Editor @NYTScience, author (w/ @murphydvm) of "Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals."
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Articles by Bill Wasik
What Are the Biggest Questions in Science Today? 100 Scientists Weigh In.
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. What Are the Biggest Questions in Science Today? 100 Scientists Weigh In. Are you proud of your chin? You should be. In fact, give it an appreciative rub right now, or admire it in the mirror: That bony protuberance jutting out past your teeth is a trait that distinguishes you from the rest of the animal kingdom.
The New York Times names new national science correspondent
Posted Wednesday, September 2, 2026 9:58 am I’m thrilled to announce that Eric Boodman, one of the most lauded rising talents in the world of science writing, will be joining The Times in the new role of national science correspondent. Eric comes to us from STAT, where he has worked since its founding in 2015, helping to make it a destination for narrative features.
The New York Times names space editor
Soon after Artemis II splashed down in April, culminating a jaw-dropping run of New York Times coverage of the mission, the man who coordinated that effort, Michael Roston, made his long-planned move to the Express desk. The Science desk already was planning to fill multiple seats with editors, but it became clear that one of those hires would also have to step into some enormous moon boots. In short: We needed a space editor.
Reporter to start new AI beat on The New York Times Science desk
Posted Wednesday, August 12, 2026 10:28 am At a moment when the rise of artificial intelligence is transforming nearly every beat that The Times covers, it’s long overdue for the Science desk to have a reporter dedicated to the subject. That’s not just because A.I. is enabling researchers across all the realms of science to make connections and discoveries that weren’t possible before.
The New York Times appoints a news director for Science
In recent years, desks at The Times have been encouraged to appoint a lead news editor: someone to serve as the main point of contact on news and work with the desk’s whole team, editors and writers alike, to find ways to make their daily coverage as urgent and vital as possible. I am thrilled to announce that Russell Goldman, a 12-year veteran of the International desk, has agreed to take on that role for Science, with the title of news director.
The New York Times appoints a new reporter for Science
I am delighted to announce that Carolyn Y. Johnson of The Washington Post will be joining The Times as a science reporter. For those of you unfamiliar with Carolyn’s byline, she has distinguished herself during her twenty-year-plus career — first at The Boston Globe, and later at The Post — as one of the science world’s most versatile, lucid and engaging journalists.
New role for Amber Williams at The New York Times
Over the past two years, editors all around The Times have gotten to know Amber Williams as one of the big brains on the News Desk, someone who can read thousands of words a day and help improve a tricky lede or spot a subtle framing problem. What colleagues might not know is that before joining The Times, Amber began her career on the science beat.
A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. During my 25 years as a magazine editor, my favorite part of the job has always been helping writers figure out what the story is: where to start it, where to end it, what’s important and new about it.
A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. During my 25 years as a magazine editor, my favorite part of the job has always been helping writers figure out what the story is: where to start it, where to end it, what’s important and new about it.
The Gilded Age of Animal Advocacy: A Transformative Era for America’s Moral Compass
For the nonhuman animal cause, the 19th century’s end would bring to a close a defining period—a transformative 30-year era beginning in 1866, with the founding of the first animal welfare society. It is a story of activism and activists like George Thorndike Angell, Henry Bergh, and Caroline Earle White, who propelled the anti-cruelty cause forward.
The Birth of Animal Welfare: America’s Moral Shift, 1866-1900
For the nonhuman animal cause, the 19th century’s end would bring to a close a defining period—a transformative 30-year era beginning in 1866, with the founding of the first animal welfare society. It is a story of activism and activists like George Thorndike Angell, Henry Bergh, and Caroline Earle White, who propelled the anti-cruelty cause forward.
The Gilded Age of animal advocacy: A transformative era for America’s moral compass
This is an adapted excerpt from Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy (Knopf Doubleday, 2024). It is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) by permission of Knopf Doubleday. This adaptation was produced for the web by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Bill Wasik is the editorial director of the New York Times Magazine.
