Writer, Podcast/Video/Web Producer, Coffee Connoisseur, Tinkerer.
One cell in 10,000
Most cancer cells can’t spread. Find those that can, and the disease could be a lot less deadly.
When Racism Was a Science
'Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office' Recreates a Dark Time in a Laboratory's Past.
An Atlas of Atlases
International collaborations are mapping the human body, atom by atom.
The Science of Dad and the ‘Father Effect’
If the scientific study of dads has taught us one thing, it’s that there are data-driven reasons why kids do better with father figures in their lives.
Junk Science Episode 13: Homeopathy
Homeopathy, the alternative medicine premised on diluting chemicals until they are effectively gone, is barely even junk science: it’s just water!
Building a better COVID test
How a small study of arthritis patients gave birth to the pandemic’s most innovative virus test.
Protecting Patients from Genetic Discrimination
Despite laws meant to protect US citizens from insurance discrimination due to their DNA, some still fear such judgment, while others claim they have experienced it.
Profile: New York City's 'Gay Health Warrior'
Demetre Daskalakis is an infectious disease physician who hung up his lab coat to bring HIV screening and counseling to Manhattan’s gay nightlife.
Does gravity make you age more slowly?
Einstein's theory of general relativity upended humanity's understanding of the universe more than a century ago, and since then, scientists have discovered that the steady march of time is anything but steady. Among the haunting implications of general relativity is that time passes more quickly at the top of every staircase in the world than it does at the bottom.
This mind-bending phenomenon happens because the closer an object is to Earth, the stronger the impacts of gravity are. And beca...
This Isn’t COVID’s First Million
Some time during the month of May 2022, the millionth U.S. inhabitant has died—or will die—of COVID-19. That grim milestone is both a cause for mourning those who passed and a chance to reflect on the enormity of the crisis.
How Gang-Affiliated, Amputee Teens Started a Scientific Civil War
There were far too many amputees—an unbelievably high number, in fact. And a veritable hoard of deaf teens who claimed to have never visited a dentist. And to be gay. And to be gang members. Something was amiss within the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.
Watch an ancient ice sheet cover the British Isles then vanish, in eerie time-lapse animation
In an animation that spans tens of thousands of years, an ancient ice sheet grows to envelope land masses that would one day be known as Great Britain and Ireland. After thousands of years elapse, the ice then retreats to expose the land once more.
Known as the British-Irish ice sheet, the frozen mass began its relentless march about 33,000 years ago. Around 10,000 years later, the land was covered in ice half a mile thick. But just 5,000 years after that, the glacier had melted away, vanishi...
Crows outthink monkeys, can grasp recursive patterns
Crows are notoriously clever — the songbirds can use tools, understand the concept of zero and follow basic analogies. Now, a new study suggests that their grasp of one complex cognitive principle in particular is better than that of monkeys and comparable to that of small children.
Researchers found that crows can distinguish paired elements buried in larger sequences, a cognitive ability known as recursion. Consider the sentence: "The cat the dog chased meowed." Although the sentence is adm...
Mind-controlling parasite turns wolves into pack leaders
Wolves infected with behavior-altering parasites are more likely to become pack leaders, or abandon their packs altogether, according to an analysis of more than 200 gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled parasite, pulls on the puppet strings of its hosts, goading them into pursuing risky behaviors.
"We identified a substantial increase in the odds of dispersal and of becoming a pack leader, both risky b...