In 2016 my editor assigned me an article about a then-recently identified genetic association between three medical conditions: postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), hypermobile Ehlers Danlos syndrome (hEDS), and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). As it so happens, I have all three of these. After minimal reflection, I decided to take a journalistic risk and […]
On Writing
The historian of science Owen Gingerich died on May 28. We’re re-posting this essay, which originally appeared on June 10, 2011, because it involves the author’s personal encounter with him. The references to dates (e.g., “A few months ago”) remain as in the original post. The 16-year-old student has an idea, but she doesn’t have […]
This is Part 2 of my interview with Jennifer Lunden, author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life. You can read Part 1 here. Kate: The main thing I took away from your early advice to me about book writing was “buy yourself […]
I’ve been talking with other writers about AI. We huddle in our conversations like anarchists. Some have been using ChatGBT as a tool and are quite happy. Some fear for their careers and think recent, rapid advances in large language models are very, very bad. I’ve turned off autocorrect on my computer. Is that enough? […]
Profiling someone who is widely and wildly admired is harder than it ought to be. The word, hagiography, is not a compliment. What’s wrong with an objective profile of someone who’s practically a saint? I still don’t know. These two people here have since died and the world is less shiny for their not being […]
I grew up sewing most of my own clothes and developed an abiding and expensive fixation on beautiful fabric. Once I was in Florence at a store buying fabric, textiles (tessuti), as a gift for my mother. I stipulated in toddler-Italian a light wool (leggera lana) in blue (blu) for a dress for my mother […]
After a long, miserable summer of illness, I’m back, and I’ve got something extra-marvelous to share: an interview with Sabrina Imbler (they/them), a fellow poet/essayist/science writer and the author of the forthcoming collection HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. Our conversation about writing, publishing, and (what else?) marine invertebrates was […]
Ann: Nine, or who’s counting, ten years ago the consummate professional and pot-stirrer, Dan Vergano, and I posted a conversation about the science writer’s sad place in the media. Dan called this place the science ghetto, though I’m pretty sure we can come up with a better term — a bubble? A walled garden? The […]