by Amy Stewart
“Playing with Fire” points to a broader theme that connects the best science writing of 2015. Recent advances in biology, ecology, physics, medicine, and engineering are bringing us closer than ever to solving the earth’s and humanity’s most pressing problems. But there are still enormous gaps between the problems and the solutions. In many cases, those gaps are the result of poverty, inequality, and prejudice.
Great science writing bridges that gap. It lets us—the readers, the citizens, the voters—understand what’s possible. It shows us that even the most horrifying, human-made atrocities in our world (elephant poaching, poisoned water supplies, urban violence) can be understood and perhaps even solved through human ingenuity. It gives us something to advocate for. It unites us and inspires us.
I’ll get back to that theme in a minute, but first I must introduce you to the other astonishingly good essay that couldn’t fit between these pages. Paul Ford’s “What Is Code?” appeared on Bloomberg.com on June 11 last year, and shortly thereafter the Internet exploded with joy.
I am not the only person to love this essay, in other words. This was a case of science writing going viral for all the best reasons. You might think that an extremely long article that attempts to explain to the general public how computer code works would be abysmally, painfully, soul-crushingly dull. But you would be wrong. This thing is amazing.
At just over 30,000 words, it exceeded our page limits. But that’s just as well, because this is not a story that you want to read on paper anyway. It was built to be read onscreen, where it makes the best possible use of animation, mouse-over effects, and other clever interactive features that allow you, the reader, to test-drive the ideas in the story.
Bang on your keyboard and see the code that your actions generate. Drag your mouse around and watch how every movement is tracked by advertisers. Try your hand at debugging code or writing JavaScript. (I rocked the JavaScript.) And if you skim the article—as I did just now, when I went back to choose my favorite interactive elements—expect to see a message like this at the end:
Congratulations! You read 31558 words in 29 minutes, which is 1076 words per minute. Hahahahah as if. Nice. Cool. Frankly we expected no more of you.
Subversive. Animated. Hilarious. Not words you’d normally associate with a long-form technology piece, but there you have it. You will tell your friends about this article. You will become obnoxious at dinner parties, if you weren’t already. You will go around feeling like more of a programming expert than you have any right to. Wasn’t that fun?
I believe that entertainment value matters. I am the daughter of a working musician. Every Friday and Saturday night, and many weeknights as well, when gigs were plentiful, I watched my dad put on a tuxedo, splash a little Canoe on his chin, and walk out the door with a guitar case and amp. When he said good night to us, he used to say that he was “going out to entertain the folks.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t take his music seriously. But he knows what his profession is about. He’s an entertainer. His job is to go out and play for the folks.
And that’s what our job is, as writers. Our job is to go and play for the folks.
Last summer I spent a week in Rhode Island with my aunt, who was dying of cancer. In case you didn’t already know this, let me tell you that the palliative oncology ward of a hospital is about the worst place in the world. People were sobbing in the hallways. The “family room”—a sort of improvised retreat center equipped with televisions, couches, and vending machines—was almost always occupied by a woman crying into her cell phone. “You’d better get down here” was a common refrain heard in the family room. “We’re losing her.”
Horrible. And those were the people who weren’t dying of cancer.
I got to know the ward pretty well, after spending five straight days there. Guess what I noticed as I walked the halls and spied on the other families who were going through the same tragedy I was?
Everyone had a book. Or a magazine. Or a newspaper. In the midst of all this suffering, on the very worst days of their lives, everyone was reading. And they weren’t just reading escapist fiction. I saw history. Biography. Memoir. And—believe it or not—science and nature writing. I saw Rebecca Skloot, Diane Ackerman, and Wendell Berry on the oncology wing.
Even my aunt, in the last month of her life, was so relieved when I logged into her iPad and downloaded some audiobooks for her to listen to (she was nearly blind by then) during the long hours she spent alone, after we went home every night. She asked for an essay collection from Anne Lamott. “Not the one with all the cancer,” she said, which, if you’ve read Anne Lamott, you know is not easy to find.
My point is this: everyone on that oncology wing needed something to read. They wanted an escape, sure, but they also wanted a connection. They wanted reassurance, hope, enlightenment, and understanding. We all read for the same reasons, just as we all listen to music for the same reasons.
Science writers get into the game with all kinds of noble, high-minded ambitions. We want to educate. To enlighten. To advocate. To accelerate the pace of progress. To win public support for research. To celebrate the work of incredibly intelligent and dedicated people who too often labor in obscurity.
But at the end of the day, we’re all writers. We’re just like novelists, memoirists, and poets. We’re entertainers.
We’re here to play for the folks.
Whether our audience is made up of congressional staffers or the miserable family members hunkered down in the hallways of the palliative-care wing, we are doing this for them.
The writers in this collection understand that. They’re writing for us, and in many cases about us, in ways that make a real difference. Here are just a few examples:
The essay that had the most significant and immediate impact on people’s lives was, in my opinion, Kathryn Schulz’s “The Really Big One,” about the risk of a catastrophic earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. Now, I might be biased, because the southern end of the Cascadia subduction zone burrows directly under my hometown of Eureka, California, which also happens to sit very near the San Andreas Fault. The last really big one, about 300 years ago, probably formed the bay I’m looking at right now.
