Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bio
Photo by Lucia Prosperi
My favorite things to think about are how science and technology shape our lived experience and what we can do as individuals to steer that process. As a journalist with a PhD from MIT in the history of technology, I find that those questions contain a lifetime's worth of stories.
I formerly identified as a longform, text-only journalist. But since 2016 or so I’ve claimed multiple citizenship in the lands of print and online journalism; audio production for podcasts and radio; and strategic communications for startups and venture firms. I launched my podcast Soonish in January 2017. It’s a nonfiction, reporting-driven show where I search out people who can help me map the places where the future is seeping into the present. I'm now preparing Season 6 of the show. My newfound audio skills have also opened up numerous freelance opportunities. In 2020, for example, I was the founding producer and host of a twice-monthly podcast from MIT Technology Review magazine called Deep Tech. The show was designed to bring ideas from the print magazine alive in audio form. I’m the producer of The Harry Glorikian Show, a twice-monthly interview podcast explaining how AI and other forms of computing are changing the healthcare industry. And in early 2022 I guest-produced and guest-hosted “The Persistent Innovators,” a miniseries for InnoLead’s Innovation Answered podcast that looks at “super-ager” companies that stay innovative long past the stage when most companies forget how to be creative. Check out the episodes about Apple, Disney, LEGO, and Novartis.
In 2017 I teamed up with Tamar Avishai of The Lonely Palette and Zachary Davis and Nick Andersen of Ministry of Ideas to form a new network of high-quality, longform, narrative nonfiction shows called Hub & Spoke. Our mission is to promote independent podcasting, collaborate to grow the audiences for our shows, and work to provide direct financial support for our member-producers. We started with a Boston-centric "hub" and we continue to recruit more “spokes” inside and outside Boston. In addition to the founding shows, the collective also includes The Briny from Matt Frassica in Maine, Iconography from Charles Gustine in Boston, Mementos from Lori Mortimer in Boston, Nocturne from Vanessa Lowe in Los Angeles, Open Source from Christopher Lydon and Mary McGrath in Boston, Out There from Willow Belden and her team in Wyoming, Print Is Dead!…Long Live Print from Patrick Mitchell in Rockport, MA, Rumble Strip from Erica Heilman in Vermont, and Subtitle from Patrick Cox in Boston and Kavita Pillay in Finland. In the last couple of years we’ve incorporated, found a fiscal sponsor, and obtained a major gift to expand our fundraising and outreach operations. You can read more about Hub & Spoke’s here and check out our Indie Audio Maker’s Manifesto at Transom.org.
In 2019 and 2020 I was a monthly technology columnist for Scientific American, the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. My column was called “Ventures: The Business of Innovation.” True to my work at Soonish and before that at Xconomy, I used it to ask how new technologies emerge and how people experience them. My first column appeared in the February 2019 issue. I covered topics ranging from machine-made music to the resurgence of nuclear power to technology for secure elections to civil-enginering responses to sea level rise.
To back up by about 30 years: I got my start in journalism at the Harvard Independent, the weekly alternative student newspaper at Harvard College, where I was news editor, executive news editor, and eventually editor-in-chief. I’ve stayed active at the newspaper as an alumnus. From 2015 to 2022 I was chair of the Indy's graduate board, which handles fundraising and oversees the newspaper's endowment. In 2019 the Independent celebrated its 50th anniversary, completed a major fundraising campaign designed to grow the endowment, and moved off-campus to offices in Harvard Square.
At Harvard I earned a B.A. in the history of science, and then went on to earn a doctorate history and social study of science and technology at MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society, now known as HASTS (for History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society). Out of the crop of students admitted to the newly approved doctoral program, I was the first to complete the degree, in 1994. My PhD thesis examined the political fallout from major technological disasters such as the blackouts in New York City in 1965 and 1977, the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and the devastating chemical leak at Bhopal.
In my first job as a full-time journalist, I spent three years covering the Boston-area science scene for Science. I developed a specialized beat covering evolutionary developmental genetics (“evo devo”), a field that was then in its first bloom of discovery. In 1997 I left Boston for the San Francisco Bay Area and became managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center. Later I was a web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia, creator of the first successful consumer electronic book device, the Rocket eBook (a precursor to the Amazon Kindle). In 2001 I joined MIT’s Technology Review magazine, where I served as a senior editor and San Francisco bureau chief and later as executive editor of the magazine’s website, Technologyreview.com.
In 2007 I went to work for Xconomy, a multi-bureau news publication about innovation, venture capital, and technology and life sciences startup. I was the editor of Xconomy Boston, then founding editor of Xconomy San Francisco. I created and managed the site’s consumer-focused Xperience section. In addition to my regular news stories for Xconomy, I wrote an opinion column every Friday called VOX: The Voice of Xperience.
