Working with students in a variety of settings keeps us looking for works to share as examples of what we love when it comes to the craft of storytelling. Since much of our work in classrooms is private, we decided to compile a list for the public. Some pieces represent all that is good in the world of both writing and scientific communication, like Rebecca Altman’s essay American petro-topia; others are playful or tackle storytelling in a unique way, like Shanna Baker and Mark Garrison’s Cuttlefish Brawl.
If you have suggestions for additions, we’d love to hear from you so email us with suggestions and we’ll read them! And, keep checking back; we’re always updating this list.
Podcasts & Podcast Episodes
- The Wild by Chris Morgon for KUOW
- Rifts Beneath the Ocean Floor by Shane Hanlon for AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun
- Under the Sea by Rose Eveleth (Flash Forward Podcast is amazing; seriously, pick any episode.)
- We Are Family by Rose Eveleth
- Ocean Currents Radio Program by Jenny Stock
- Teuthology by Allie Ward (Ologies Podcast is incredible as well!)
- Isabella Rosselini on Communicating the Wonders of Nature via Clear & Vivid with Alan Alda
Ocean Books
Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness
Nick Pyerson’s Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures
Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Lives of Beavers and Why They Matter (We know this isn’t technically an “ocean” read, but the health of our watersheds certainly plays a role in healthy ocean ecosystems, and let’s face it: beavers are super cool.)
Elizabeth Rush’s The Rising
Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind (also see A Silent Spring)
Robert Kunzig’s Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science
Peter Godfrey Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Sylvia Earle’s The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One
Carl Safina’s Eye of an Albatross
Articles and Multimedia
- An Even More Inconvenient Truth: Why Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing by Lisa Song
- Exploring the Oceans by Remote Control by Jeffrey Marlow
- Hawaii’s Ancient Aquaculture Revival by Erica Gies
- How Squids Outsmart Their Predators by Carly Anne York (Animated video)
- A Whale’s Afterlife by Jeffrey Marlow
- OPB’s Oregon Field Guide Season 30, Episode 8 (about plastic in the ocean, Oregon rivers, and our food)
- A Bad Summer for birds on Cooper Island by Ned Rozell
- Time-bombing the Future by Rebecca Altman * (A writer worth following — her website always includes links to her bibliographies. We love that idea.)
- Frozen Ocean by Jennifer Kinglsey
- Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
- Letter to America by Rebecca Altman
- George Divoky’s Planet by Darcy Frey
- The World is Running Out of Sand by David Owen
- Sea Change by Hannah Hoag and Marcus Westberg
- American petro-topia by Rebecca Altman
- How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World by Rebecca Altman
- The Loneliest Polar Bear by Kale Williams
- The Lunar Sea by Ferris Jabr
- A Case for Wonder by Christopher Norment
- Disappearing Seagrass Protects Against Pathogens, Even Climate Change, Scientists Find by Carl Zimmer
- Forewarned by Peter Dykstra
- On the thawing tundra, researchers race to understand black carbon’s climate impact by Madeline Ostrander
- A Wall Worth Building: Making Clam Habitat Great Again by Jude Isabella and Meigan Henry
- Cuttlefish Brawl by Shanna Baker and Mark Garrison
- Total Failure: When The Space Shuttle Didn’t Come Home by Geoff Brumfiel
- Exodus by Ross Anderson
- What Happens When You Zap Coral With The World’s Most Powerful X-ray Laser?, a KQED Deep Look
- Reef Avengers by Theodora Sutcliffe
- Drawing Meaning from Death, One Seabird at a Time by Larry Pynn
- Welcome to Pleistocene Park by Ross Anderson
- Wild thing – How and why did humans domesticate animals – and what might this tell us about the future of our own species? by Jacob Mikanowski
- A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists by Tim Radford
- A Tale of Two Glassworkers and Their Marine Marvels by Julie Leibach
- Coral Sperm Banks: A Safety Net for Reefs? by Julie Leibach
- Battle of the Ash Borer by Matthew Miller
- The Really Big One by Katheryn Schulz
- Zoo Futures by Jon Cohen
- Science communication training should be about more than just how to transmit knowledge by Besley and Dudo
- Even the Bottom of the Grand Canyon is Now Contaminated by Osha Gray Davidson
- Oregon’s Only Saltwater Lake Is Disappearing, and Scientists Don’t Know Why by Rob Davis
- Nicaraguan villagers building electric grid by Lucas Laursen
- Losing Ground by Marshall et al.
- Disappearing Colorado River by David Owen
- California Burning by Amy Quinton
- Tending the Body’s Microbial Garden by Carl Zimmer
