Podcasts about knight science journalism fellow

An avalanche of information besets us on what to eat. It comes from the news, from influencers of every ilk, from scientists, from government, and of course from the food companies. Super foods? Ultra-processed foods? How does one find a source of trust and make intelligent choices for both us as individuals and for the society as a whole. A new book helps in this quest, a book entitled Food Intelligence: the Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us. It is written by two highly credible and thoughtful people who join us today.Julia Belluz is a journalist and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She reports on medicine, nutrition, and public health. She's been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and holds a master's in science degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Kevin Hall trained as a physicist as best known for pioneering work on nutrition, including research he did as senior investigator and section chief at the National Institutes of Health. His work is highly regarded. He's won awards from the NIH, from the American Society of Nutrition, the Obesity Society and the American Physiological Society. Interview Transcript Thank you both very much for being with us. And not only for being with us, but writing such an interesting book. I was really eager to read it and there's a lot in there that people don't usually come across in their normal journeys through the nutrition world. So, Julia, start off if you wouldn't mind telling us what the impetus was for you and Kevin to do this book with everything else that's out there. Yes, so there's just, I think, an absolute avalanche of information as you say about nutrition and people making claims about how to optimize diet and how best to lose or manage weight. And I think what we both felt was missing from that conversation was a real examination of how do we know what we know and kind of foundational ideas in this space. You hear a lot about how to boost or speed up your metabolism, but people don't know what metabolism is anyway. You hear a lot about how you need to maximize your protein, but what is protein doing in the body and where did that idea come from? And so, we were trying to really pair back. And I think this is where Kevin's physics training was so wonderful. We were trying to look at like what are these fundamental laws and truths. Things that we know about food and nutrition and how it works in us, and what can we tell people about them. And as we kind of went through that journey it very quickly ended up in an argument about the food environment, which I know we're going to get to. We will. It's really interesting. This idea of how do we know what we know is really fascinating because when you go out there, people kind of tell us what we know. Or at least what they think what we know. But very few people go through that journey of how did we get there. And so people can decide on their own is this a credible form of knowledge that I'm being told to pursue. So Kevin, what do you mean by food intelligence? Coming from a completely different background in physics where even as we learn about the fundamental laws of physics, it's always in this historical context about how we know what we know and what were the kind of key experiments along the way. And even with that sort of background, I had almost no idea about what happened to food once we ate it inside our bodies. I only got into this field by a happenstance series of events, which is probably too long to talk about this podcast. But to get people to have an appreciation from the basic science about what is going on inside our bodies when we eat. What is food made out of? As best as we can understand at this current time, how does our body deal with. Our food and with that sort of basic knowledge about how we know what we know. How to not be fooled by these various sound bites that we'll hear from social media influencers telling you that everything that you knew about nutrition is wrong. And they've been hiding this one secret from you that's been keeping you sick for so long to basically be able to see through those kinds of claims and have a bedrock of knowledge upon which to kind of evaluate those things. That's what we mean by food intelligence. It makes sense. Now, I'm assuming that food intelligence is sort of psychological and biological at the same time, isn't it? Because that there's what you're being told and how do you process that information and make wise choices. But there's also an intelligence the body has and how to deal with the food that it's receiving. And that can get fooled too by different things that are coming at it from different types of foods and stuff. We'll get to that in a minute, but it's a very interesting concept you have, and wouldn't it be great if we could all make intelligent choices? Julia, you mentioned the food environment. How would you describe the modern food environment and how does it shape the choices we make? It's almost embarrassing to have this question coming from you because so much of our understanding and thinking about this idea came from you. So, thank you for your work. I feel like you should be answering this question. But I think one of the big aha moments I had in the book research was talking to a neuroscientist, who said the problem in and of itself isn't like the brownies and the pizza and the chips. It's the ubiquity of them. It's that they're most of what's available, along with other less nutritious ultra-processed foods. They're the most accessible. They're the cheapest. They're kind of heavily marketed. They're in our face and the stuff that we really ought to be eating more of, we all know we ought to be eating more of, the fruits and vegetables, fresh or frozen. The legumes, whole grains. They're the least available. They're the hardest to come by. They're the least accessible. They're the most expensive. And so that I think kind of sums up what it means to live in the modern food environment. The deck is stacked against most of us. The least healthy options are the ones that we're inundated by. And to kind of navigate that, you need a lot of resources, wherewithal, a lot of thought, a lot of time. And I think that's kind of where we came out thinking about it. But if anyone is interested in knowing more, they need to read your book Food Fight, because I think that's a great encapsulation of where we still are basically. Well, Julie, it's nice of you to say that. You know what you reminded me one time I was on a panel and a speaker asks the audience, how many minutes do you live from a Dunkin Donuts? And people sort of thought about it and nobody was more than about five minutes from a Dunkin Donuts. And if I think about where I live in North Carolina, a typical place to live, I'm assuming in America. And boy, within about five minutes, 10 minutes from my house, there's so many fast-food places. And then if you add to that the gas stations that have foods and the drug store that has foods. Not to mention the supermarkets. It's just a remarkable environment out there. And boy, you have to have kind of iron willpower to not stop and want that food. And then once it hits your body, then all heck breaks loose. It's a crazy, crazy environment, isn't it? Kevin, talk to us, if you will, about when this food environment collides with human biology. And what happens to normal biological processes that tell us how much we should eat, when we should stop, what we should eat, and things like that. I think that that is one of the newer pieces that we're really just getting a handle on some of the science. It's been observed for long periods of time that if you change a rat's food environment like Tony Sclafani did many, many years ago. That rats aren't trying to maintain their weight. They're not trying to do anything other than eat whatever they feel like. And, he was having a hard time getting rats to fatten up on a high fat diet. And he gave them this so-called supermarket diet or cafeteria diet composed of mainly human foods. And they gained a ton of weight. And I think that pointed to the fact that it's not that these rats lacked willpower or something like that. That they weren't making these conscious choices in the same way that we often think humans are entirely under their conscious control about what we're doing when we make our food choices. And therefore, we criticize people as having weak willpower when they're not able to choose a healthier diet in the face of the food environment. I think the newer piece that we're sort of only beginning to understand is how is it that that food environment and the foods that we eat might be changing this internal symphony of signals that's coming from our guts, from the hormones in our blood, to our brains and the understanding that of food intake. While you might have control over an individual meal and how much you eat in that individual meal is under biological control. And what are the neural systems and how do they work inside our brains in communicating with our bodies and our environment as a whole to shift the sort of balance point where body weight is being regulated. To try to better understand this really intricate interconnection or interaction between our genes, which are very different between people. And thousands of different genes contributing to determining heritability of body size in a given environment and how those genes are making us more or less susceptible to these differences in the food environment. And what's the underlying biology? I'd be lying to say if that we have that worked out. I think we're really beginning to understand that, but I hope what the book can give people is an appreciation for the complexity of those internal signals and that they exist. And that food intake isn't entirely under our control. And that we're beginning to unpack the science of how those interactions work. It's incredibly interesting. I agree with you on that. I have a slide that I bet I've shown a thousand times in talks that I think Tony Sclafani gave me decades ago that shows laboratory rats standing in front of a pile of these supermarket foods. And people would say, well, of course you're going to get overweight if that's all you eat. But animals would eat a healthy diet if access to it. But what they did was they had the pellets of the healthy rat chow sitting right in that pile. Exactly. And the animals ignore that and overeat the unhealthy food. And then you have this metabolic havoc occur. So, it seems like the biology we've all inherited works pretty well if you have foods that we've inherited from the natural environment. But when things become pretty unnatural and we have all these concoctions and chemicals that comprise the modern food environment the system really breaks down, doesn't it? Yeah. And I think that a lot of people are often swayed by the idea as well. Those foods just taste better and that might be part of it. But I think that what we've come to realize, even in our human experiments where we change people's food environments... not to the same extent that Tony Sclafani did with his rats, but for a month at a time where we ask people to not be trying to gain or lose weight. And we match certain food environments for various nutrients of concern. You know, they overeat diets that are higher in these so-called ultra-processed foods and they'd spontaneously lose weight when we remove those from the diet. And they're not saying that the foods are any more or less pleasant to eat. There's this underlying sort of the liking of foods is somewhat separate from the wanting of foods as neuroscientists are beginning to understand the different neural pathways that are involved in motivation and reward as opposed to the sort of just the hedonic liking of foods. Even the simple explanation of 'oh yeah, the