The New York Times names new leader to expand ideas journalism - Editor and Publisher
After nine years at Opinion, Max Strasser will shepherd Ideas, tapping into big thinking around the newsroom. Almost a year ago, Joe asked us to create a new initiative for ideas journalism at The Times. The premise was this: In a complex and changing world, there’s a huge and untapped opportunity for our journalists to take on deep, explanatory pieces that introduce the ideas shaping the beats they report on. This impulse led, last October, to the creation of a new weekly feature, slugged Ideas.
Our Kindred Creatures need you to be brave
"Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals" By Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy c. 2024, Knopf $35, 464 pages Maybe you have room for one more. The photo of that rescue animal tugged at your heart. Those soft eyes, the little ears, the fat furry paws, one more dog or cat in the family won't matter, will it? After all, what's a house without pets?
Review: Looking at the historic bonds of animals and humans in 'Our Kindred Creatures'
A 19th-century pet cemetery in Westchester County, New York, with poignant epitaphs: "Born a dog/Lived like a gentleman/Died beloved." A metropolis adjacent to a metropolis, with teeming Chicago stockyards next to a luxurious hotel. Manhattan's equine ambulance, which preceded the city's first human ambulance by a couple of years.
How P.T. Barnum Brought Beluga Whales to New York City
As the vast glaciers of the last ice age retreated toward the poles some hundred centuries ago, most of the small, playful white whales that had foraged at the southern edge of the glacial mass migrated northward to the Arctic seas.
How our treatment of animals has changed - and hasn’t - in 150 years
Our Kindred Creatures How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals By Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy Knopf. 450 pp.
Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do about Animals
"Our Kindred Creatures is the most elegantly written, rigorously researched, and morally nuanced portrait of America's early animal advocates I've ever read. More important, it's the story of how widespread social change happens.
The Illogical Relationship Americans Have With Animals
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. American society has a confused, contradictory relationship with animals. Many dog owners have no compunction about eating feedlot-raised pigs, animals whose intelligence, sociality, and sentience compare favorably with their shih tzus and beagles. Some cat lovers let their outdoor felines contribute to mass bird murder. A pescatarian might claim that a cod is less capable of suffering than a chicken.
From the American Civil War to the present, 'Our Kindred Creatures' is a history of animal rights activism
A 19th-century pet cemetery in Westchester County, N.Y., with poignant epitaphs: "Born a dog/Lived like a gentleman/Died beloved."A metropolis adjacent to a metropolis, with teeming Chicago stockyards next to a luxurious hotel. Manhattan's equine ambulance, which preceded the city's first human ambulance by a couple of years.
Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry
Austin Frerick. Island, $29 (248p) ISBN 978-1-64283-269-3 In this eye-opening debut study, Frerick, an agricultural policy fellow at Yale University, reveals the ill-gained stranglehold that a handful of companies have on America’s food economy. Tracing the paths various corporations took to achieve market domination, he repeatedly demonstrates how their rise was aided by infusions of corrupting money into the political process.
The City Is Up For Grabs: How Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Led and Lost a City in Crisis
Gregory Royal Pratt. Chicago Review, $28.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-641-60599-1 Crime, scandals, a powerful union, and her own abrasive personality did in Chicago’s recently deposed mayor, according to this savvy debut analysis. Chicago Tribune reporter Pratt recaps Lori Lightfoot’s sudden rise to the mayoralty in 2019 as a political newbie running as a progressive, despite her background as a former federal prosecutor.
Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals|Hardcover
A compassionate, sweeping history of the transformation in American attitudes toward animals by the best-selling authors of Rabid Over just a few decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a moral revolution on behalf of animals. Before the Civil War, animals' suffering had rarely been discussed; horses pulling carriages and carts were routinely beaten in public view, and dogs were pitted against each other for entertainment and gambling.
OUR KINDRED CREATURES
A well-researched account that strikes a nice balance between description and analysis. The authors of Rabid return with an examination of the historical shift in attitudes of Americans toward animals.
The Dissident: Alexey Navalny: Profile of a Political Prisoner
David M. Herszenhorn.
Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback
Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd. Dutton, $30 (400p) ISBN 978-0-593-47203-3 Journalists Dent and Dodd’s outstanding debut weaves the story of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes into a warts-and-all history of the Missouri city. The son of a former major league pitcher, Mahomes’s passing skills while playing at Texas Tech University caught the attention of the Chiefs, who drafted him in 2017.
gang aft agley
CN: infestations, bugs, covid, rabies, general gross stuff Everyone's always quoting the bit about the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, but the rest of that line deserves some air-time too. Anyway. I had big (middling) plans for this newsletter when I started it last week. It was going to be a place where I could hammer out any old thing! Maybe I'd do a whole entry on the best floaty white nightgowns to swan around in or how I love earth-toned appliances from the 1970s.
Stories to Sweep You Away: Our New Feature, The Great Read
Times Insider Every weekday, we recommend one piece of exceptional writing from across the newsroom. You never know what you’ll find. And that’s the point. Feb. 4, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. The Times publishes an astonishing amount of stuff every week, and that’s because we know our readers come to us with an astonishing array of interests.
The Internet Dream Became a Nightmare. What Will Become of It Now?
“Hey, everyone!” the world’s eighth-richest man said, with a bit too much brio, as he waved to the crowd at Gaston Hall in Washington. “It’s really great to be at Georgetown with all of you today.” But then the smile fell away from Mark Zuckerberg’s face, and there was an awkward pause as he licked his lips and looked at the crowd.
Rock Prophets | Harper's Magazine
From “What Would Journey Do?” by Bill Wasik, in the September 24, 1998, issue of The Weekly Week, a humor magazine published in Somerville, Massachusetts. “W.W.J.D.” bracelets were created in 1989 to encourage teenagers to ask “the question ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ with each decision they made”; since then, over 14 million of the bracelets have been sold in the United States alone.
The New York Times Takes a Trip to a Driverless Future
Ever since I started as an editor at The New York Times Magazine a little more than three years ago, one of my main guiding principles has been: Don’t go too far out on a limb. That precept feels particularly important to me because many of the stories I oversee are about science and technology, two subjects where it can be easy for journalists to get too far ahead of the facts.
In the Programmable World, All Our Objects Will Act as One
In our houses, cars, and factories, we’re surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do. Now they are beginning to talk to one another. Soon we’ll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, even save our lives. On a 5-acre plot in Great Falls, Virginia, less than a mile’s stroll through exurban scrub from the wide Potomac River, Alex Hawkinson has breathed life into a lifeless object.
The Superfood Gold Rush
In the aisles of the American supermarket, hierarchies arise and collapse with the velocity of soap-opera drama. The produce section is especially cutthroat; here, because novel products are so rare, it’s the stories that must change to entice consumers. Back in the 1970s, the Chinese gooseberry went global — cultivated in New Zealand and shipped to the world — after being rechristened as the friendlier kiwi.
Transcript of United Airlines’ New Safety Video
Welcome! Bienvenidos! Willkommen! Thank you for flying United Airlines. We appreciate your attention as we demonstrate the updated safety features of this aircraft. Please turn off and stow away your phones and electronics. Whenever the seatbelt light is on, be sure your seatbelt is fastened low and tight across your lap. Keep in mind, flyers — if for any reason this airliner becomes overbooked, we maintain the right to forcibly remove you with little to no explanation.
Toms River by Dan Fagin | PenguinRandomHouse.com
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • Winner of The New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award • “A new classic of science reporting.”— The New York Times The riveting true story of a small town ravaged by industrial pollution, Toms River melds hard-hitting investigative reporting, a fascinating scientific detective story, and an unforgettable cast of characters into a sweeping narrative in the tradition of A Civil Action, The Emperor of All Maladies, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta...
Exit Strategies From Social Gatherings
Leaving quietly out the side door of a party or bar without saying goodbye to anyone. Leaving quietly out the side door of a party or bar without saying goodbye to anyone, making it down the block before you realize you forgot your coat inside, stopping inside the front door because you can’t recall if you actually wore a coat that night, then leaving again because you in fact forgot your coat in the cab on the way over.
