Here is a list of some of the stories and books I have assigned to students over the years in my class, “Writing about Science, Medicine, and the Environment.” I picked them for examples of story-telling, explanation, and bringing humanity to complex subjects. ARTICLES: Ross Anderson, “Pleistocene Park” Burkhart Bilger…

These are notes for a class called “Writing about Science, Medicine, and the Environment,” which I have taught for several years at Yale. I update them here from time to time. They are published under Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-NC-ND) Structure In this class, we are writing stories. Without structure…

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity is available in paperback. This article, adapted from the book, originally appeared as the cover story in the May/June 2019 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. If someone says, “I guess it’s in my DNA,” you never hear people say…

A handful of criminal prosecutions have stalled because DNA tests cannot distinguish between suspects who are twins. Then scientists decided to create one. — One night in November 1999, a 26-year-old woman was raped in a parking lot in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Police officers managed to get the perpetrator’s DNA from a semen sample, but it matched no one in their databases. Detectives found no fingerprints at the scene and located no witnesses. The…

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, via RSS, etc.) In this episode, I spoke to Kate Adamala, a chemist at the University of Minnesota. In her Protobiology Lab, she is trying to build a…

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, via RSS, etc.) In this episode, I talked withDonato Giovannelli, an assistant professor at the University of Naples “Federico II.” …

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, via RSS, etc.) In this episode, I talked with Steven Benner, a scientist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, about how strange life can get. All the…

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, via RSS, etc.) In this episode, I spoke to Jeremy England, a physicist at MIT, about why life exists. …

“What Is Life?” is an eight-episode podcast series recorded in front of a live audience. (Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, via RSS, etc.) In this episode, I spoke to astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, the director of the Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University, about how life began. …