2014: A Storyful Year
Thanks to everyone for sharing a year of science with me over the course of 2014. It was a year of frantic writing, as I tried (and failed) to keep up with all of the new research that expanded my appreciation of the natural world. In addition to blogging here, I wrote my weekly “Matter” columns for the New York Times, published a few longer pieces, and spent time in Second Edition World, revising a couple of my books. (Details to come in a few months.)
Looking over the year, I put together a list of the pieces I was most fond of (plus some radio work). If you’re looking for some reading (or listening) to fill the languorous spaces between gift-opening and holiday-meal-snarfing, check these out…
From the Loom:
What Slipped Disks Tell Us About 700 Million Years of Evolution
Parasite Cuisine: Eating the Eaters
The Mystery of the Sea Unicorn
The Erotic Endurance of Whale Hips
How A Dog Has Lived For Eleven Thousand Years–In Other Dogs
From the New York Times:
White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier
The Strange Tale of a New Species of Lizard
Scientists Rein In Fears of Ebola, a Virus Whose Mysteries Tend to Invite Speculation
How Caffeine Evolved to Help Plants Survive and Help People Wake Up
Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself
Putting a Price Tag on Nature’s Defenses
In a First, Test of DNA Finds Root of Illness
Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging
The Continuing Evolution of Genes (See also this TED-Ed video for which I wrote the script, based on some the research in this article.)
Seeing X Chromosomes in a New Light
From around the longform universe:
Secrets of the Brain (National Geographic, February)
Why Do We Have Blood Types? (Mosaic, July 15)
The New Science of Evolutionary Forecasting (Quanta, July 14)
How Lives Became Long (the introduction to Rachel Sussman’s photography book, The Oldest Things in the World)
The spoken word:
Worth (Radiolab–I talked about putting a price tag on nature)
The Black Box (Radiolab–I talked about anesthesia and the mysteries of consciousness)
Translation (Radiolab–I talked about how we translate the messages in our genes into our biology)
Safety Carl Versus Gamera (Story Collider)
Darwin in the City (Harvard lecture)
My Guide to the Giant Sandworms of Dune (Studio 360)
Ebola and a Planet of Viruses (Radio Times on WHYY)
