I grew up in a family of Russian scientists listening to stories about volcanoes and black holes while eating dinners from my family’s organic orchard. Since then, I survived a winter in Siberia, a summer in Madagascar, a year at Columbia J-School, and have written for the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Popular Science, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Sierra Club, Atlantic, Newsweek, BBC, NPR and AFAR, and appeared on radio and TV. Along the way, I won two awards for stories on sustainability and four for covering the science of poo, and decided to pen a book on the subject. Named THE OTHER DARK MATTER: THE SCIENCE AND BUSINESS OF TURNING WASTE INTO WEALTH & HEALTH, it will be published by Chicago University Press in November 2021, just in time for the World Toilet Day.
In writing this book, I toured a slew of smelly sewage plants, hopped over many murky street gutters, stuck my nose into a stool bank—and lived to tell the story. Now go read it! I promise you lots of good laughs, aha moments and ‘holy shit’ revelations. You’ll never flush the same way again! Amen.
