The world has lost a truly splendid photographer — Anja Niedringhaus, murdered this week in Afghanistan. This was a determined, brave journalist and an unbelievably sensitive artist, finely attuned to both the technical demands and possibilities of every image and, even more exquisitely, the humanity of those in the frame. This is a terrible, terrible loss. […]
Continue reading →Monday, April 7, 5 pm, at the University of Vermont, I’ll talk about how to shape a mess of reading and reporting into a magazine story — specifically, “Beautiful Brains,” my National Geographic cover story about adolescent brain and behavior. If you’re around Burlington, come join us. Event is free and open to the public. Here’s […]
Continue reading →The brain craze was bound to go through the usual hype cycle, so we shouldn’t be surprised that some of us are rolling back our enthusiasms for brain-based explanations of, well, everything. Welcome to those slippery slopes between the peak of inflated expectations and the slope of enlightenment. And welcome, too, to reconsiderations like that […]
Continue reading →Quick publicity note: Snap Judgment, the popular NPR story-telling show and podcast, has a segment this week in which I describe how I uncovered the story that became “My Mother’s Lover,” the Atavist story that became a #1 best-selling Kindle Single. You can find the Snap Judgment segment here. You can read the story itself […]
Continue reading →In his fine short Leonardo da Vinci: A Life, for Penguin’s Penguin Lives series, Sherwin Nuland wonders if there are times when good scientists or entire disciplines, psychology among them, sound idiotic in their speculations because the empirical underpinnings of their fields are simply not yet in place. [Leonardo] has been criticized, now and in […]
Continue reading →To Joshua Rothman, over at The New Yorker, “The Triple Package” might not be convincing as an argument about “the rise and fall of cultural groups in America,” but it’s valuable in another way: it offers a fascinating window onto a particular interpretation of family life. In this interpretation, parents see themselves as dangerous risk-takers […]
Continue reading →I have loved Texas Monthly ever since my parents, third-generation Texans raising me in Houston, were wise enough to be among the magazine’s first subscribers. So you betch yer ass I was glad to see the magazine once again among the best of the week as curated by the good folk at Longreads. Here’s a snip […]
Continue reading →Some I read and liked, others just look good. Not news: Most of us carry Neanderthal genes. News: Collectively we carry about 20 percent of the Neanderthal’s genome. As Ed Yong explains, the influence is huge, and will take time to sort out. Meanwhile, the technique that spotted this may — may — allow us to […]
Continue reading →Last year I talked to a primatologist in his mid-80s, still sharp, still in his office most days, a pleasant spot in California, surrounded by his books and by younger colleagues who adored him. He wore khakis and a red plaid shirt and desert boots — I didn’t know you could even find desert boots […]
Continue reading →I’ve been combing through various of the Paris Review “Writers At Work” interviews, which are spectacular. William Faulkner looks like a pretty tough assignment. INTERVIEWER Mr. Faulkner, you were saying a while ago that you don’t like interviews. WILLIAM FAULKNER The reason I don’t like interviews is that I seem to react violently to personal […]
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