I’m trying to come up with words to explain the impact that this article made on those of us who live in the Cascadia region, but it all ends up sounding like a bad pun in a newspaper headline: It sent shock waves through our community. It shook us up. It rocked our world. It caused a seismic shift in . . . well, you see the problem.
The point is that politicians, public safety agencies, and individual citizens throughout the Pacific Northwest changed their thinking because of this story. Some people changed their lives: I know people who moved away from the region entirely after the story ran, and I know people who bought and sold homes for the sole purpose of finding a safer place to live. Parents made contingency plans for their children’s safety. Neighbors stocked up on emergency supplies. Contractors got busy bracing foundations.
On a larger scale, public officials have put a new emphasis on earthquake preparation. In June 2016, 6,000 emergency and military personnel participated in a four-day disaster-preparedness exercise across Oregon and Washington. A serious discussion is taking place right now among officials in all three West Coast states about implementing a regional early-warning system. In Portland, Oregon, the seismic safety of the city’s critical bridges and its many unreinforced masonry buildings have become a top priority. And along the coast—including right here where I live—people in small towns are preparing for the real possibility of a tsunami evacuation.
I simply cannot overstate the power of this piece. When you read it, imagine that you live where I live. Your life would change because of this story, just like mine did. That’s the power of great writing.
But this isn’t the only piece that changed people’s lives this past year. Sarah Maslin Nir’s investigation into the health, safety, and working conditions of New York’s nail-s
alon workers highlights the dangers faced by immigrant workers who toil in a highly visible yet often overlooked environment. The report, which was published not only in English but in Chinese, Korean, and Spanish, led to increased enforcement and a higher level of scrutiny by public health and employment officials. We’ve included the more health- and science-focused second half, “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers,” here, but I urge you also to read the first half, about wages and hours, if you haven’t already.
Gabrielle Glaser’s “The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous” is another terrific piece of scientific reporting that directly addresses the well-being of a marginalized group of people: alcoholics and drug addicts. While wealthier people might have the means to avail themselves of a wide range of treatment options, poor people and people whose addiction has landed them in jail often have few choices but to enter the treatment programs mandated by judges or social workers. And when that treatment program—the faith-based 12-step program—fails to stand up to scientific rigor, they aren’t provided a better option.
By shining a light on those treatment methods that can be backed up by solid medical studies and those that cannot, Glaser’s piece exposes the failures of our health care and criminal justice systems when it comes to treating addicts. (Her work might also benefit wealthier people seeking treatment: a month’s inpatient treatment at a rehab center starts at $40,000 and includes such unproven treatment methods as art therapy and mindfulness mazes, while far more effective treatments cost only a few thousand dollars.)
Medical professionals in any other field follow clinical trials, monitor the results of scientifically valid studies, and update their treatment practices accordingly. But this doesn’t happen nearly as often in the field of addiction treatment—and that’s a huge disservice to the people whose very lives depend upon its effectiveness. Glaser’s piece exposes the flaws in our treatment of addiction and will, I hope, bring about change.
Charles Mann’s article “Solar, Eclipsed” takes a perspective on climate change that we don’t hear enough in this country: that of the unwired poor. In India, carbon emissions continue to grow—and have to, if the 300 million Indians who currently live without electricity are to have any at all (which is to say nothing of the millions more who have only intermittent, unreliable power). As Mann points out, Westerners tout alternative energy as the solution to India’s energy needs, but his visit to the remote village of Luckman shows how difficult this might be. Come nightfall, a single solar-powered 6-watt LED lamp is the only light source for the entire village. It’s easy for Americans and Europeans to propose this solution for India’s poor, but none of us would be satisfied with that result. The answers won’t come easily, but this piece raises important questions.
Many of the stories I chose for this collection delighted me because they spoke to perspectives I don’t hear often enough or don’t understand. I want to look at climate change from the perspective of India’s poorest. I want to do more to protect the safety of immigrant workers in nail salons. I want great science and nature writing to take me into worlds I can’t imagine and to challenge my ideas about what matters.
But how do we decide what matters? This is the part of the essay where I need to talk about the underwear story. You might be wondering why Rose Eveleth’s “Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible?” ended up here and not, say, in Best American Fashion Writing. It turns out that building a functional sports bra depends a great deal on engineering and technology. It also turns out that the existence of a functional sports bra directly affects women’s health.
I’m particularly enamored of this essay because it taught me something very interesting about my own biases as a reader. A piece on the technology and psychology behind athletic wear should hit me right in the demographic: I’ve been wearing sports bras for 30 years, I care a great deal about fitness and women’s access to sports, and I’m predisposed to champion a story about an issue particular to women that might otherwise be sidelined.
This story was well researched, it was interesting, and it made solid arguments. But the truth is, I kept arguing with it in my own mind because it didn’t fit with my experience. I’ve never had a problem with sports bras, I found myself thinking. Maybe this isn’t really an issue.
