Stories by Steve Mirsky

Jonathan Losos, biology professor at Harvard and curator of herpetology at the university’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, talks about his latest book, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance and the Future of Evolution.

Not every movie villain has terrible skin, but it helps

Astronomers Without Borders wants to share your used eclipse glasses with kids in other parts of the world for the 2019 total solar eclipse.

David Baron, author of the new book American Eclipse, talks about how seeing his first total solar eclipse turned him into an eclipse chaser.  

In advance of the big solar eclipse on August 21, author and journalist David Baron talks about his new book American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World.

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio ventures deep into the human mind in his new book, Why? What Makes Us Curious.

Man with bizarre views being investigated by authorities

Journalist and author Susan Ewing talks about her new book Resurrecting the Shark: A Scientific Obsession and the Mavericks Who Solved the Mystery of a 270-Million-Year-Old Fossil. (And we'll discuss how Helicoprion is not technically a shark, but it's really close!)

Scott Kraus, vice president and senior science advisor at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium in Boston, talks about the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, created last year and already under threat.  

Whether lightning rods should have rounded or pointy ends became a point of contention between rebellious Americans and King George III.

Two new books look at evolution from head to below your toes

Journalist Craig Pittman of the Tampa Bay Times talks about his book, Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country.

The "other victims" of the opioid epidemic are pain patients who need the drugs but cannot now get them because of fears related to their use

New French president, Emmanual Macron, reacted to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement by inviting disaffected U.S. researchers to make France "a second homeland."

Journalist Bonnie Rochman talks about her new Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux book, The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids—and the Kids We Have.

Spiders eat a ridiculous amount of stuff (mostly insects, thankfully)

Verizon’s director of network planning, Sanyogita Shamsunder, talks with Scientific American's Larry Greenemeier about the coming 5G and EM-spectrum-based communications in general.

Tom Frieden, head of the CDC from 2009 to 2017, told graduating medical students that we face challenges from pathogens, and from politicians.

Pocket gophers survived the Mount Saint Helens eruption in their underground burrows and immediately went to work bringing back the ecosystem.

Human-produced noise doubles the background sound levels in 63 percent of protected areas, and raises it tenfold in 21 percent of such landscapes.

Emory University paleontologist, geologist and ichnologist Anthony J. Martin talks about his new book, The Evolution Underground: Burrows, Bunkers and the Marvelous Subterranean World beneath Our Feet.

Called an "open sewer" in the recent past, the Bronx River is now clean enough for a type of herring to once again be introduced and to make runs to the ocean.

Our gorilla cousins sing as they supper

Feds frustrate researchers trying to study pistols and pot