I write about the slow-motion collapse of industrial civilization. Mostly from a laptop.

My beat is a big-picture critique of contemporary life. Humans evolved to live and thrive in nature and community, using our bodies on the landscape to survive. Most of us no longer follow this original blueprint, and we suffer for it. My 2023 book, Why We Need to Be Wild, follows the adventures and philosophies of rewilders, who reject the script of our techno-utopia, building meaningful lives with nature and ancestral skills. Fearless Women in the Outdoors, out in 2027, follows 25 extreme female endurance athletes pushing the limits of human-powered adventure.

Noticing that hypocrisy has become the default operating system for anyone trying to live ethically inside a broken machine, my forthcoming book explores how we integrate contradiction at the cultural and individual levels. You can hear more about that here.

Over two decades, my reporting on health, culture, and education has run in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, KQED, the Christian Science Monitor, ARTNews, YOGA Magazine, NBC News online, and a long tail of others. I also ghostwrite, co-write, and edit books for people whose names you'd recognize and whose authorship I'm contractually obligated to forget. Wikipedia took note.

A few greatest hits: I covered Tunisia's arts scene blooming after the revolution and the first crop of Stanford students building apps to make you less anxious, the irony of which was not lost on me. My Atlantic piece on white privilege in collegiate debate went viral and got adapted into an episode of Radiolab. My San Francisco Chronicle investigation into Medi-Cal exposed an unjust genetic-testing policy, and one year later, the California Senate took up the matter, which is roughly as close as journalism ever gets to a slam dunk.

I've uncovered hidden environmental hazards and exposed the unglamorous underbelly of sustainable food. Yes, I dumpster-dived, attempted permaculture design, and built a compost toilet because why waste fresh water?

I've also published graphic memoir essays about motherhood, under the working title “Motherwhelmed,” in Motherwell, Hip Mama, and Mutha. Literary Mama interviewed me about my creative work in 2017. A handful of other outlets have had things to say.