In 2014-15, I returned to MIT to become Acting Director of Knight Science Journalism at MIT, the world's leading mid-career fellowship program for journalists covering science, technology, health, and the environment. Founded by veteran science journalist Victor McElheny and endowed by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the fellowship brings about a dozen distinguished science and technology journalists to MIT each year. I managed the program's budget, staff, and curriculum and arranged a year of rewarding experiences for the 2014-15 Knight Fellows. As part of the KSJ job, I was the executive producer and chief fundraiser for ScienceWriters2015, held at MIT October 9-13, 2015. From 2018 to 2023 I was a lecturer for MIT’s Experimental Study Group (ESG), where I taught seminars on extraterrestrial life and podcasting. In 2020 I was associate producer for ESG’s 50th-anniversary documentary Experimental, which was written and directed by my friend Graham Gordon Ramsay, associate director of ESG.
In 2017 I assembled and edited the 2018 edition of Twelve Tomorrows, an anthology of hard science fiction short stories. That volume, published by the MIT Press in May 2018, featured marvelous pieces by Elizabeth Bear, SL Huang, Clifford V. Johnson, J. M. Ledgard, Liu Cixin, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Nnedi Okorafor, Malka Older, Sarah Pinsker, and Alastair Reynolds, as well as an interview with renowned science fiction author Samuel R. Delany by Jason Pontin and Mark Pontin. The anthology is available in soft cover or Kindle ebook formats. A second hard science fiction collection that I co-edited—this one focused on the young-adult market—came out in October 2022. It’s called Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions, published by the MITeen Press, and it’s a collaboration with the super-talented YA SFF writer A. R. Capetta. The book includes mesmerizing stories by William Alexander, K. Ancrum, Elizabeth Bear, A. R. Capetta, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, and Wendy Xu. Keep your eye out for another hard sci-fi anthology project coming in 2025!
The Twelve Tomorrows project led to another MIT Press book, Extraterrestrials, which was published in April 2020 as part of the press’s Essential Knowledge series. It’s an exploration of the long history of the idea that intelligent aliens might exist; you can read the first chapter of the book for free at the MIT Press Reader site. The book is structured around the big question: Where is everybody? Other civilizations ought to be common in the Milky Way galaxy, yet as far as we can tell, we are alone. What might explain this strange fact, known as the Fermi Paradox? Why haven’t we detected signs of sentience, or life of any kind, elsewhere in the galaxy? Perhaps, the book speculates, we don’t yet understand what to look for.
In addition to my books, articles, and writings in Science, Scientific American, Technology Review, and Xconomy, I’ve contributed to STAT, The Boston Globe, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, World Business, Nieman Storyboard, and WBUR's Cognoscenti. I was the founding producer for MIT Technology Review’s Business Lab and Deep Tech podcasts (and hosted Deep Tech’s first 12 episodes). WBUR, WHYY, and GBH Radio have aired my audio pieces. I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH, the PBS NewsHour, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. In 2018 I performed live on stage for Story Collider, and my story was later released as part of the Story Collider podcast.
In 2017, a wonderful Australian Shepherd pup named Gryphon came into my life. I posted lots of photos of him on the social network formerly known as Twitter, but I abandoned that account in 2022, for obvious reasons. You can see a few photos of Gryphon in this Flickr album.
In September 2023, I closed up shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’d lived since 2014, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I can’t give you a logical, left-brain explanation for the move. I just felt New Mexico calling to me. I love it here so far, and I expect that the change of environment will make itself heard in future episodes and seasons of Soonish, as well as other projects.
Recent Media Appearances
Author Talk: Essential Knowledge for Future Living: Extraterrestrials, with Wade Roush, MIT Press, June 1, 2020
This Planet Sucks. Good Thing We’re Looking Harder Than Ever for Life on New Ones, The Daily Beast, May 11, 2020
Extraterrestrials—Wade Roush, Geek Chocolate, May 10, 2020
IT Visionaries, April 28, 2020
New Books in Science Podcast, April 27, 2020
The MIT Press Podcast, April 10, 2020
Wow! Signal Podcast, April 6, 2020
Stride & Saunter, November 6, 2019
Boston Speaks Up, Episode 17, July 9, 2019
Bello Collective: Welcome to the Overwhelm, May 30, 2019
How Do We Fix It?, Episode 191, February 7, 2019
New Books in Science Fiction, October 28, 2018
Meet Wade Roush of Soonish in Cambridge, BostonVoyager, July 3, 2018
Inquiring Minds, Episode 95, 2015
Conversations on Passion, Crazy Enough to Try, March 20, 2014