How I Started the Iraq War (I Think)

For a lot of writers, there's no greater dream than to get onto the Colbert Report or the Daily Show.

This was not exactly how my dream was supposed to go:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Now, as the author of a book about science tattoos and articles on topics including exploding whales, jumping fleas, zombie cockroaches, and the sex-crazed flashes of fireflies, I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes like writing about things that may seem–at first–to be pure diversion.

But my hope is that there's more to the stories than an intriguing headline, an eye-catching opening photo, or, yes, a cute cover of a magazine. I hope readers can learn something surprisingly deep about how the world works.

The flashes of fireflies are one of the best examples of Darwin's ideas about how sex shapes nature. The parasitic wasps that make cockroaches their slaves have learned things about nervous systems that we humans do not yet understand. Learning about how whales survive deep dives can potentially give doctors clues about how to treat people who suffered from ...