Feb. 22 – 26, 2016 RadioLab doesn’t run climate change stories. Cassie asks her husband, who works for RadioLab, why not. Cassie’s husband explains about anti-stories. Cassie says, “what the hell.” Jennifer was out in the rain and cold, and was on the receiving end of kindness and empathy. She doesn’t care whether her kind […]
Miscellaneous
Being human is hard. Sometimes we treat each other poorly, putting our own feelings or wellbeing first. Mathematical-game models explain the logic behind selfish acts, suggesting that they often make the best sense. (Remember the Prisoners’ Dilemma?) But straight-up logic dismisses empathy. The truth is that deep down, and sometimes even up near the surface, we’re […]
This interview with Radiolab’s senior editor (also my husband) focuses on why the show hasn’t done a story on climate change. It originally ran on May 22, 2014. Since then, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad has spoken the words “climate change” on air . . . as part of an episode on nihilism. Progress? (The show is actually one of my very […]
February 15-19, 2016 Sea glass: a reworked human product returned to the sand from whence it was wrought. There’s less of it now, but you can tell a lot about its origins if you know what to look for. Designer and writer Matt Steel is working on a simplified version of Thoreau’s Walden, and Michelle […]
On a slushy Ottawa night last week, I tromped into the Officer’s Mess of the Royal Canadian Air Force, here to attend the 513th meeting of the Arctic Circle. When I moved north to Yellowknife ten years ago, my Aunt Diana wrote that her husband Graham would have been pleased I was living in the land he […]
I’ve owned only one copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and I’ve owned it since high school. It’s a 1980 Signet Classic paperback, original price $1.75. Inside the creased front cover, in ballpoint pen, a long-ago student has scrawled, “I want to go to sleep. I’ll never last 1 hr + 20 min reading!” I wasn’t that student—I […]
February 8 – 12, 2016 C’mon, Hollywood, get real, says Erik. Even a 12-year old can get out of those rope knots, let alone some grownup damsel on the railroad tracks, let alone Indiana Jones. New era, new climate, so we need some new words. Michelle makes up some of such quality that they rival […]
Eleven years ago this week, my 67-year-old mother died from a brain tumor. It was Glioblastoma multiforme, an insidious fourth-stage cancer that, without treatment, usually kills within three months. Treatment options are miserable for the patient and not terribly effective; for those who opt for surgery and radiation/chemo, the cancer almost always returns within a year […]
