Last week a producer from the BBC’s show More or Less contacted me with a question from a listener: Can jellyfish swim as fast as an Olympic swimmer? (I’m guessing this question was in part spurred on by Michael Phelps’, umm, race with a shark during Shark Week in 2017.) I LOVE …
For the last month on Mondays at lunchtime, I’ve been logging on to a Zoom Spanish class with a half a dozen other women. All of us have varying degrees of high school, college, and life experience that qualify us as “intermediate” speakers. We all intermittently confuse the differences between ser and …
There’s something about self-isolation that longs for the wandering ways of the jellies. So I’ve probably spent a bit too much time oogling videos lately. Luckily, there’s been plenty to virtually drift off to. The Schmidt Ocean Institute captured video [click the link, that’s just a screen grab on the left] of …
For the last few months, the world has been watching the spread of the deadly coronavirus and lives have been upended in the uncertainty of its trajectory. Governments have been mobilizing their responses and businesses have shut down operations. And all the while there’s been another lethal and massive epidemic building. One …
The news is terrible. I find myself picking up my phone and clicking the “News” ap on my phone every hour, twice an hour, three times. I’ve read all the stuff about dopamine hits from clicking and I get it. It’s an addiction. Plus, like I said, the news is bad so …
How Do I Not Know This #1: Janthina’s Violet Liquid Continue reading
I’ve been getting Google alerts on the word “jellyfish” since 2010. For eight years a daily roundup of jellyfish news from across the web has been rolling across my inbox in the mid-afternoon. I’ve seen most of the stories several times. I’ve seen giant jellyfish drifting near video cameras on oilrig platforms that …
I’ve had the most extraordinary response from SPINELESS. Beyond anything I could imagine. I thought I might share some more of that goodness here. It’s been amazing visiting book clubs around Austin and talking with readers, from groups of lawyers and doctors, to groups of women who have been reading together for …
Jellyfish Art, a Polyp Finder, The New York Times & Helen Macdonald! Continue reading
Look what the marvelous people at Riverhead made! Happy Holidays, everyone!
The media that has found something to showcase in SPINELESS has really exceeded anything I could imagine. So here’s the latest, with all my gratitude! Over the weekend, SPINELESS received an amazing review in the Wall Street Journal. I loved all the science packed into this piece, and the placement–above the fold–was …
Since SPINELESS has been out in the world, I’ve discovered one very simple jellyfish thing I never did: draw a jellyfish. Sure, I doodled jellyfish in the edges of my notes and I sketched Picasso-esque outlines of jellyfish on nametags and business cards so people would remember that I was that person …
A Jellyfish Anatomy Primer: By Popular Demand Continue reading