rats just like the food more' that doesn't seem to be fully explaining why we have these behaviors. Why it's more complicated than a lot of people make out. Let's talk about ultra-processed foods and boy, I've got two wonderful people to talk to about that topic. Julia, let's start with your opinion on this. So tell us about ultra-processed foods and how much of the modern diet do they occupy? So ultra-processed foods. Obviously there's an academic definition and there's a lot of debate about defining this category of foods, including in the US by the Health and Human Services. But the way I think about it is like, these are foods that contain ingredients that you don't use in your home kitchen. They're typically cooked. Concocted in factories. And they now make up, I think it's like 60% of the calories that are consumed in America and in other similar high-income countries. And a lot of these foods are what researchers would also call hyper palatable. They're crossing these pairs of nutrient thresholds like carbohydrate, salt, sugar, fat. These pairs that don't typically exist in nature. So, for the reasons you were just discussing they seem to be particularly alluring to people. They're again just like absolutely ubiquitous and in these more developed contexts, like in the US and in the UK in particular. They've displaced a lot of what we would think of as more traditional food ways or ways that people were eating. So that's sort of how I think about them. You know, if you go to a supermarket these days, it's pretty hard to find a part of the supermarket that doesn't have these foods. You know, whole entire aisles of processed cereals and candies and chips and soft drinks and yogurts, frozen foods, yogurts. I mean, it's just, it's all over the place. And you know, given that if the average is 60% of calories, and there are plenty of people out there who aren't eating any of that stuff at all. For the other people who are, the number is way higher. And that, of course, is of great concern. So there have been hundreds of studies now on ultra-processed foods. It was a concept born not that long ago. And there's been an explosion of science and that's all for the good, I think, on these ultra-processed foods. And perhaps of all those studies, the one discussed most is one that you did, Kevin. And because it was exquisitely controlled and it also produced pretty striking findings. Would you describe that original study you did and what you found? Sure. So, the basic idea was one of the challenges that we have in nutrition science is accurately measuring how many calories people eat. And the best way to do that is to basically bring people into a laboratory and measure. Give them a test meal and measure how many calories they eat. Most studies of that sort last for maybe a day or two. But I always suspected that people could game the system if for a day or two, it's probably not that hard to behave the way that the researcher wants, or the subject wants to deceive the researcher. We decided that what we wanted to do was bring people into the NIH Clinical Center. Live with us for a month. And in two two-week blocks, we decided that we would present them with two different food environments essentially that both provided double the number of calories that they would require to maintain their body weight. Give them very simple instructions. Eat as much or as little as you'd like. Don't be trying to change your weight. We're not going to tell you necessarily what the study's about. We're going to measure lots of different things. And they're blinded to their weight measurements and they're wearing loose fitting scrubs and things like that, so they can't tell if their clothes are getting tighter or looser. And so, what we did is in for one two-week block, we presented people with the same number of calories, the same amount of sugar and fat and carbs and fiber. And we gave them a diet that was composed of 80% of calories coming from these ultra-processed foods. And the other case, we gave them a diet that was composed of 0% of calories from ultra-processed food and 80% of the so-called minimally processed food group. And what we then did was just measured people's leftovers essentially. And I say we, it was really the chefs and the dieticians at the clinical center who are doing all the legwork on this. But what we found was pretty striking, which was that when people were exposed to this highly ultra-processed food environment, despite being matched for these various nutrients of concern, they overate calories. Eating about 500 calories per day on average, more than the same people in the minimally processed diet condition. And they gained weight and gained body fat. And, when they were in the minimally processed diet condition, they spontaneously lost weight and lost body fat without trying in either case, right? They're just eating to the same level of hunger and fullness and overall appetite. And not reporting liking the meals any more or less in one diet versus the other. Something kind of more fundamental seemed to have been going on that we didn't fully understand at the time. What was it about these ultra-processed foods? And we were clearly getting rid of many of the things that promote their intake in the real world, which is that they're convenient, they're cheap, they're easy to obtain, they're heavily marketed. None of that was at work here. It was something really about the meals themselves that we were providing to people. And our subsequent research has been trying to figure out, okay, well what were the properties of those meals that we were giving to these folks that were composed primarily of ultra-processed foods that were driving people to consume excess calories? You know, I've presented your study a lot when I give talks. It's nice hearing it coming from you rather than me. But a couple of things that interest me here. You use people as their own controls. Each person had two weeks of one diet and two weeks of another. That's a pretty powerful way of providing experimental control. Could you say just a little bit more about that? Yeah, sure. So, when you design a study, you're trying to maximize the efficiency of the study to get the answers that you want with the least number of participants while still having good control and being able to design the study that's robust enough to detect a meaningful effect if it exists. One of the things that you do when you analyze studies like that or design studies like that, you could just randomize people to two different groups. But given how noisy and how different between people the measurement of food intake is we would've required hundreds of people in each group to detect an effect like the one that we discovered using the same person acting as their own control. We would still be doing the study 10 years later as opposed to what we were able to do in this particular case, which is completed in a year or so for that first study. And so, yeah, when you kind of design a study that way it's not always the case that you get that kind of improvement in statistical power. But for a measurement like food intake, it really is necessary to kind of do these sorts of crossover type studies where each person acts as their own control. So put the 500 calorie increment in context. Using the old fashioned numbers, 3,500 calories equals a pound. That'd be about a pound a week or a lot of pounds over a year. But of course, you don't know what would happen if people were followed chronically and all that. But still 500 calories is a whopping increase, it seems to me. It sure is. And there's no way that we would expect it to stay at that constant level for many, many weeks on end. And I think that's one of the key questions going forward is how persistent is that change. And how does something that we've known about and we discuss in our books the basic physiology of how both energy expenditure changes as people gain and lose weight, as well as how does appetite change in a given environment when they gain and lose weight? And how do those two processes eventually equate at a new sort of stable body weight in this case. Either higher or lower than when people started the program of this diet manipulation. And so, it's really hard to make those kinds of extrapolations. And that's of course, the need for further research where you have longer periods of time and you, probably have an even better control over their food environment as a result. I was surprised when I first read your study that you were able to detect a difference in percent body fat in such a short study. Did that surprise you as well? Certainly the study was not powered to detect body fat changes. In other words, we didn't know even if there were real body fat changes whether or not we would have the statistical capabilities to do that. We did use a method, DXA, which is probably one of the most precise and therefore, if we had a chance to measure it, we had the ability to detect it as opposed to other methods. There are other methods that are even more precise, but much more expensive. So, we thought that we had a chance to detect differences there. Other things that we use that we also didn't think that we necessarily would have a chance to detect were things like liver fat or something like that. Those have a much less of an ability. It's something that we're exploring now with our current study. But, again, it's all exploratory at that point. So what can you tell us about your current study? We just wrapped it up, thankfully. What we were doing was basically re-engineering two new ultra-processed diets along parameters that we think are most likely the mechanisms by which ultra-processed meals drove increased energy intake in that study. One was the non-beverage energy density. In other words, how many calories per gram of food on the plate, not counting the beverages. Something that we noticed in the first study was that ultra-processed foods, because they're essentially dried out in the processing for reasons of food safety to prevent bacterial growth and increased shelf life, they end up concentrating the foods. They're disrupting the natural food matrix. They last a lot longer, but as a result, they're a more concentrated form of calories. Despite being, by design, we chose the overall macronutrients to be the same. They weren't necessarily higher fat as we often think of as higher energy density. What we did was we designed an ultra-processed diet that was low in energy density to kind of match the minimally processed diet. And then we also varied the number of individual foods that were deemed hyper palatable according to kind of what Julia said that crossed these pairs of thresholds for fat and sugar or fat and salt or carbs and salt. What we noticed in the first study was that we presented people with more individual foods on the plate that had these hyper palatable combinations. And I wrestle with the term terminology a little bit because I don't necessarily think that they're working through the normal palatability that they necessarily like these foods anymore because again, we asked people to rate the meals and they didn't report differences. But something about those combinations, regardless of what you call them, seemed to be driving that in our exploratory analysis of the first study. We designed a diet that was high in energy density, but low in hyper palatable foods, similar to the minimally processed. And then their fourth diet is with basically low in energy density and hyper palatable foods. And so, we presented some preliminary results last year and what we were able to show is that when we reduced both energy density and the number of hyper palatable foods, but still had 80% of calories from ultra-processed foods, that people more or less ate the same number of calories now as they did when they were the same people were exposed to the minimally processed diet. In fact they lost weight, to a similar extent as the minimally processed diet. And that suggests to me that we can really understand mechanisms at least when it comes to calorie intake in these foods. And that might give regulators, policy makers, the sort of information that they need in order to target which ultra-processed foods and what context are they really problematic. It might give manufacturers if they have the desire to kind of reformulate these foods to understand which ones are more or less likely to cause over consumption. So, who knows? We'll see how people respond to that and we'll see what the final results are with the entire study group that, like I said, just finished, weeks ago. I respond very positively to the idea of the study. The fact that if people assume ultra-processed foods are bad actors, then trying to find out what it is about them that's making the bad actors becomes really important. And you're exactly right, there's a lot of pressure on the food companies now. Some coming from public opinion, some coming from parts of the political world. Some from the scientific world. And my guess is that litigation is going to become a real actor here too. And the question is, what do you want the food industry to do differently? And your study can really help inform that question. So incredibly valuable research. I can't wait to see the final study, and I'm really delighted that you did that. Let's turn our attention for a minute to food marketing. Julia, where does food marketing fit in all this? Julia - What I was very surprised to find while we were researching the book was this deep, long history of calls against marketing junk food in particular to kids. I think from like the 1950s, you have pediatrician groups and other public health professionals saying, stop this. And anyone who has spent any time around small children knows that it works. We covered just like a little, it was from an advocacy group in the UK that exposed aid adolescents to something called Triple Dip Chicken. And then asked them later, pick off of this menu, I think it was like 50 items, which food you want to order. And they all chose Triple Dip chicken, which is, as the name suggests, wasn't the healthiest thing to choose on the menu. I think we know obviously that it works. Companies invest a huge amount of money in marketing. It works even in ways like these subliminal ways that you can't fully appreciate to guide our food choices. Kevin raised something really interesting was that in his studies it was the foods. So, it's a tricky one because it's the food environment, but it's also the properties of the foods themselves beyond just the marketing. Kevin, how do you think about that piece? I'm curious like. Kevin - I think that even if our first study and our second study had turned out there's no real difference between these artificial environments that we've put together where highly ultra-processed diets lead to excess calorie intake. If that doesn't happen, if it was just the same, it wouldn't rule out the fact that because these foods are so heavily marketed, because they're so ubiquitous. They're cheap and convenient. And you know, they're engineered for many people to incorporate into their day-to-day life that could still promote over consumption of calories. We just remove those aspects in our very artificial food environment. But of course, the real food environment, we're bombarded by these advertisements and the ubiquity of the food in every place that you sort of turn. And how they've displaced healthy alternatives, which is another mechanism by which they could cause harm, right? It doesn't even have to be the foods themselves that are harmful. What do they displace? Right? We only have a certain amount the marketers called stomach share, right? And so, your harm might not be necessarily the foods that you're eating, but the foods that they displaced. So even if our experimental studies about the ultra-processed meals themselves didn't show excess calorie intake, which they clearly did, there's still all these other mechanisms to explore about how they might play a part in the real world. You know, the food industry will say that they're agnostic about what foods they sell. They just respond to demand. That seems utter nonsense to me because people don't overconsume healthy foods, but they do overconsume the unhealthy ones. And you've shown that to be the case. So, it seems to me that idea that they can just switch from this portfolio of highly processed foods to more healthy foods just doesn't work out for them financially. Do you think that's right? I honestly don't have that same sort of knee jerk reaction. Or at least I perceive it as a knee jerk reaction, kind of attributing malice in some sense to the food industry. I think that they'd be equally happy if they could get you to buy a lot and have the same sort of profit margins, a lot of a group of foods that was just as just as cheap to produce and they could market. I think that you could kind of turn the levers in a way that that would be beneficial. I mean, setting aside for example, that diet soda beverages are probably from every randomized control trial that we've seen, they don't lead to the same amount of weight gain as the sugar sweetened alternatives. They're just as profitable to the beverage manufacturers. They sell just as many of them. Now they might have other deleterious consequences, but I don't think that it's necessarily the case that food manufacturers have to have these deleterious or unhealthy foods as their sole means of attaining profit. Thanks for that. So, Julia, back to you. You and Kevin point out in your book some of the biggest myths about nutrition. What would you say some of them are? I think one big, fundamental, overarching myth is this idea that the problem is in us. That this rise of diet related diseases, this explosion that we've seen is either because of a lack of willpower. Which you have some very elegant research on this that we cite in the book showing willpower did not collapse in the last 30, 40 years of this epidemic of diet related disease. But it's even broader than that. It's a slow metabolism. It's our genes. Like we put the problem on ourselves, and we don't look at the way that the environment has changed enough. And I think as individuals we don't do that. And so much of the messaging is about what you Kevin, or you Kelly, or you Julia, could be doing better. you know, do resistance training. Like that's the big thing, like if you open any social media feed, it's like, do more resistance training, eat more protein, cut out the ultra-processed foods. What about the food environment? What about the leaders that should be held accountable for helping to perpetuate these toxic food environments? I think that that's this kind of overarching, this pegging it and also the rise of personalized nutrition. This like pegging it to individual biology instead of for whatever the claim is, instead of thinking about how did environments and don't want to have as part of our lives. So that's kind of a big overarching thing that I think about. It makes sense. So, let's end on a positive note. There's a lot of reason to be concerned about the modern food environment. Do you see a helpful way forward and what might be done about this? Julia, let's stay with you. What do you think? I think so. We spent a lot of time researching history for this book. And a lot of things that seem impossible are suddenly possible when you have enough public demand and enough political will and pressure. There are so many instances and even in the history of food. We spend time with this character Harvey Wiley, who around the turn of the century, his research was one of the reasons we have something like the FDA protecting the food supply. That gives me a lot of hope. And we are in this moment where a lot of awareness is being raised about the toxic food environment and all these negative attributes of food that people are surrounded by. I think with enough organization and enough pressure, we can see change. And we can see this kind of flip in the food environment that I think we all want to see where healthier foods become more accessible, available, affordable, and the rest of it. Sounds good. Kevin, what are your thoughts? Yes, I just extend that to saying that for the first time in history, we sort of know what the population of the planet is going to be that we have to feed in the future. We're not under this sort of Malthusian threat of not being able to know where the population growth is going to go. We know it's going to be roughly 10 billion people within the next century. And we know we've got to change the way that we produce and grow food for the planet as well as for the health of people. We know we've got to make changes anyway. And we're starting from a position where per capita, we're producing more protein and calories than any other time in human history, and we're wasting more food. We actually know we're in a position of strength. We don't have to worry so acutely that we won't be able to provide enough food for everybody. It's what kind of food are we going to produce? How are we going to produce it in the way that's sustainable for both people and the planet? We have to tackle that anyway. And for the folks who had experienced the obesity epidemic or finally have drugs to help them and other kinds of interventions to help them. That absolve them from this idea that it's just a matter of weak willpower if we finally have some pharmaceutical interventions that are useful. So, I do see a path forward. Whether or not we take that is another question. Bios Dr. Kevin Hall is the section chief of Integrative Physiology Section in the Laboratory of Biological Modeling at the NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Kevin's laboratory investigates the integrative physiology of macronutrient metabolism, body composition, energy expenditure, and control of food intake. His main goal is to better understand how the food environment affects what we eat and how what we eat affects our physiology. He performs clinical research studies as well as developing mathematical models and computer simulations to better understand physiology, integrate data, and make predictions. In recent years, he has conducted randomized clinical trials to study how diets high in ultra-processed food may cause obesity and other chronic diseases. He holds a Ph.D. from McGill University. Julia Belluz is a Paris-based journalist and a contributing opinion writer to the New York Times, she has reported extensively on medicine, nutrition, and global public health from Canada, the US, and Europe. Previously, Julia was Vox's senior health correspondent in Washington, DC, a Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and she worked as a reporter in Toronto and London. Her writing has appeared in a range of international publications, including the BMJ, the Chicago Tribune, the Economist, the Globe and Mail, Maclean's, the New York Times, ProPublica, and the Times of London. Her work has also had an impact, helping improve policies on maternal health and mental healthcare for first responders at the hospital- and state-level, as well as inspiring everything from scientific studies to an opera. Julia has been honored with numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, the 2017 American Society of Nutrition Journalism Award, and three Canadian National Magazine Awards (in 2007 and 2013). In 2019, she was a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communications Award finalist. She contributed chapters on public health journalism in the Tactical Guide to Science Journalism, To Save Humanity: What Matters Most for a Healthy Future, and was a commissioner for the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges.

Apa bedanya tulisan artikel jurnal ilmiah dengan kebutuhan jurnalistik? Bagaimana caranya agar tulisan kita bisa dimuat di majalah sains terkemuka seperti Nature atau Science Magazine? Di episode kali ini saya mencoba mencari jawaban untuk pertanyaan tersebut dari Dyna Rochmyaningsih, kontributor dua majalah tersebut dan penerima Knight Science Journalism Fellow 2023/2024.

When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his childhood had left him indifferent to it, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite of Cru Sauvage was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen travels the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America to find the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system that long ago abandoned wild and heirloom cacao in favor of high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by Big Chocolate.What he found was a cacao renaissance. As his guides pulled the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction, they'd forged an alternative system in the process-one that is bringing prosperity back to local economies, returning fertility to the land, and protecting it from the rampages of cattle farming. All the while, a new generation of bean-to-bar chocolate makers are racing to get theirhands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Full of vivid characters, vibrant landscapes, and surprising history, Wild Chocolate promises to be as rich, complex, and addictive as good chocolate itself.Rowan Jacobsen is the author of eight books, including the James Beard Award-winning A Geography of Oysters and 2021's Truffle Hound. He has written for the New York Times, Harper's, Outside, Food & Wine, Forbes, Mother Jones, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Vice, and others, and he appears regularly in Best American Science & Nature Writing and Best Food Writing. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, a McGraw Center fellow, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. The creator and host of the 2022 podcast series "Wild Chocolate," he lives in Vermont.Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - ​https://www.wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9781639733576

Dan Falk is an award winning freelance writer and broadcaster specializing in science stories, and was a 2011/12 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.

In part because there are over 10,000 known human diseases and symptoms thereof may have numerous possible explanations, frequently diagnostic tests can be in-determinative or less informative than observing (termed: watchful waiting) a suspected disease's clinical course over time.  Because of diagnostic complexities population level diagnostic errors represent a significant public health problem.  Nevertheless, despite the progress made in treating cancer - as Ropeik writes in his introduction two-thirds of nearly 200 types of cancer are either treatable as chronic diseases or entirely curable - cancer today remains the emperor of nosophobias that in turn leads to over-screening, over diagnosis and false positives, over treatment, potentially harmful side effects, death and excessive healthcare budgeting and wasteful spending.  As one reviewer of the book wrote, “Ropeik details how the gravity force of cancerphobia warps risk perception, leading to personal and societal harms and legislative misdirection.”  During this interview Mr. Ropeik begins by clarifying the book's discussion is at the population level, disputes the belief cancer always needs be diagnosed as soon as possible and describes the US Preventive Services Taskforce's (USPSFT's) work upon which his book is based. He next discusses USPSTF's (evolving) mammography screening recommendations for breast cancer, the prevalence of associated false positive diagnoses particularly related to DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ). He discusses his chapter regarding environmental agents as cancer agents or contributing to the fear of cancer, the lack of a relationship between federal funding and the burden of disease, e.g., breast v pancreatic cancer funding. He concludes by discussing policy solutions that can simultaneously reduce cancer phobia and improve the effectiveness and cost cancer care. Mr. David P. Ropeik is a retired Harvard University Instructor, author, and international consultant on risk perception, risk communication, and risk management. He worked as a television reporter for WCVB-TV in Boston from 1978 – 2000 specializing on environment and science issues, wrote a science column for The Boston Globe, taught journalism at Boston University, Tufts University, and MIT, was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Mr. Ropeik previously published “How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts,” (2010, McGraw Hill), and co-author of “RISK, A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You,” (2002, Houghton Mifflin). Mr. Ropeik has also authored more than 50 articles, book chapters, and other essays on risk perception and risk communication published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Scientific American, The Atlantic Monthly, Health Affairs, Issues in Science and Technology and elsewhere. He writes a blog for Psychology Today and blogged at Big Think and The Huffington Post. Among numerous awards Mr. Ropeik is a two time winner of the DuPont-Columbia Award and seven regional EMMY awards. Information on “Curing Cancer-Phobia” is at: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12956/curing-cancerphobia. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Judy Foreman is the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014), “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine” (2020), all published by Oxford University Press, the novel “CRISPR'd,” (2022) published by Skyhorse Publishing and a memoir, “Let the More Loving One be Me,” from She Writes Press. She was a staff writer at the Boston Globe for 23 years and a health columnist for many of those years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun and others. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1966, spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil, then got a master's from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis. She also hosted a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com. Please listen, share, subscribe, follow, and support. If you want to support Ms V The Storyteller Podcast, please email me at valisonelliot@gmail.com or visit my website @msvthestoryteller.co. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube & LinkedIn at Ms. V The Storyteller or visit my website @ msvthestoryteller.co. Thanks for listening! Judy Info: My website is: https://judyforeman.com Linked In: linkedin.com/in/judy-foreman-88a0272 Twitter: https://twitter.com/judy_foreman Facebook: Judy Foreman Instagram –@judy_foreman

EPISODE 1799: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to M.R. O'Connor, author of IGNITION: LIGHTING FIRES IN A BURNING WORLD, about the life-giving force of fire to regenerate natureM.R. O'Connor is a journalist who writes about the politics and ethics of science, technology, and conservation. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atavist, Slate, Foreign Policy, Nautilus, UnDark and Harper's. Her first book, Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things (St. Martin's Press, 2015), was one of Library Journal and Amazon's Best Books of The Year. Her second book, Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World (St. Martin's Press, 2019), is an exploration of navigation traditions, neuroscience, and the diversity of human relationships to space, time and memory. She is a graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and was a 2017 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her partner and their two sons.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Journalist Richard Fisher shares his thoughts on the importance of taking a long view of the future, why short-termism is the greatest threat to civilisation, and how metaphors are key to our comprehension of time. Richard Fisher is a Senior Journalist with BBC Global News in London, where he writes and commissions for BBC Future, the BBC's international-facing science, technology and health features site. He was recently a 2019-20 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has held various roles at the BBC, including leading the BBC.com Features teams as a managing editor, and before that, he was both a feature and news editor at New Scientist. Find out more: futurespodcast.net FOLLOW Twitter: twitter.com/futurespodcast Instagram: instagram.com/futurespodcast Facebook: facebook.com/futurespodcast ABOUT THE HOST Luke Robert Mason is a British-born futures theorist who is passionate about engaging the public with emerging scientific theories and technological developments. He hosts documentaries for Futurism, and has contributed to BBC Radio, BBC One, The Guardian, Discovery Channel, VICE Motherboard and Wired Magazine. Follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/lukerobertmason CREDITS Produced by FUTURES Podcast Recorded, Mixed & Edited by Luke Robert Mason

Lisa is joined by Judy Foreman who talks about her book, Exercise is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging. Judy Foreman is a nationally syndicated health columnist who has won more than 50 journalism awards and whose columns have appeared regularly in theBoston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun, and other national and international outlets. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College, served in the Peace Corps in Brazil for three years, and received a Master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 2000 to 2001, she was a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School. She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She has also been the host of a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com. She has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying ofbreast cancer, and she is author of A Nation in Pain: Healing our Biggest Health Problem (Oxford, 2014) and The Global Pain Crisis: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2017).Aging, despite its dismal reputation, is actually one of the great mysteries of the universe. Why don't we just reproduce, then exit fast, like salmon? Could aging just be one big evolutionary accident? Is senescence, the gradual falling apart of our bodies, at least partially avoidable? Can we extend the healthy lifespan and reduce the lingering, debilitating effects of senescence? In this book, investigative health journalist Judy Foreman suggests that we actually can, and the key element is exercise, through its myriad effects on dozens of molecules in the brain, the muscles, and other organs. It's no secret, of course, that exercise is good for you and that exercise can extend longevity. What Foreman uncovers through extensive research into evolutionary biology, exercise physiology, and the new field of geroscience is exactly why exercise is so powerful - the mechanisms now being discovered that account for the vast and varied effects of exercise all over the body. Though Foreman also delves into pills designed to combat aging and so-called exercise "mimetics," or pills that purport to produce the effects of exercise without the sweat, her resounding conclusion is that exercise itself is by far the most effective, and safest, strategy for promoting a long, healthy life. In addition to providing a fascinating look at the science of exercise's effects on thebody, Foreman also provides answers to the most commonly asked practical questions about exercise.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5948889/advertisement

We chatted with environmental writer Jeremy Hance in 2021 about his travel memoir BAGGAGE: CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBETROTTING HYPOCHONDRIAC Season 5 Ep. 113. Our guest this week, Jeremy Hance, writes about 3 topics in his most recent book that we are always drawn to; mental health, travel, and animals. Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-trotting Hypochondriac is a memoir that uses humor to help readers understand what life is like for someone who has a mental health issue like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In Jeremy's case, his anxiety is always worse when he travels. While traveling to all corners of the globe is one of the best parts of his life as an environmental writer and is necessary for the work he does, travel is also fraught with rumination and fear. Jeremy is an environmental journalist who is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac by Jeremy Hance 2- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 3- The Princess Bride by William Goldman 4- My Antonia by Willa Cather 5- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 6- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein 7- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein 8- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermer 9- Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan Websites mentioned news.Mongabay.com Follow us on Facebook - The Perks of Being a Book Lover Instagram - @perksofbeingabookoverpod Website : www.perksofbeingabooklover.com

We chatted with environmental writer Jeremy Hance in 2021 about his travel memoir BAGGAGE: CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBETROTTING HYPOCHONDRIAC Season 5 Ep. 113. Our guest this week, Jeremy Hance, writes about 3 topics in his most recent book that we are always drawn to; mental health, travel, and animals. Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-trotting Hypochondriac is a memoir that uses humor to help readers understand what life is like for someone who has a mental health issue like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In Jeremy's case, his anxiety is always worse when he travels. While traveling to all corners of the globe is one of the best parts of his life as an environmental writer and is necessary for the work he does, travel is also fraught with rumination and fear. Jeremy is an environmental journalist who is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac by Jeremy Hance 2- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 3- The Princess Bride by William Goldman 4- My Antonia by Willa Cather 5- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 6- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein 7- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein 8- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermer 9- Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan Websites mentioned news.Mongabay.com Follow us on Facebook - The Perks of Being a Book Lover Instagram - @perksofbeingabookoverpod Website : www.perksofbeingabooklover.com

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 22:10:00 +0000 https://paperwings-podcast-intro.podigee.io/128-new-episode c1adf631d98e30b4cb82de4f3ff930e8 Herzlich willkommen liebe Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörer zu einer neuen Paperwings Podcastfolge: Heute geht es um das Thema: „Wie führe ich kunstvoll und klug eine Streitgespräch“ Für diese Folge habe ich den Wissenschaftsjournalisten und Autoren Reto Schneider eingeladen. Reto U. Schneider ist stellvertretender Chefredakteur bei NZZ Folio, dem Magazin der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung. Der vielfach ausgezeichnete Journalist studierte Elektrotechnik an der ETH Zürich und war Knight Science Journalism Fellow am MIT in Cambridge, USA. Sein Buch der verrückten Experimente ist ein in mehrere Sprachen übersetzter Bestseller. Zum Buch Die Kunst des klugen Streitgesprächs Wer diskutieren will, sollte diese Regeln kennen Ein Crashkurs in Vernunft "Ich streite nicht, ich erkläre nur,warum ich recht habe" Haben wir nicht alle schon gedacht, die Welt wäre eine bessere, wenn gewisse Leute ihre Meinung ändern würden? Und wären diese Leute ohne Ausnahme niemals wir selbst? Dieses Buch erklärt, auf welch dubiosen Wegen unsere Meinungen zustande kommen. Es zeigt, wie sehr Menschen ihr Wissen überschätzen, warum ein Einhorn im Garten ein Problem ist und mit welcher Frage Sie Ihre Gesprächspartner zuverlässig aus dem Tritt bringen. Sie werden auf bekannte Kontroversen stoßen: auf die biologischen Unterschiede zwischen Mann und Frau, auf die falschen Erklärungen für Erkältungen und auf Latein als vermeintliche Maßnahme zur Förderung des logischen Denkens. Eine höchst unterhaltsame Anleitung, um Argumente zu zerlegen und dabei zu den wahren Gründen von Meinungsverschiedenheiten vorzustoßen. Vielleicht finden Sie dabei sogar heraus, dass Sie gar nicht Ihrer Meinung sind. 128 full no wi

Don't Dumb it Down, and Other Science Writing Tips and Tricks Bethany Brookshire, PhD, Science Journalist Website | Twitter @Beebrookshire Abstract Bethany Brookshire, science journalist and author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, made the transition from scientist to science writer. Along the way, she learned how many assumptions non-scientists make about scientific writing…and how many assumptions scientists make about non-scientific readers. The world of science writing is, in its way, just as much of a specialty as genomics, and Brookshire is here to pull back the curtain on it all. Related links: Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains (also available as audiobook) Related same-day events: 4:30-5:30 PM – Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, @ Fishbowl Forum, D.H. Hill Library 7:00-8:30 PM –  A conversation with Dr. Bethany Brookshire and NCMNS Mammalogist Dr. Mike Cove, WRAL 3D Theater, NC Museum of Natural Science (to be filmed by C-SPAN!) Speaker Bio Bethany Brookshire is a freelance science journalist and the author of the December 2022 book, Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She is also a host and producer on the podcast Science for the People. She is a former staff writer with Science News magazine and Science News for Students, a digital magazine covering the latest in scientific research for kids ages 9-14. Her freelance writing has appeared in Scientific American, Science News magazine, Science News Explores, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate and other outlets. Bethany has a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. GES Colloquium (GES 591-002) is jointly taught by Drs. Jen Baltzegar and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, who you may contact with any class-specific questions. Colloquium will generally be live-streamed via Zoom, with monthly in-person meetings in the 1911 Building, Room 129. Please subscribe to the GES newsletter and Twitter for updates. Genetic Engineering and Society Center GES Colloquium - Tuesdays 12-1PM (via Zoom) NC State University | http://go.ncsu.edu/ges-colloquium GES Mediasite - See videos, full abstracts, speaker bios, and slides https://go.ncsu.edu/ges-mediasite Twitter - https://twitter.com/GESCenterNCSU GES Center - Integrating scientific knowledge & diverse public values in shaping the futures of biotechnology. Find out more at https://ges-center-lectures-ncsu.pinecast.co

