Bryan Walsh

New York

Editorial Director at Vox

Editorial director @voxdotcom, for Future Perfect, tech/climate and world teams. Author of END TIMES. Email [email protected]

Articles

New study finds self-driving cars safer than human drivers

1 week ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

I have some bad news: You are almost certainly a worse driver than you think you are. Humans drive distracted. They drive drowsy. They drive angry. And, worst of all, they drive impaired far more often than they should. Even when we’re firing on all cylinders, our Stone Age-adapted brains are often no match for the speed and complexity of high-speed driving.
Solar power, big batteries, and carbon removal - good news on climate

2 weeks ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!Any time I try to convince skeptical people that the world isn’t as bad as they think it is — which I do quite a lot, given that I write a newsletter called Good News — they usually come back with a two-word rejoinder: “climate change.”Good NewsA weekly dose of stories chronicling progress around the world. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.
PAUL HAWKEN-CARBON: The Tree of Life

2 weeks ago | myemail.constantcontact.com | Bryan Walsh |Bill McKibben |Casey Crownhart |Bronwyn Thompson

Click here, to View as Webpage. To unsubscribe scroll to bottom. Scroll down for links to timely articles our connection with the rest of naturePAUL HAWKENCARBON: The Tree of LifeThe more we know, the more we knowwe don't know. Listen any time to PodcastApplePodcasts,aworldthatjustmightwork.comProgressive Voices Network on TuneIn.comSaturday 5/10 7pmPT - Sunday 5/11 8pmPT Learn more: paulhawken.comI'm not concerned about the "environment".
Tariffs and Trump risk reversing the reduction in extreme poverty

1 month ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!Back in 2022, sunglasses-wearing U2 frontman and rock star philanthropist Bono gave one of those long interviews to the New York Times Magazine.
Trump’s immigration crackdown and funding cuts risk killing US science

1 month ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

In Ezra Klein and Derk Thompson’s new book Abundance — which maybe you’ve heard of — they tell the story of Katalin Karikó, the Hungarian American scientist whose work ultimately led to the mRNA Covid vaccines. When the research center she was working for in Hungary lost its state funding in the early 1980s, Karikó left her homeland, selling her car for 900 British pounds and sewing the cash into her daughter’s teddy bear so her family had something to live on.
A new study finds the shingles vaccine can protect against dementia

1 month ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

Anyone who has watched a loved one descend into the fog of dementia knows the tremendous toll that neurodegenerative diseases of aging can exact. Dementia currently afflicts over 55 million people worldwide; in the US, — about 1 out of 10 of those 65 years or older — live with dementia. The economic cost of treating and the often uncompensated cost of caring for those sufferers is now more than $600 billion a year.
The astonishing drop in global child mortality, explained

1 month ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

I was an English major in college, and my favorite poet was the first-generation Romantic William Wordsworth. For one thing, there’s the name, the best example of nominative determinism in the annals of English literature. But what I most love about Wordsworth is the way he acts as a bridge between the formal, at times stultified style of the poetry that came before him, and the dawn of a new era that venerated individual emotion and experience — both the good and the ill.
Zero-sum politics is destroying America. We can build a way out.

1 month ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

If you’re anything like me — a policy dork who spends too much time on X — you’ve been unable to escape discussion of a new book called Abundance. Written by the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson and the New York Times’s Ezra Klein (also a co-founder of Vox), Abundance is one of those policy books with one big idea that everyone has to have an opinion on — whether they’ve read it or not. Good NewsA weekly dose of stories chronicling progress around the world.
The Covid pandemic was catastrophic. But don’t overlook what went right.

2 months ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

For most people, the Covid-19 pandemic, which officially began five years ago this month, marked their first encounter with case counts and N-95 masks and lockdown orders. Not me, though. I was a young reporter for Time magazine in Hong Kong in early spring 2003, when we started getting reports about a strange new sickness spreading in southern China, just across the border.
Humanity isn’t asteroid-proof yet. But we’re getting closer.

2 months ago | vox.com | Bryan Walsh

In 2012, astronaut Ron Garan did an AMA on Reddit. In between questions about aliens (he didn’t see any in space) and where his coffee came from (recycled urine), he responded to a question about why we should accept the risks of a future mission to Mars.