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 […]
Conversations
Helen and I argued about the Bay Area back in 2017. I mostly love it, she mostly does not. So, how have I not been there since late 2019?! (You know how.) I’m going back this weekend and I’ll see how the 2022 Bay compares to my happy memories and/or Helen’s less happy ones. * […]
Ann Finkbeiner: My son died, as did my husband; and so did parents and grandparents whom I loved dearly. I’ve written articles and LWON posts about grief, plus a book. So I consider myself a kind of expert, the kind who knows what she’s lived and read and what other people tell her. But I’ve […]
I go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall —what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do. (Mary Oliver, “I Go Down to the Shore”) You can listen […]
Most people don’t adopt a new manner of speech in their 40’s, so when my husband recently started using the phrase “y’all” I wondered what was up. It wasn’t like his Swiss parents taught him to use this slang, and he’d grown up in Colorado, where y’all is uttered only by Texas transplants. After hearing […]
Our Michelle wrote a book! It’s called Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, and it has already become beloved by the many readers and reviewers who have been talking about it even before the book came out March 9. The book chronicles the history of conservation and conservationists in the U.S., […]
The most striking thing about Konrad Steffen is not his accolades as one of the world’s leading cryosphere researchers, but how he could light a cigarette in a 60-mile-per-hour gale screaming across the ice. He’d duck into his shoulder with a lighter and in a second or two reappear with a glowing cherry. He held […]
I set down my pen next to a slug the other day, not your garden variety, but a beast of a banana slug near the central California coast under misty morning redwoods. The slug wasn’t so much lumbering as gliding at a hardly perceptible speed over dried leaves, under twigs. Setting the pen down, I […]
