scilance, a network of 30+ science writers that has been meeting up online for 20 years. Over the years, I’ve loved following Hillary’s thoughtful, adventurous reporting on wildlife conservation, […]
ANN: Richard Panek has just published a book called The Pillars of Creation. It’s about the James Webb Space Telescope — which I call JWST and Richard calls Webb, and there’s a story behind that difference but it’s not relevant here — and how it got built and what it’s finding. And Richard, this is […]
Last week, I crabbed over papers at a late-night kitchen table while my very pregnant step daughter stood near me with her hands clasped atop the globe of her belly. She’d been pacing for most of an hour, not wanting to sleep or sit down. She wanted her pelvis as open as she could make […]
It’s hard to know what to say, every twist and turn becoming a knot. Forces are crashing, glass flying. I’m up in the mountains where ancient volcanoes choked themselves to death, then eroded for 30 million years into the throaty remnants of a Colorado hotspot. Forests have grown on the rubble and I’ve been walking […]
A coyote urine mark I investigated with my nostrils in the snow was lemony and oceanic with an aftertaste of burning sulfur and fetid saltwater. A healthy piss from a black bear in the sand I’d call oak barrel stank. I got my nose as close as I dared into the stained hole from the […]
I first met Our Jenny in 2010 (I think?), when I walked into her office at National Geographic to buy a lizard. It’s a cute story; we’ll tell it some other time. For now, all you need to know is that the reptile sale turned into a friendship, and then a collaboration, as I helped […]
