Crowdsourced resources on burnout
Some potentially helpful resources on stress, burnout, and mindfulness including those collected during the March 6, 2025 workshop "Burnout: Causes and Remedies for Science Communicators."
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Edna Bonhomme—A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19
“Pandemics start small, grow large due to negligence, and leave rot behind that we generally don’t bother to clean up before the next pandemic arrives,” Edna Bonhomme writes. In A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19, she details how racial, sexual, and class discrimination maintains disparities in healthcare and society.
ScienceWriters2025 conference
An update for the science-writing community about a change regarding this year’s conference, ScienceWriters2025.
Mar. 5, 2025
Dennis Meredith—Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence
The human cost of prolonged space travel urgently needs attention, Dennis Meredith asserts in Earthbound: The Obstacles to Human Space Exploration & the Promise of Artificial Intelligence. Astronauts experience bone loss & problems with vision, digestion, heart and immune system functions, cognition, & more. Using AI robotic space probes instead of humans, Meredith says, offers an ethical option.
Small Business Structures: An Overview
This NASW Freelance Committee virtual meetup will be a business chat on business structures. To speak on the topic, volunteer event hosts Jennifer Huber and Ellen Kuwana have invited Wudan Yan, who founded The Writers’ Co-op, a business podcast and learning academy for freelance creatives.
Carl Zimmer—Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe
“The Covid-19 pandemic was not a fluke,” Carl Zimmer writes in Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe. Public health authorities initially said close personal contact spread the disease via droplets and fomites on surfaces. It took months for them to recognize Covid-19’s airborne transmission. “The Covid-19 pandemic,” Zimmer notes, “made the ocean of gases surrounding us visible.”
NASW and more than 40 organizations that champion journalists and the public’s right to know released a joint statement on Friday, February 21, 2025. Led by the Society of Professional Journalists, the statement condemns the campaign underway in the United States to penalize independent reporting on the government and its activities.
Our collective commitment
NASW was founded more than 90 years ago with a mission to “fight for the free flow of science news.” That mission is imperative, yet threatened by recent challenges to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
Leigh Ann Henion—Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark
Shut down your screens. Go outside at night. As your eyes adjust, revel in the darkness. Tag along as Leigh Ann Henion attends a bat outing and a moth festival. Look for wondrous nightlife that may include synchronous fireflies, hooting owls, glowing fungi, and other creatures and plants that Henion describes in Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark.