Portland: I’ll be in conversation with Ferris Jabr about climate change and brain health on Monday evening at Powell's Books! 7pm! Join us!

From 2017: my The New York Times essay on how a total solar eclipse severs our solar umbilical cord, profoundly albeit briefly altering life on Earth—with illustrations by Golden Cosmos nytimes.com/2017/08/14/sci…

Here's how the #EclipseSolar2024 looked from space so far, watch for the shadow zooming in on the left-hand side of the video, then passing up and over North America!

As well as looking cool, the path of the shadow is a great demonstration of how the Earth isn't flat😃

Looking pretty dark over the USA right now. The Moon's shadow blocking out sunlight over much of the country!

Today I handed over the typescript of my new book Is A River Alive? to my editor & friend Simon Prosser.
It felt—after 3+ yrs’ work—like a big moment.
To mark it we walked up to the springs near my house, where a river is born—and the book begins & ends.
More on the project below.

✨UK Cover Reveal✨

My British publisher, Picador Books, opted for something lush & prismatic, featuring Rogan Brown’s gorgeous art.

UK audiobook/ebook out in late June; UK hardback in late August. Becoming Earth will eventually be available in at least eight languages.

Breaking news: A person in Texas is being treated for bird flu, the second human case of an illness caused by a highly virulent virus that has rampaged through sickened dairy cows in five states in recent weeks, federal and state officials said Monday. wapo.st/4awJmQ4

Snake’s head fritillary in late afternoon light

🌎🔥🧠 Today in the The Guardian, I argue that climate change is intervening directly on brain health. This is not a story of climate anxiety. With fabulous illustrations from Ngadi Smart: theguardian.com/environment/20…

Just learned that Madagascar has enormous green roly polies! The giant emerald pill millipede (Zoosphaerium neptunus), which can grow to 3.5 inches

*Not the same as the more familiar & much smaller woodlice/roly polies/pill bugs, but an anatomically similar arthropod

Wow! 😍 New-to-me creature: the inflated blister beetle (Cysteodemus armatus). Their swollen wing cases may be for defense or sun protection. Their base body is blue-black, but they often have a yellow/white/gray waxy latticed covering, as though they'd fused with a slime mold

the ideal man

-fashionable
-well-groomed
-refined taste
-quadruple threat: actor, singer, dancer, architect
-obsessively curates unique collection of found objects in self-run interactive art space
-will fight you for shiny blue thing
-superb plumage
-deft beak
-is bird

Portland! Please join me in conversation with Ferris Jabr at Powell's Books on April 15! We’ll be talking climate change and brain health 🌎🔥🧠 powells.com/book/the-weigh…

Portland, Oregon’s cherry blossoms are at their peak right now

I wrote this essay about the critical importance of #herbaria to science and the future of humanity for the The Washington Post . Please share and help me raise awareness about these precious plant collections.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/…

#herbaria #science #plants #botany #funding …

Directly opposite is a 10ft tall, 3D printed modern magpie skeleton, x20 scaled

This fantastically showcases the skeletal similarities between modern and extinct theropods, and in my opinion is the scarier of the two! (2/6)

For Los Angeles Review of Books I reviewed conservation biologist Joe Roman's fascinating new book, which explores how animals profoundly alter their environments and have shaped the planet as a whole lareviewofbooks.org/article/animal…

'For Roman, these ecological insights offer more than a refined understanding of our world; they also provide a roadmap for how we can improve it.' Ferris Jabr reviews Joe Roman's 'Eat, Poop, Die.' lareviewofbooks.org/article/animal…