Selected Writing

An unscientific assortment of features, essays, news and ideas pieces, and reviews I’ve written. Installments of The Synthesist, my column for OnEarth about the intersection of technology and nature, are available here.

The (New) Web of Life: All the known creatures on Earth may soon be a click away

OnEarth, Fall 2009

The Middle of Nowhere: What Alaska’s tundra is teaching scientists about climate change

OnEarth, Spring 2009

Welcome to My Paperless World

OnEarth, Fall 2008
Listen to an interview about it

The Wonder Land of Socotra, Yemen

The New York Times T Style Magazine: Travel, March 25, 2007

Interview with Will Wright: The master of the computer ‘god game’ tackles alien life and dreams up a world that would make Darwin drool

Discover Magazine, August 2006

The Lives They Lived: Miriam Rothschild

The New York Times Magazine, December 25, 2005

The Truth About Invasive Species: How to stop worrying and learn to love ecological intruders

Discover, May 2005

Seeding the Universe: The search for life on Mars could be a bit complicated by the hitchhikers on our rovers

Discover, October 2004

Gross Anatomy: Technology makes cadavers an art form and dissection uncomfortably real

Discover, March 2004

Socket To Me (The Biology of Batteries)

Discover, January 2004

Stopping Time: What can you do in a billionth of a billionth of a second?

Discover, June 2003

Why I Love Her

Glamour, February 2003

I Was DeNiro’s Leg: Tales from the parts-modeling industry

GQ, July 2002

Sheaves of Grass: The Re-opening of the New York Botanical Garden Library and Herbarium

Discover, May 2002

Four Ears to the Ground: For the elephant, the foot may be a powerful listening device

Natural History, April 2002

Here Comes the Sun: Get ready for space weather, the perfect foil for a new century’s ambitions

The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2001

Now Hear This: Listening back on a century of sound

Harper’s, July 2001

Name That Star! When our writer set out to hang his name upon a celestial body, he never imagined he would have to navigate such an Earthbound bureaucracy

Discover, February 2000