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Erik Olsen

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Los Angeles
As seen in: Medium, MSN, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, Clarín (Argentina), Fast Company, Quartz, Scientific American, Substack and
Covers:  Science, environment, extreme sports, national news, breaking news
Doesn't Cover: Politics, relationships.
Visual journalist and producer in Los Angeles. Formerly @nytimes, @qz, @ABCNews Instagram @olsentropy. Once went down to 2000 ft in a sub. Thalassophile.
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The Ocean's Youngest Monsters Are Ready for Glamour Shots

The Ocean's Youngest Monsters Are Ready for Glamour Shots

The New York Times — Divers practicing blackwater photography are helping marine scientists gain new insights into fish larvae. For most scuba divers, few places underwater match the visual thrill of a kaleidoscopic coral reef teeming with colorful fish. For Jeff Milisen, a marine biologist and photographer in Kona, Hawaii, there is no better place to dive than an open stretch of deep ocean.
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A Map 15 Years in the Making Illuminates a 'Grand Canyon' off California's Coast

A Map 15 Years in the Making Illuminates a 'Grand Canyon' off California's Coast

Scientific American — Just offshore from the small town of Moss Landing, Calif.-once an important West Coast fishing hub and now a center of oceanographic research-stretches one of the country's most magnificent but little-known geologic features: Monterey Canyon. About the same size as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, its main channel is nearly 300 miles long.
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Drones Capture Close Encounters between Great White Sharks and Beachgoers

Drones Capture Close Encounters between Great White Sharks and Beachgoers

Scientific American — Over the past decade, the number of encounters between humans and sharks swimming off the coast of California has risen dramatically . Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach, says this summer is shaping up to be a major year for these sharks along the state’s 840-mile coastline.
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Ralphie from 'A Christmas Story' could have been the first child in space. Then disaster struck.

Ralphie from 'A Christmas Story' could have been the first child in space. Then disaster struck.

Popular Science — The 1980s offer lessons on the perils of human space flight-lessons that are still relevant today.
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A scientist's paintings reveal the incredible beauty of the living cell

A scientist's paintings reveal the incredible beauty of the living cell

Quartz — David Goodsell is not a household name, but if you've ever spent time perusing a cellular biology textbook, there's a good chance you've come across his work. Goodsell is one of the world's foremost molecular artists. His gorgeous, intricate watercolor paintings showing the inner workings of cells are a staple of the biological sciences.
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This filmmaker shoots the mountain lions that live near his home in Los Angeles, and this video i...

This filmmaker shoots the mountain lions that live near his home in Los Angeles, and this video i...

Quartz — Robert Martinez hunts lions. Not with a gun. Not like the "sportsman" archer/dentist who killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe. Martinez hunts them with his camera. Eleven cameras to be exact. And, as you can see in the video above, he has filmed some of the most captivating footage of Los Angeles mountain lions ever seen. For the last four years, Martinez, who lives in Glendora, California and works full time in the supermarket industry, has planted cameras in the chaparral-strewn hills high above Los Angeles. He admits he's become a bit of a fanatic about it all.
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Great white sharks are coming back in California-and that's a good thing

Great white sharks are coming back in California-and that's a good thing

Quartz — Dr. Chris Lowe's phone has been ringing almost constantly. As the director of the Cal State Long Beach Shark Lab, Lowe is the go-to-guy for media and other scientists when they have questions about sharks. Recently, they've been wanting to know whether the waters here are safe for people-and with good reason. In the past two weeks, there have been two shark encounters. On Memorial Day weekend, a great white shark attacked a 52 year-old mother of three who was training for a triathlon off the coast of Newport Beach. The shark's bite extended from her shoulder to her pelvis, suggesting an adult shark perhaps 9 feet long or more.
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Marine Life Thrives in Unlikely Place: Offshore Oil Rigs

Marine Life Thrives in Unlikely Place: Offshore Oil Rigs

The New York Times — EUREKA OIL PLATFORM OFF CALIFORNIA COAST - Eight miles off the coast of Long Beach, Calif., the oil rig Eureka, which has stood here for 40 years, is a study in contrasts. From a distance, it looks like just another offshore platform, an artifact of the modern industrial landscape. But beneath the waves, the Eureka and other rigs like it in the area are home to a vast and thriving community of sea life that some scientists say is one of the richest marine ecosystems on the planet.
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Drone Racing Dreams | The New York Times

