The Seeds of Stories

Simons Institute Science Communicator in Residence and author Anil Ananthaswamy will talk about how story ideas originate, leading to full-length features or even books. He’ll use examples of his own work, including features in New Scientist, Quanta, and other publications, and also his books on cosmology, quantum physics and neuroscience. 

Refreshments will be served after this event.

Please register here if you plan to participate virtually on Zoom.

Anil Ananthaswamy is an award-winning science writer and former staff writer and deputy news editor for the London-based New Scientist magazine. He is a 2019-20 MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow. He has been a guest editor for the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and organizes and teaches an annual science writing workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, India. He is a freelance feature editor for PNAS Front Matter. He writes for regularly for New Scientist, Quanta, Scientific American, PNAS Front Matter and Nature, and has contributed to Nautilus, Matter, The Wall Street Journal, Discover and the UK’s Literary Review, among others. His first book, The Edge of Physics, was voted book of the year in 2010 by UK’s Physics World, and his second book, The Man Who Wasn’t There, was long-listed for the 2016 Pen/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His most recent book, Through Two Doors at Once was named one of Smithsonian's Favorite Books of 2018 and one of Forbes's 2018 Best Books About Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics. He is now working on his next book, tentatively titled Why Machines Learn, on the mathematics of machine learning.