20 Jahre lang hat man von Carlo Rossi weder etwas gesehen noch gehört. Doch dann gibt es plötzlich eine heiße Spur … Wer ist dieser Mann und was wird ihm zum Verhängnis? Wissenschaftsjournalistin Eva Wolfangel und Thrillerautor Lucas Fassnacht finden es heraus.Unser Gastermittler*innen:Eva Wolfangel ist preisgekrönte Wissenschaftsjournalistin, Speakerin und Moderatorin. 2019/20 war sie als Knight Science Journalism Fellow am MIT und in Harvard, wo sie unter anderem bei Barack Obamas ehemaligem Sicherheitsberater Cybersecurity studierte. Sie recherchiert über künftige Gefahren durch Hackerangriffe und schreibt darüber in ihrem aktuellen Buch „Ein falscher Klick – Hackern auf der Spur: Warum der Cyberkrieg uns alle betrifft“. Mehr Info.Lucas Fassnacht gibt neben seiner Arbeit als Autor Workshops für Kreatives Schreiben und veranstaltet regelmäßig Literatur-Shows in Nürnberg und Erlangen. Sein aktueller Thriller „Tartarus“ dreht sich um ein geheimes Gen-Projekt, das verheerende Auswirkungen haben könnte. Mehr Info zu Lucas und seinen Büchern.Ihr kennt einen Fall, den unsere Gäste unbedingt einmal errätseln sollten? Dann schreibt uns an crimegames@penguinrandomhouse.de+++ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christopher Cox discusses how to leverage deadlines to curb procrastination, improve productivity, and deliver better results. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) The worst possible deadline you can give yourself 2) The trick restaurateurs and theater artists use to consistently deliver quality 3) The trick to making self-imposed deadlines more motivating Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep785 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT CHRISTOPHER — Christopher Cox has written about politics, business, books, and science for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper's, Wired, and Slate. In 2020, he was named a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He was formerly the chief editor of Harper's Magazine and executive editor of GQ, where he worked on stories that won the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN Literary Award for Journalism, and multiple National Magazine Awards. His book The Deadline Effect is out in paperback now. • Book: The Deadline Effect: Inside Elite Organizations That Have Mastered the Ticking Clock • Website: Deadline-Effect.com — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Research: “More and Less Effective Updating: The Role of Trajectory Management in Making Sense Again” by Marlys Christianson • Research: Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences • Research: "Procrastination by pigeons: preference for larger, more delayed work requirements." by J.E. Mazur • Book: Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely • Book: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rod McCullom is a Chicago-based science journalist and reports the “Convictions” column for Undark. His work has been published by Undark, Scientific American, Nature, MIT Technology Review, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Rod was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.Rod discussed the different science topics he covers – a wide range but with special focus on health, artificial intelligence, and criminal justice. He explained how he tries to write in an easy-to-understand manner.Thank you for listening as always. Please send any comments to journalismsalute@gmail.com.

Our guest this week, Jeremy Hance, writes about 3 topics in his most recent book that we are always drawn to; mental health, travel, and animals. Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-trotting Hypochondriac is a memoir that uses humor to help readers understand what life is like for someone who has a mental health issue like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In Jeremy's case, his anxiety is always worse when he travels. While traveling to all corners of the globe is one of the best parts of his life as an environmental writer and is necessary for the work he does, travel is also fraught with rumination and fear. Jeremy is an environmental journalist who is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac by Jeremy Hance 2- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 3- The Princess Bride by William Goldman 4- My Antonia by Willa Cather 5- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 6- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein 7- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein 8- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermer 9- Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan Websites mentioned news.Mongabay.com Follow us on Facebook - The Perks of Being a Book Lover Instagram - @perksofbeingabookoverpod Website : www.perksofbeingabooklover.com

Our guest this week, Jeremy Hance, writes about 3 topics in his most recent book that we are always drawn to; mental health, travel, and animals. Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-trotting Hypochondriac is a memoir that uses humor to help readers understand what life is like for someone who has a mental health issue like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In Jeremy's case, his anxiety is always worse when he travels. While traveling to all corners of the globe is one of the best parts of his life as an environmental writer and is necessary for the work he does, travel is also fraught with rumination and fear. Jeremy is an environmental journalist who is currently a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Baggage: Confessions of a Globe-Trotting Hypochondriac by Jeremy Hance 2- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 3- The Princess Bride by William Goldman 4- My Antonia by Willa Cather 5- The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani 6- Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein 7- The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein 8- A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermer 9- Sorry, I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes by Jessica Pan Websites mentioned news.Mongabay.com Follow us on Facebook - The Perks of Being a Book Lover Instagram - @perksofbeingabookoverpod Website : www.perksofbeingabooklover.com

Scott speaks with Karen Hao the senior Artificial Intelligence editor for MIT Technology Review whose groundbreaking work looking into Facebook just got validated in a massive way this week by whistleblower Francis Haugen's testimony to the U.S. Senate. Hao holds a mechanical engineering degree from MIT, which she took to outlets like Mother Jones and Quartz where she honed her craft as a data journalist before earning her current senior role and recently becoming a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. Her groundbreaking reporting spans from the murky world of Facebook's reliance on artificial intelligence to create programs that make autonomous decisions about what people see and human networks that convert disinformation for hire into cold hard cash. Buzzfeed caught and exposed the Eastern European troll farms who polluted the 2016 election with pro-Trump disinformation, yet Karen reports that not only did Facebook allow people in those same countries to influence Americans with inauthentic content, but they paid them from the network's Instant Articles advertising platform.

Today I welcome Wired magazine writer Adam Rogers back to COVIDCalls. Today's guest is Adam Rogers.  Adam writes about science for Wired Magazine. Before coming to WIRED, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a reporter for Newsweek. He is the author of the New York Times science bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze. NEW story up yesterday titled, An Old Source for Potential New Covid-19 Drugs: Blood Serum—great read.  We will talk about the COVID-19 test snafu, vaccines, silicon valley and the tech economy in the age of COVID-19 and more.

Episode 180 - Jason Dearen Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Jason Dearen. Jason Dearen is an award-winning investigative reporter for The Associated Press currently covering the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018-19, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Dearen's work appears regularly in hundreds of newspapers and websites around the globe, including the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Seattle Times, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. He has twice been nominated by The AP for the Pulitzer Prize. Dearen grew up in California, and attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Buy the book, Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, A Deadly Disease, by visiting Jason's website: https://www.jasondearen.com Note: Guests create their own bio description for each episode. The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund. The Curiosity Hour Podcast is listener supported! The easiest way to donate is via the Venmo app and you can donate to (at symbol) CuriosityHour (Download app here: venmo.com) The Curiosity Hour Podcast is available free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Podbean, Overcast, PlayerFM, Castbox, and Pocket Casts. Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language. The Public Service Announcement near the beginning of the episode solely represents the views of Tommy and Dan and not our guests or our listeners.

