Rachel Riederer

Oct 16, 2024 | newyorker.com | Patrick Bresnan |Ivete Lucas |Rachel Riederer

During the COVID-19 shutdown, the filmmakers Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas started spending more time with their neighbors. Across the street lived Michael Mullen, a local veterinarian who had become known for his compassionate euthanasia practice. Bresnan and Lucas learned that his practice was based on making house calls, and that he had developed an approach to putting down pets that made the process easier for both the animals and the humans involved.

Sep 24, 2024 | dissentmagazine.org | Sarah Jones |Rachel Riederer |Nick Serpe

In the Shadow of King Coal While the coal industry is in terminal decline, it still shapes the culture of central Appalachia. ▪ Fall 2024 Writer and director Elaine McMillion Sheldon begins her latest documentary, King Coal, with a funeral rite. A multigenerational, multiracial procession of people in black clothing walks slowly up a country road. All is quiet except for the sound of insects and a steady drum. Who are these mourners? Sheldon lets the mystery linger.

Jul 26, 2024 | wired.jp | Rachel Riederer

1970年代から80年代にかけて、ワシントン大学のある研究者は大学の実験林で異変が起きていることに気づいた。その林では何年も前から毛虫が木を食い荒らして枯死させていたが、突然毛虫たちのほうが死に始めたのだ。おかげで林は回復した。しかし、毛虫にいったい何が起きたのだろうか？ 化学と動物学を専門とするその研究者、デイビッド・ローズは、木々の葉が毛虫にとって不都合な化学変化を起こしていることを発見した。さらに驚くべきことに、変化を起こしたのは毛虫にかじられた木だけではなかった。毛虫がつく前に、まるで警告を受けたかのように葉を変化させている木もあった。これは衝撃的な可能性を示していた──木々は互いにシグナルを送り合っているかもしれないのだ。 ローズのこの発見について、ゾーイ・シュランガーは新著『The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on...

Jun 11, 2024 | newyorker.com | Rachel Riederer

During the nineteen-seventies and eighties, a researcher at the University of Washington started noticing something strange in the college’s experimental forest. For years, a blight of caterpillars had been munching the trees to death. Then, suddenly, the caterpillars themselves started dying off. The forest was able to recover. But what had happened to the caterpillars?

Dec 27, 2023 | newyorker.com | Rachel Riederer

The orcas that sunk the Champagne are part of a small group, thought to number fifteen altogether, that have been having run-ins with boats in and near the Strait of Gibraltar since 2020. That was the third vessel that they had sunk in a year. It wasn’t the last. The orcas have continued their disruptions—with encounters happening almost every day in May and June—and coverage in both traditional and social media has bloomed.