This week I went to Minneapolis to speak about science writing at a conference at the University of Minnesota. I wanted to mention one of my favorite novels in the talk, Moby-Dick. My view of Melville’s book has evolved from my days as a college English major to my current existence as a science writer. I’ve grown increasingly fond of the “cetology” chapters, in which Melville veers away from the story of Ishmael to explore the biology of whales. In 2013, I was asked by the Los Angeles Public Library to write an essay on the subject for an online celebration of the novel. I wanted to put a link to the essay on a slide for my Minnesota talk, but I discovered that the whole site for the project had disappeared. Such is the tenuous legacy of writers in the digital age. So I fished the piece out of my hard drive and revived it on Medium. You can read it here. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk January 12, 2018” →

At the close of 2017, I just wanted to thank all of you for reading “Friday’s Elk” through the year. One of the joys of this job is learning more about the world. Another one is sharing that joy.

To round out the year, here’s a feature I published this past week in the New York Times about the mysteries of proteins.

The genesis of the story goes back seven years ago, to a podcast I recorded with a biologist named David Baker. He explained to me just how hard it was for scientists to figure out the rules by which proteins fold into their final shapes. Protein scientists simply call this challenge “the folding problem.” Continue reading “Friday’s Elk: End of 2017 Edition!” →