EPISODE 59 | Judy Foreman—author of A Nation In Pain (2014), The Global Pain Crisis (2017), and Exercise Is Medicine (2020)—was a staff writer at the Boston Globe for 23 years and a health columnist for many of those years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun, and others. Judy graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1966, spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil, then got a Master's from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also hosted a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com. In the episode, Judy shares how exercise impacts our heart, brain, mood, and immune system; the most fascinating facts she learned about exercise while completing research for her book Exercise Is Medicine; the best type of exercise for optimal health...and more! Enjoy!! EPISODE WEBPAGE: thehealthinvestment.com/judyforeman P.S. – If you're liking The Health Investment Podcast, be sure to hit “subscribe/follow” so that you never miss an episode

We discussed a number of things including: 1. Psychology and worldview of computer programmers 2. Beneficial ways technology has affected our cognition 3. How tech is helping and hurting society 4. Technology and the election I'm a computer geek from way back. I got interested in them as a child in the early 80s in Toronto, when machines like the Commodore 64 arrived. My parents wouldn't get our family a computer (my mother worried I'd just “sit around playing games all the time”), but I devoured every book of BASIC programming I could find at the library, and whenever I could cadge some time on a computer at school or a friend's house, I'd try to do some programming. I created little games, databases, primitive chatbots, digital music, and gradually realized that computers were going to change everything. In high school, though, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I studied English and political science at the University of Toronto, and after graduating in 1992 I worked as a street musician, a receptionist for a driving school, a bookkeeper, and an administrative cog for the League of Canadian Poets (the country's most awesomely-named literary organization) — before deciding to become a freelance magazine writer. This was around the time the Internet hit the mainstream, so I began writing long pieces about how it was changing politics, shopping, art, culture, and everything in between. In the late 90s I moved to New York and began writing for magazines including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Fast Company, New York, Mother Jones and Smithsonian. My work has won several awards, including an Overseas Press Council Award, a Mirror Award, and in 2002/2003 I was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. My most recent books include Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, and Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. In my spare time I write, record, and perform music in the band The Delorean Sisters.

Adam Rogers is the author of the New York Times Bestselling Book, ‘Proof: The Science of Booze'… Adam works as the Deputy Editor at WIRED magazine, where he writes about science and various other miscellaneous geekery. Adam was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, and a reporter for Newsweek. He's also a thoroughly lovely human being to discuss the wonderful world of fermentative and distilled beverages, like wine, beer, whisky, and other drinks... - - In Episode Eight of the Fermenting Place [podcast], Adam and I discuss: - Yeast Inspiring Humans to Build Civilisation - The ‘ologies that Exist and Make up the Science of Booze - Consistency vs. Inconsistency - Holograms with the Natural World - The Intersection of Science and Craft - Why the profession of wine (and other drinks) tasting is ‘kind of bullshit', and - Much, much more besides… - - Website – adam-rogers.net Follow Adam on Twitter - @jetjocko - - This episode is brought to you by the Fermenting Place [podcast] Patreon Supporters. Thank you! If you're wondering how you too can keep ground up content creation independent and ad-free, consider becoming a Patreon Supporter, or make a one-off donation via PayPal, or Bitcoin. Log on to fermentingplace.com for more information. If you dig what you hear, please consider giving the podcast a follow, a rating, and a comment on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Soundcloud. It takes no time at all, and it really helps the all-seeing algos to discover new listeners, like you. Thanks for listening! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/fermenting-place/support

Gary Robbins is a science and technology writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune. As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) started to spread through the United States, Gary took a closer look at the impact on University and College students.This is not the first time Gary penned articles concerning students, but the discoveries he made related to loneliness and how students are handling the epidemic is telling.In the midst of the pandemic, Gary took to Reddit to hear how students were venting. Through interviews, he heard their frustration over making plans to deal with continuing education, changes in living situations, and maintaining their relationships.He wrote a long story in which he gave readers a sample of what college students were saying. Students expressed their feelings over the disruption and loneliness caused by the sudden change in their situation as a result of the spreading outbreak. You can read the article on The San Diego Union-Tribune website – titled ‘Mood turns gloomy as University of San Diego students prepare to move out of dorms.' (Source: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2020-03-13/the-mood-turns-sad-as-university-of-san-diego-students-prepare-to-move-out-of-dorms )Another interesting article by the journalist is ‘The novel coronavirus has emptied out most of the nation's colleges, and they might not reopen this fall,' also on The San Diego Union-Tribune website. (Source: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2020-04-27/covid-19-inflicts-turmoil-on-colleges-and-universities )Jack Eason and Gary Robbins continue their conversation on the impact loneliness have on the lifestyle and health of the average American, while discussing some possible solutions.Gary Robbins has been a journalist for more than 30 years and currently covers science, technology for The San Diego Union-Tribune. He joined the paper in April 2010 after working for 25 years at the Orange County Register, where he was a science editor.Robbins was born and raised in Maine and attended Northeastern University in Boston, graduating in 1978. He served as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT during the 2000-01 academic year, and a Science Writer Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts in June 2001.

Judy Foreman, the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014), “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine” (2019), all published by Oxford University Press, was a staff writer at the Boston Globe for 23 years and a health columnist for many of those years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun and others. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1966, spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil, then got a Master's from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis. She also hosted a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com She has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a 1998 George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying of breast cancer and the 2015 Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers for her book, “A Nation in Pain.”

Judy Foreman, the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014), “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine” (2020), all published by Oxford University Press, was a staff writer at the Boston Globe for 23 years and a health columnist for many of those years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun and others. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1966, spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil, then got a Master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis. She also hosted a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com She has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a 1998 George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying of breast cancer and the 2015 Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers for her book, “A Nation in Pain.”

Judy Foreman, the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014),  “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine” (2020), all published by Oxford University Press, was a staff writer at the Boston Globe for 23 years and a health columnist for many of those years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, Baltimore Sun and others.She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College in 1966, spent three years in the Peace Corps in Brazil, then got a Master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.She has been a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis. She also hosted a weekly, call-in radio show on Healthtalk.comShe has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a 1998 George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying of breast cancer and the 2015 Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers for her book, “A Nation in Pain.”

Clive Thompson is the author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. Today, Thompson is one of the most prominent technology writers--respected for keeping his distance from Silicon Valley hype and doing deeply-reported, long-form magazine stories that get beyond headlines and harness the insights of science, literature, history and philosophy. In addition to the New York Times Magazine and Wired, he's a columnist for Smithsonian Magazine, writing about the history of technology, and writes features for Mother Jones. His journalism has won many awards -- including an Overseas Press Council Award and a Mirror Award -- and he's a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow. In his spare time he's also a recording and performing artist with the country/bluegrass band The Delorean Sisters. Connect with Clive Thompson: https://www.clivethompson.net/ https://twitter.com/pomeranian99/ Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P1DVV2L/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0 Connect with Nick Holderbaum: Health Coaching: https://www.primalosophy.com/ Nick Holderbaum's Weekly Newsletter: Sunday Goods (T): @primalosophy (IG): @primalosophy iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-primalosophy-podcast/id1462578947 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBn7jiHxx2jzXydzDqrJT2A

Pagan Kennedy tells stories about iconoclasts, humanitarian inventors, and scientific visionaries. Her eleven books include The First Man-Made Man, a study of the transgender pioneer Michael Dillon. Kennedy's journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times Magazine, where she wrote the "Who Made That?" column. In the 1980s and '90s, she created a 'zine called Pagan's Head that anticipated today's self-produced samizdat -- and was named the Queen of 'Zines by Wired Magazine. She is now a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion section; she is also co-producing a serial podcast for the Radiotopia network. As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2010-11, Kennedy studied microbiology and neuroengineering. She has won numerous other awards including an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.

