2025 In Review

A lot happened in 2025, and the first two words that come to mind are “pinch me.” Because, um, 2025 was the year of my first book.

Let me rephrase that: I WROTE A FREAKING WHOLE-ASS POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK.

I started writing Rise of the Zombie Bugs in 2022 while also working full-time. I read scores of papers, interviewed scientific experts in parasites, mycology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience, and visited collections and labs in New York and the Netherlands. More than 80,000 words later, it’s been absolutely incredible to see the book out in the world, a feat that would not have been possible without the skill and attention of the very talented bookish folk at Hopkins Press:

• Senior Science Acquisitions Editor: Tiffany Gasbarini
• Acquisitions Editor: Ezra Rodriguez
• Production Editor: Hilary Jacqmin
• Production Editorial Manager, Books Division: Jennifer D’Urso
• Copyeditor: Susan Matheson
• Index: Kathy Patterson
• Marketing Specialist: Kris Lykke
• Publicity Director: Kait Howard
• Publicist: Alison Mailloux
• UK Media Publicist: Katherine Lowe
• Cover design and illustration: Kimberly Glyder
• Art direction: Molly Seamans
• Blurbs (Graduate Acquisitions Coordinator): Jonah Shallit

Has it been an absolute thrill to see it in people’s hands, and in bookstores and libraries? Indeed, it has.

I spoke about Rise of the Zombie Bugs at the Library of Congress (for reals, PINCH ME), the New York Public Library, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab Colloquium and WORD Bookstore in Jersey City. I appeared on Science Friday, Quirks and Quarks and VOX: Unexplainable. It was reviewed in Nature, The Biologist (newsletter of the Royal Society of Biology), The Scientist, The Conversation, Live Science, Gizmodo and El País.

New Zealand Geographic featured the book in an illustrated article, with absolutely marvelous cartoons by Gisele Clarkson. If you thought that parasitic zombifiers couldn’t be adorable, I am confident that her art will change your mind (or at least make you reconsider on a case-by-case basis).

Articles, articles, articles

But there was lots of other writing in 2025, too! I got to report on plenty of cool science for CNN. Some highlights include “supercontinents” buried deep inside Earth; secret color signalling in birds-of-paradise; inner workings of a zombie volcano; a 688-year-old murder case; the oldest evidence of human mummification; what really doomed Shackleton’s Endurance; assassination intrigue between rival ant queens; and the discovery of more than 16,000 fossil dinosaur footprints. (If you want to see all of my CNN stories, you can find everything under my byline on CNN Brasil, for reasons that were never explained to me.)

For Scientific American, I wrote about the emergence of Brood XIV periodical cicadas, and baby pterosaurs that lived about 150 million years ago — until they were pummeled to death by a powerful storm. And for Live Science I dove deep into weird medical cases, for their article series Diagnostic Dilemmas. There was the woman who injected herself with black widow venom to get high; a woman who lactated from her armpits; and a woman with a rare condition that made her see people as dragons. Oh, and then there was the man who walked around for EIGHT YEARS with a knife blade embedded in his chest.

Yes, and …

2025 was also the year that I finally bit the bullet and signed up for improv classes, at the Magnet Theater. While this wasn’t specifically science-y, improv training provided a whole new box of tools for conducting and giving interviews, for public speaking, and for generally thinking on your feet and navigating the unexpected. I was super lucky to have two excellent teachers (Rick Andrews for Level 1 and Armando Diaz for Level 2) and two incredible groups of classmates.

While my stint as a science editor at Scholastic ended in August, before that I put some of those improv lessons to good use in front of the camera for Scholastic’s ScienceFlix, a subscription-based STEM learning resource. I home-tested and studio-recorded a series of science experiments, building a DIY compass and a tabletop projector; demonstrating the behavior of non-Newtonian fluids and the porosity of eggshells; and showing how much bacteria is living on the surface of your iPhone (you may not want to know the answer to that one).

Coming in 2026

What lies ahead for next year? January kicks off with an appearance on the Peculiar Book Club (streaming Jan. 8) and a conversation on the Talk Nerdy podcast. Hens Breet and I are working together on a series of unsettling art and very brief mini-stories, called Sightings of the Strangely Familiar. I collaborated with artist Gwendolyn Wood on a piece of illustrated fiction about Cambrian critters that is loosely based on The Canterbury Tales, out soon in a digital zine celebrating invertebrates. And then in March I’ll be at the Tuscon Festival of Books (March 14–15), talking about zombie bugs on the festival’s Science Stage.

Oh, and I recently joined the New Jersey Institute of Technology as a staff writer, covering news and research in engineering, tech and other science.

In non-science news, in May I’ll be co-hosting (with Hens) a drop-in show called the Mr. Ferocious Radio Hour on the best radio station in the world: WFMU. Our first show aired April 13, 2024, and we’ll be back with more obscure hits and forgotten gems. All killer, no filler! More on that to come as the playlist evolves.

I can’t wait to see what comes next on this incredible journey; I hope you’ll be joining me for whatever that might be.

Another fabulous zombie bug illustration by Giselle Clarkson, from the NZ Geographic article “Hostile takeover”