In the summer of 1978, just a year into my lifelong obsession with fly fishing, I badgered my father to take three trout-addled middle schoolers on a trip to Yellowstone Park. Our destination was a remote lake reachable only by canoe and portage, the back bays of which were full…

In the summer of 1978, just a year into my lifelong obsession with fly fishing, I badgered my father to take three trout-addled middle schoolers on a trip to Yellowstone Park. Our destination was a remote lake reachable only by canoe and portage, the back bays of which were full…

I took up the guitar as I approached fifty and my wife faced her impending death. Angel from Montgomery was the first song I could truly (kinda, sorta) play. With fumbled chords and a halting voice, I played it as her legs failed and her speech disappeared within her tumor-ravaged…

The maximum slope, measured in degrees from the horizontal, at which loose solid material will remain in place without sliding. By my eleventh summer, I knew where the earth would give way just enough. Where it would allow a brief arc beneath my waffled soles before they went airborne again…

An iron wrought deception marks the entrance to Auschwitz 1. Arbeit Macht Frei. It did no such thing for unfathomable numbers of cruelly pyjamaed souls herded past a conscripted orchestra, all of them awaiting an inhuman death. I stop beyond the gate and pull back from my group. Just behind…

A joint piece in Scientific American in response to the latest IPCC report, from all of us involved in Let Science Speak. Please follow the link for the full essay.

This project challenged me to dig deep and open up for the importance of science as never before. To learn more, please visit the Let Science Speak website, where you can watch each of the six extraordinary movies made by the teams at Generous Films and A+B Pictures: Christine Arena, Ben Heretig, Adam Warmington, Matthew Shambroom, Amber Janis and more. I’m humbled and proud to share the screen with Katherine Hayhoe, Marshall Shepherd, Jacquelin Gill, Dawn Wright and Jon Foley — five remarkable scientists and people who are and have been frequent sources of inspiration.

Why I left a great job in a top R1 institution to help lead a small liberal arts college. Published in Inside Higher Education.

The two young women wove through the crowd with set jaws and fierce eyes. On each, a t-shirt with large block letters: Marjory Stoneman Douglas Soccer. An hour later, their classmate Maddie King would launch the Denver March for our Lives with a searingly eloquent speech. I don’t have to…