Maggie Koerth-Baker

Joined: Nov 21, 2012

Maggie is an American science journalist, former columnist for The New York Times Magazine and current senior science reporter for the web site FiveThirtyEight. She is the author of the 2012 book Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us, and her work has been included in the 2014 "Best American Science and Nature Writing" anthology. She writes about the intersection of science and culture, about studies she finds to be especially revealing or provocative, about human behavior and technological innovation and natural phenomena. Carl Zimmer referred to her as "one of the most innovative science writers at work today."

10 Things Your Body Can Do After You Die

10 Crime-Fighting Tricks the Bad Guys Didn’t See Coming

10 Times Correlation Was Not Causation

What's the Difference?: Egg Roll vs. Spring Roll

The Science of Spicy: Four Amazing Things Chili Peppers Can Do

The hottest thing about chili peppers isn't the way they taste; it's everything else they can do for you. 1. They Strangle

How To: Die Laughing

YOU WILL NEED A Sense of Humor Poor

How To: Join the Amish

How To Is Now 100% Desert Island-Free! YOU WILL NEED Fortitude A strong desire to get out of the rat race A beard (guys

How To: Get Rescued from a Desert Island

YOU WILL NEED 1 unstoppable will to live Patience An appreciation for tragic irony If there's one thing you can say about most desert island strandings, it's that, at the very least, the weather is nice. There are certainly worse islands to be trapped on

How To: Get Stranded on A Desert Island

How To: Wrestle an Alligator

YOU WILL NEED 1 Alligator, un-sedated and unbowed 1 Person, just a little bit crazy 1 Rope, preferably strong Do: Check the Classifieds In 2000, members of the Seminole tribe near Hollywood, Florida put an ad in a local paper. They were looking for a ne

How To: Cause an International Crisis

YOU WILL NEED ---A perilous (and paranoid) diplomatic climate ---Weapons of mass destruction ---Human error First: Don't Read Your Mail That way, you can remain blissfully uninformed about important events that you (and your staff) are likely to misinter

How To: Host A Roman Bacchanalia

Bring the Wife While not exactly paragons of female equality, the Romans also certainly weren't at the bottom of the patriarchy pole either (that spot probably goes to the Greeks, who believed that ladies shouldn't be seen or heard and basically kept them

Eye of the Beholder

If kids used to ride you for looking "beat up from the feat up" or for "taking one too many hits from the ugly stick" or even for having a "face that only a mother could love on payday," then maybe it's time you gained back some of that self-confidence...

How To: Train A Cat

YOU WILL NEED To Give Your Cat Some Good Role Models, Such As"¦ --Humphrey, the cat who launched a political scandal Named the Prime Minister's Official Mouser in 1988, former stray Humphrey quickly became a fixture at 10 Downing Street, overseeing fel

How To: Fuel Your Car With Thanksgiving Leftovers

Question: What's greasy, grimy, and surprisingly useful? Answer: Turkey guts"¦and a lot of other stuff, too. It just depends on how you process it. If you're reading this, you're probably hip to the concept that Americans (and pretty much everybody else

Fake Your Way Through a Conversation About: St. Augustine

Name Dropping: Saint Augustine (Saint Uh-GUSS-tin if you're trying to impress people; St. AWW-guh-steen if you're talking about the town in Florida): (354-430). The most important Christian theologian ever, except for St. Paul, whose thoughts on God ended