So I put out a call on social media and asked women friends to report in if sports bra–related problems ever prevented them from getting exercise or playing a sport. The responses were immediate and convincing. I heard from women who went years without getting any kind of exercise. Others gave up running, dancing, and most other types of cardio workouts. I heard from women who dropped out of sports, and others who suffered serious shoulder and neck pain from ill-fitting bras or from “double bagging,” a practice I had never even imagined, which involves wearing one bra on top of another in an often futile attempt to get enough support.
I point this out because it shows how easily a worthy topic can be marginalized if the person in charge of making the selection—in this case, me, the editor of this collection—doesn’t have a life experience that fits the story. Rose Eveleth made the case quite perfectly: “Breast discomfort is a leading reason women stop participating in sports. And in extreme cases, an ill-fitting bra can actually do nerve damage.”
As much as I care about—and am personally involved in—fitness, sports bras, and women’s issues, I kept asking myself whether this issue really mattered. Why? Because in my decades as a sports bra–wearing, cardio-loving feminist, I had never heard of it.
So. Lesson learned. We could all benefit from looking outside our own experiences once in a while. I specifically went looking for stories that help us do that.
Some of the pieces I enjoy most in this collection take a different perspective on the very idea of science and nature writing. So much of the best writing in the field is told from the perspective of a journalist trekking along behind a scientist and attempting to explain what exactly he or she does and why it matters. The writer is an enthusiastic observer who takes up the task of defining the problem (the encroachment of bark beetles, the intractability of certain cancers), building the world in which these problems exist (the Rocky Mountains, a public housing project) and then embodying for the reader the scientist who hopes to do something about it. It’s the “hero’s journey” narrative structure, superimposed upon science journalism.
We love these stories. We love the idea of the lone protagonist battling a diabolical and menacing enemy. I adore that form of storytelling and was happy to include many such pieces here. But I was also delighted to find writers who had a different kind of story to tell and an interesting structure to hang it on.
Katie Worth’s “Telescope Wars” is one such piece. It tells the distressing history of rival astronomers competing to build the world’s largest telescope. For 15 years—well, actually, for nearly 100 years, depending on how far back you want to go—astronomers have launched rival projects to build telescopes so powerful that they could gaze deep into the cosmos and bring back remarkably clear and detailed images, the likes of which we’ve never seen. But these supersized telescopes don’t yet exist, and none of the competing projects have enough funding. It all comes down to an inability to collaborate that has been fed by, as Worth puts it, “personality conflicts, miscommunications, competing technologies, and an expanding universe of bitterness.”
I love this piece because it calls attention to what isn’t getting done. It looks at what scientists have failed to accomplish. It calls astronomers to task for failing to see beyond petty rivalries to work together on a project of global significance. It asks why there was never “a little adult supervision in the room.” In other words, it looks honestly at the messy process of actually getting science done. That’s a perspective we don’t hear often enough.
I’m also pleased to include some serious pieces of investigative reporting, in which the author is far more than an observant bystander. Bryan Christy’s “Tracking Ivory” is the firsthand account of an ambitious und
ertaking: to fabricate ivory tusks, implant GPS and satellite trackers within them, and release them into the clandestine ivory market, with the goal of finding out how the tusks of endangered elephants are trafficked around the world.
This is not a risk-free project. Christy spends the night in a Tanzanian jail and embeds himself with a heavily armed antipoaching patrol as he journeys to the heart of the illegal ivory trade. Ultimately, he has to part ways with his GPS-embedded artificial ivory and track its movements on a computer screen. It moves 600 miles into Sudan, illuminating on a map the route that smugglers go to such great lengths to keep secret. With over 30,000 African elephants killed every year, the stakes could not be higher. Christy and his team at National Geographic should be commended for this exemplary piece of journalism.
Finally, this collection celebrates language. You’ll read some of the most lyrical and poetic writers exploring the themes of science and nature today. Chelsea Biondolillo’s “Back to the Land” is a lovely short piece on a gruesome topic: a research facility in which forensic anthropologists study how bodies decay in the scorching Texas sun. I’m not going to quote from it here because I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I promise those last few lines will take your breath away.
Gaurav Raj Telhan’s “Begin Cutting,” about the dissection of cadavers in medical school, is just as macabre but also gorgeous. “Her eyelids,” he writes, “not entirely shut, revealed the green of her irises, afloat in a white scleral sea.” Later, when he begins the dissection, he recounts how “in my beginner’s hands, the tapping of the scalpel against the spine sounded like beats of Morse code.”
Amazing. Dazzling.
There is also the beautiful and heartbreaking “My Periodic Table,” published about a month before Oliver Sacks’s death. I can think of very few writers who have brought more lyricism to science and nature writing than Sacks. Through his writing we knew his warmth, curiosity, hunger, and love of language. His work has appeared in this collection in 10 out of the 16 years it’s been in publication, and it pains me to think that it won’t appear here again.