Pagan Kennedy tells stories about iconoclasts, humanitarian inventors, and scientific visionaries. Her eleven books include The First Man-Made Man, a study of the transgender pioneer Michael Dillon. Kennedy's journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times Magazine, where she wrote the "Who Made That?" column. In the 1980s and '90s, she created a 'zine called Pagan's Head that anticipated today's self-produced samizdat -- and was named the Queen of 'Zines by Wired Magazine. She is now a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion section; she is also co-producing a serial podcast for the Radiotopia network. As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2010-11, Kennedy studied microbiology and neuroengineering. She has won numerous other awards including an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.

It's almost like this superpower... design is such an invisible force in our lives. We don't realize how it's affecting our behavior, affecting how we do things, how we live, how we die.  - Pagan Kennedy "Pagan Kennedy tells stories about iconoclasts, humanitarian inventors, and scientific visionaries. Kennedy's journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times Magazine, where she wrote the "Who Made That?" column. She is now a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion section; she is also co-producing a serial podcast for the Radiotopia network.  As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2010-11, Kennedy studied microbiology and neuroengineering.  She has won numerous other awards including an NEA fellowship, a Smithsonian fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.  She is the creator of Inventology — How We Dream Up Things That Change The World. "    Website: https://www.pagankennedy.space/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Inventology-Pagan-Kennedy/dp/0544811925/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545190907&sr=8-1&keywords=inventology Podcast: https://radiopublic.com/ShowcaseFromRadiotopia/ep/s1!dfcfb   Fun And Interesting Points Discussed 1. Most cited patent holders were in their 40s and 50s.  2. John Goodenough invented the lithium Ion battery at the age 57. He was still creating inventions at the age of 94. 3. Alexander Flemming's beginnings to creating Penicillin 4. Serendipity - observational creativity and "anti-serendipity" 5. Invention is multi-step. Eureka makes for a good story, but there needs to be testing, understanding... Eureka makes it sound a lot easier than it is.  6. The one who sees a problem on a daily basis has the strongest ability to create a solution (end-user mentality).     

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lynda Mapes, author of Witness Tree: Seasons of Change with a Century-Old Oak, published in April by Bloomsbury. Lynda has been a reporter with the Seattle Times for nearly 20 years, covering Northwest tribes, nature and the environment. Her previous works include Washington, the Spirit of the Land, Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam and The Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village. Lynda first encountered the Harvard Forest as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She then accepted the Bullard Fellowship in 2014 that enabled her to live at Harvard Forest to continue her work there, which ended up giving us this wonderful book. Witness Tree. So the tale of one year in a small forest with one run of the mill (NPI) 100 year old red oak. What can one learn from that? Well, a lot more than I thought I would. I learned about the cocktail of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide that starts the engine of photosynthesis and not only keeps a red oak alive and thriving, but sustains the very environment in which we live our lives, so far comfortably. I learned about the story of carbon itself and its inextricable tie with our own spiral toward drastic climate change. I learned about the interdisciplinary way that one can approach a tree, as an equal and in so doing learn as much about yourself as you do about the tree. Some folks say that looking too closely, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Linda belies that old saw and sees both the tree, intimately and up close and sees not only the forest but also our world and what is happening to it.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Lynda Mapes, author of Witness Tree: Seasons of Change with a Century-Old Oak, published in April by Bloomsbury. Lynda has been a reporter with the Seattle Times for nearly 20 years, covering Northwest tribes, nature and the environment. Her previous works include Washington, the Spirit of the Land, Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam and The Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village. Lynda first encountered the Harvard Forest as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She then accepted the Bullard Fellowship in 2014 that enabled her to live at Harvard Forest to continue her work there, which ended up giving us this wonderful book. Witness Tree. So the tale of one year in a small forest with one run of the mill (NPI) 100 year old red oak. What can one learn from that? Well, a lot more than I thought I would. I learned about the cocktail of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide that starts the engine of photosynthesis and not only keeps a red oak alive and thriving, but sustains the very environment in which we live our lives, so far comfortably. I learned about the story of carbon itself and its inextricable tie with our own spiral toward drastic climate change. I learned about the interdisciplinary way that one can approach a tree, as an equal and in so doing learn as much about yourself as you do about the tree. Some folks say that looking too closely, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Linda belies that old saw and sees both the tree, intimately and up close and sees not only the forest but also our world and what is happening to it.

Adam Rogers gets an exciting opportunity to work in a marine biology lab, and see if he really wants to be a biologist. Adam Rogers is articles editor at WIRED, where he edits features about miscellaneous geekery and runs the science desk. His features for the print magazine have included stories about the astrophysics of the movie Interstellar, a fan cruise for apex nerds, and a mysterious fungus that lives on whisky fumes. That last one won the 2011 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for magazine writing and lead to Rogers' New York Times bestselling book Proof: The Science of Booze. Rogers was a presenter and writer for the television show WIRED Science, which aired on PBS in 2007. Prior to joining WIRED, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and before that Rogers was a writer and reporter at Newsweek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Co-sponsored by the MIT Open Documentary Lab. Hybrid forms of multimedia, combining aspects of newspapers, documentary film and digital video are a notable feature of today's on-line journalism. How is this access to the power of the visual changing our journalism? What current projects are particularly significant? What will this convergence mean in the future? Jason Spingarn-Koff is the series producer and curator of Op-Docs, a new initiative at the New York Times for short opinionated documentaries by independent filmmakers and artists. He directed the feature documentary "Life 2.0", which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network's Documentary Club, and his work has appeared on PBS, BBC, MSNBC, Time.com and Wired News. In 2010-2011, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Alexandra Garcia is a multimedia journalist for The Washington Post. She reports, shoots and edits video stories on topics ranging from health care and immigration to fashion and education. Awarded an Edward R. Murrow award, eight regional Emmy awards and named 2011 Video Editor of the Year by the White House News Photographers Association, Garcia is currently a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Moderator: Sarah Wolozin, director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, has produced documentaries and educational media for a variety of media outlets including PBS, History Channel, Learning Channel and NPR.

Recently in Amherst, New York, two of Point of Inquiry’s hosts sat down for a special in-studio episode of the show. One was a conservative (Robert Price), one a liberal (Chris Mooney)—and both were atheists. The topic they tackled: Is there any necessary correlation between one’s disbelief in God and one’s place on the political spectrum? The result was a fascinating—and notably civil, and frequently entertaining—conversation ranging across foreign policy, abortion, stem cell research, animal rights, and many other topics. In the end, the discussants actually found not only much disagreement, but also some common ground. Robert M. Price is Professor of Biblical Criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute as well as the editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism and a host of Point of Inquiry. His books include Beyond Born Again,  The Widow Traditions in Luke-Acts: A Feminist-Critical Scrutiny, Deconstructing Jesus, andThe Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.   Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist and commentator and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. They also write “The Intersection” blog together for Discover blogs. In the past, Chris has also been visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University and a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. He is also a host of Point of Inquiry.  

Chris Mooney is a 2009-2010 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. In this conversation with D.J. Grothe, Chris Mooney talks about the growing divide between science and society. He contrasts the issues addressed in The Republican War on Science with the current problems facing society as outlined in Unscientific America. He argues for the unique public policy significance of science for society, and why scientific literacy matters more than other kinds of cultural or historical literacy. He discusses the policy relevance of scientific illiteracy in terms of global warming and biotechnology. He talks about the need for scientists to become better communicators to the public. He shares his criticisms of the New Atheists and explains why their attacks against religious moderates works counter to the goal of scientific literacy. He recounts his experiences as an atheist activist while in college, and how his views have changed about campus forethought activism since that time. He explores other underlying causes of scientific illiteracy, including our educational system, the media's dysfunctional treatment of science, and growing anti-science movements such as the climate deniers and vaccine skeptics. And he details concrete actions that science advocates can take in order to increase scientific literacy.