Can Knitting Help Teach Science?

A Cell Biologist Reflects on the Connections Between Stitches and STEM

When I was about 8 years old, my grandmother took me to a local fabric store to pick out a pattern for a dress we could sew together. Piecing together the brown pattern paper, cutting out fabric, and learning to pin and hem, I felt like I was solving the ultimate wearable puzzle.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was also preparing for my PhD in cell biophysics—the study of how cells, and the structures within them, move and grow. Cells form, and interact with, the squishy, …

A male bullfinch with an orange chest and black head and wing tips in a cage.

Intellectual Snobbery Is for the Birds

How Birdkeepers and Bullfinch Sperm Taught an Ornithologist Something New About Evolution

Birdkeepers are almost universally scorned by anyone else interested in birds. Biologists and birdwatchers alike are generally opposed to the idea of birds being kept in captivity. But during a …

| Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

I Turn Science Into Art

My Textbook Illustrations Help Educate the Next Generation of Biologists, Doctors, and Physicists

I graduated from art school in a muddle. All I’d ever really wanted to do was draw, and I had done so on every sheet of paper that came within …

What Is the Meaning of Life? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

What Is the Meaning of Life?

For Sir Paul Nurse, Creativity and Community Are Essential Building Blocks

What does it take to create meaning in our lives? According to Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel laureate geneticist and author of What Is Life?, supporting family and community as …

Is It Possible to Be Just Terrified Enough This COVID Halloween? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Is It Possible to Be Just Terrified Enough This COVID Halloween?

A Biologist of Animal Behavior Explains Why This Primordial Emotion Can Help Guide Us Through an Especially Spooky Season

It’s Halloween, the season when we go out and try to spook each other—at least in normal years. Indeed, fears of contracting and spreading the novel coronavirus have drastically impacted …