As I Prepare for the TSA to Ravage My Afro for Weapons
As I Prepare for the to Ravage My Afro for Weapons Here we are once again, about to perform our customary dance. I assume the position in the full-body scanner, which apparently is not thorough enough, so a female agent must then proceed to rummage through my hair in search of explosives. Other passengers sheepishly stare but this does not discourage her, although occasionally she may offer a quiet “sorry� as she pokes and probes.
In Search of the Red Planet
In Search of the Red Planet In a poem called “Tulsa,” in a book titled Actual Air, by a poet named David Berman, I read, “He paints radio storms / in the basement beside a globe of Mars, / his hair and shoes the color of ox blood.” This was on Sunday, a bright, warm, altogether atypical morning. Is there a company in the world today that manufactures globes of Mars? This is what I asked myself, in those exact words more or less.
Bright Lights, Big Internet
THIS summer, as in so many summers gone by, young aspirants to the creative class — would-be writers, musicians, artists, editors, comedians, performers, thinkers, provocateurs — are stepping off buses in Port Authority and trains in Penn Station, navigating their rented trucks and borrowed cars through outer-borough blocks. These new arrivals come to New York, first and foremost, to find one another, a flock of other young people like themselves.
#Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts-Coming to a City Near You
Let’s start with the fundamental paradox: Our personal technology in the 21st century—our laptops and smartphones, our browsers and apps—does everything it can to keep us out of crowds. Why pack into Target when Amazon can speed the essentials of life to your door? Why approach strangers at parties or bars when dating sites like OkCupid (to say nothing of hookup apps like Grindr) can more efficiently shuttle potential mates into your bed? Why sit in a cinema when you can stream?
5 Works of Nonfiction for Horror Fans
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. I used to spend a lot of time imagining the kind of research that writers had to in order to make their books more convincing. I thought about the places they visited, the questions they asked, and the books they had to read. Eventually, I stopped wondering and started reading.
Silicon Valley Needs to Lose the Arrogance or Risk Destruction
When an industry has a hold on the public imagination, it’s easy to forget just how fickle that imagination can be. By 1946, when women were nearly rioting to get their hands on scarce pairs of nylon hose, plastic had emerged not merely as an enormous business but as the very stuff of dreams, a substance poised to shape the American future.
Terrible Virus, Fascinating History In 'Rabid'
Here's your vocabulary word for the week: zoonosis. It describes an infection that is transmitted between species. For example, the disease that the husband and wife team of Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy have written about in their new book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus. Wasik is a journalist; his wife is a veterinarian, so the rabies virus seems like a natural topic for conversation.
Welcome to the Age of Digital Imperialism
The Tech & Design Issue June 4, 2015 In March, the Culture Ministry of Thailand sent out an unusual communiqué. Women, it seems, both locals and tourists, were snapping pictures of their breasts from beneath, in an act known colloquially as the “underboob selfie.” The ministry reminded women that sharing such images was banned under the Computer Crime Act of 2007 and that offenders could face five years in prison.
How Smartphones Opened Up a Wonderful New Frontier for Art
For most of history, great art tended to be inseparable from its physical setting. There was no Sphinx without Giza, no Creation of Adam without the Sistine Chapel, no Hamlet (in performance, at least) without the Globe Theater. Only in the age of reproduction (first mechanical, then digital) did we cut that once inseverable tie—culminating in our present era, when we can see and hear and watch whatever we want from wherever we are.
The Man Making Silicon Valley Go Crazy for Hardware
Most gadgets have buttons, but for Shortcut Labs, the gadget is the button. The company’s forthcoming product, Flic 1, is a single, clip-on button that uses Bluetooth to activate a preset function in a mobile device. As Shortcut’s founders imagine it, it could be used as anything from a camera remote to a fridge magnet you push to launch your food-shopping app. It’s the kind of idea that has launched a thousand Kickstarter campaigns.
My Crowd | Harper's Magazine
Article — From the March 2006 issue Or, phase 5: A report from the inventor of the flash mob By Bill Wasik The author (center) at MOB #2, June 17, 2003. Photograph (detail) courtesy Mike Epstein/satanslaundromat.com. [T]hey have a goal which is there before they can find words for it. This goal is the blackest spot where most people are gathered.
#Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts-Coming to a City Near You
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