Writing
Essay in Quanta Magazine
“The new quest to control evolution”
(November 2023)
Article in ESPN’s Andscape
“Nnedi Okorafor, a pioneer of Africanfuturism, doesn’t want her work put in a box”
(November 2023)
Essay in Harvard Public Health Magazine
“Data Availability is Social Justice”
(October 2023)
Essay in Scientific American
Nobel Prize Debate Misses the Mark on the Real Culprits Ignoring Scientific Merit
(October 2023)
Essay in Undark
Book Review: A Classic Study of Evolution, and Why It Matters
(September 2023)
Essay in Andscape
Verbal Armageddon: A story of hip-hop at an HBCU, 25 years in the making
(August 2023)
Essay in Quanta Magazine
How Genetic Surprises Complicate the Old Doctrine of DNA
(July 2023)
Essay in Andscape
New study on COVID-19, race and prison populations shows the power of ‘big data’ in the fight for equality.
(April 2023)
Essay in Undark
“ChatGPT isn’t hallucinating. It’s bullshitting”
(April 2023)
Essay in Undark
“Ghosts of science past still haunt us. We can put them to rest.”
(Dec 2022)
Ideas essay in The Atlantic
“Go ahead, joke about the pandemic”
(Nov 2022)
Article in ESPN’s Andscape
“Lupe Fiasco on his latest challenge: Teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”
(Nov 2022)
Article in ESPN’s Andscape
“Afropunk pioneer James Spooner explores the ‘High Desert” of his origins”
(June 2022)
Ideas article in Wired
“Quashing racist pseudoscience is science’s responsibility”
(May 2022)
Feature article in ESPN’s Andscape
“New data reveals how #OscarsSoWhite changed the Academy Awards”
(March 2022)
Ideas article in Wired
“What are you going to tweet after you die?”
(November 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“From ‘Fear of a Black Planet’ to ‘Fear of a Black Universe’”
(November 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“30 years after Magic’s diagnosis, a look at the intersection of hip-hop and the HIV/AIDS pandemic”
(November 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“#Are the #EmmysSoWhite? It’s complicated”
(September 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“One year after the bubble, the NBA’s COVID-19 response is helping the world understand the pandemic”
(September 2021)
Ideas article in Wired
“What Makes an Artist in the Age of Algorithms?”
(Sept 2021)
Article in Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal, Special Issue: On Police, Prisons, and Plagues
“Structural Inequality, the Carceral State and the Need for New Language in the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
(July 2021)
Ideas article in Wired
“STEM’s Racial Reckoning Just Entered Its Most Crucial Phase”
(May 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“#TheOscarsAreStillSoWhite”
(April 2021)
Ideas article in Wired
“Scientists Need to Admit What They Got Wrong About Covid”
(April 2021)
Ideas article in Wired
“Clubhouse Cured My Imposter Syndrome”
(February 2021)
Opinion article in Scientific American
“The Human Genome and the Making of a Skeptical Biologist”
(February 2021)
Ideas article in Wired
“White Nationalism is Worse than a Disease”
(January 2021)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“Can the NBA win its rematch with COVID-19?”
(December 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“The Race to Get a PlayStation 5 Is the Year’s Best Game”
(December 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“Yes, Accept the Flaws of Election and Epidemic Models”
(November 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“The Science That Spans #MeToo, Memes, and Covid-19”
(October 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“How the NBA conquered COVID-19”
(October 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“The Flagrant Hypocrisy of Bungled College Reopenings”
(September 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“Howard alum Chadwick Boseman captured what it meant to be Black and excellent”
(September 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“Calling Bullshit Skewers the World’s BS Merchants”
(August 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“The NBA bubble is a grand experiment in epidemiology”
(July 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“How Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend”
(July 2020)
Ideas article in Wired
“Why Juneteenth Went Viral”
(June 2020)
Opinion article in Scientific American
“For Scientific Institutions, Racial Reconciliation Requires Reparations.”
(June 2020)
Opinion article in Wired
“The Pandemic and the Protests Are Mirror Images”
(June 2020)
Opinion article in Undark Magazine
“The Coronavirus Is Mutating. That’s Not Necessarily Good or Bad.”
(May 2020)
Opinion article in Wired
“How to spot a Covid-10 Carpetbagger, and an Expert”
(April 2020)
Essay in Genes to Genomes (a blog from the Genetics Society of America):
“One life, many ideas: A centennial homage to John Maynard Smith”
(April 2020)
Opinion article in Wired
“How Social Distancing Became Social Justice”
(March 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“How coronavirus compares to MRSA”
(February 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
“Katherine Johnson taught us about erasure”
(February 2020)
Feature article in ESPN’s The Undefeated
Can artificial intelligence help us understand racial bias in sports?
(January 2020)
Featured on the The Story Collider podcast. “Justice: Stories about righteous determination.” (Best of Story Collider selection, 2019)
Content Contributor to the 0.1% project by Navel x Massive Science (November 2019)
Opinion piece in Wired
How white nationalists have co-opted fan fiction
(August 2019)
Essay-Book Review in Boston Review
Is There a Human Blueprint?
(August 2019)
Opinion piece in Wired
James Watson and the insidiousness of scientific racism
(January 2019)
Essay in Genes to Genomes (a blog from the Genetics Society of America):
Coffee and epistasis: A scientific story of sips and SNPs
(June 2019)
Jazz @ Lincoln Center: Does Life and the Universe Improvise? A conversation (May 2019)
Feature article in Deadspin
Jackie Robinson and Integration
(April 2019)
Article in The Conversation
Why it’s so difficult for scientists to predict the next outbreak of a dangerous disease
(February 2019)
Other freelance writing:
Book Review for Greater Good Magazine
Why do people do bad things? A Review of Robert Sapolsky’s ‘Behave’. (December 2017)
Deadspin (2016 — present)
I’m a freelance sports writer, mostly data-informed:
— Article on the Rickey Henderson Hall of Fame, a statistical analysis of Hall of Famers in Major League Baseball (July 2017)
— Article on predicting the winner of the NBA slam dunk contest, using statistical analyses (February 2017)
Staff Writer for Boxing.com (2011 — present)
I’ve served as a staff boxing writer for many years. You can find my boxing writing here