Drone Racing Dreams | The New York Times

youtube.com — Drone racing is a fast-growing extreme sport in which pilots compete head-to-head with small flying drones while wearing first-person-view goggles. Grab the embed code for this video at Times Video: http://nyti.ms/1GYMPs0 Produced by: ERIK OLSEN Read the story here: http://nyti.ms/1iXfJwZ Subscribe to the Times Video newsletter for free and get a handpicked selection of the best videos from The New York Times every week: http://bit.ly/timesvideonewsletter Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n Watch more videos at: http://nytimes.com/video --------------------------------------------------------------- Want more from The New York Times?
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Video: Digitizing Natural History

Video: Digitizing Natural History

New York Times — Museums worldwide are spending millions to digitize their collections. The Berlin Museum of Natural History is undertaking one of the more ambitious efforts, using digital technology to create 3D images of so-called type specimens.
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Video: Migrants Flood Greek Island of Lesbos

Video: Migrants Flood Greek Island of Lesbos

New York Times — Thousands of migrants have come ashore this summer on the Greek island of Lesbos, a popular tourist destination. Some of them have to walk more than 40 miles to get to the main port of Mytilene.
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Video: Greek Cash Crunch Goes to Market

Video: Greek Cash Crunch Goes to Market

New York Times — Athens's Ichthyoskales fish auction is the largest in Greece, but capital controls and bank closings have hurt its ability to function.
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Video: Greece's Doctor Brain Drain

Video: Greece's Doctor Brain Drain

New York Times — In part of a large brain drain that could affect Greece for decades, thousands of doctors have left the nation for Germany since the financial crisis began five years ago.
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Video: Ukrainian Refugees, Lost and in Limbo

Video: Ukrainian Refugees, Lost and in Limbo

New York Times — Over a million people have been forced to flee their homes because of the war in Ukraine. Many of these internally displaced people have struggled to find a new life.
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Video: Keeping Fires Burning in Eastern Ukraine

Video: Keeping Fires Burning in Eastern Ukraine

New York Times — Avdiivka Coke and Steel in eastern Ukraine has been hit 160 times by military fire, but it is a vital plant and cannot close because of the prohibitive cost of restarting.
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Video: Anti-Immigration Movement Splits Germany

Video: Anti-Immigration Movement Splits Germany

New York Times — The German anti-immigration movement Pegida started in Dresden in October and has spread to other cities, gathering followers and prompting a backlash.
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Video: Germany's Refugee Crisis

Video: Germany's Refugee Crisis

New York Times — More refugees are seeking asylum in Germany than in any other country, straining Germans' tolerance for foreigners and taxing the government's ability to find housing for them.
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Berlin’s Wall of Light

Berlin’s Wall of Light

New York Times — To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the artists Christopher and Marc Bauder created a border of lights called the “Lichtgrenze.”
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Behemoth at Sea

Behemoth at Sea

New York Times — In the chess match that has global powers looking for new ways to move goods around the world, the Mary Maersk and nine other sister ships are the biggest pieces.
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Video: Scotland: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Video: Scotland: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

New York Times — In the week ahead of a historic referendum on Scottish independence, campaigners from both sides took to the streets to sway the vote, which could break a three-century-old union.
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Germany’s Offshore Wind Push

Germany’s Offshore Wind Push

New York Times — The small German island of Heligoland, a popular tourist destination, is undergoing dramatic change as the wind industry takes over.
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Video: Dubbing 007

Video: Dubbing 007

New York Times — German actor Dietmar Wunder performs the voice of Daniel Craig as James Bond, among many others, as a dubbing artist in Berlin.
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Video: Native Fantasy: Germany's Indian Heroes

Video: Native Fantasy: Germany's Indian Heroes

New York Times — Germany's biggest folk hero is an Apache named Winnetou who fights for justice outside of Hamburg. Best-selling author Karl May, who created him, never traveled to the American West.
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Bomb Collector of Ypres

Bomb Collector of Ypres

New York Times —
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