Taylor Wilson, The Boy Who Played With Fusion
POPULAR SCIENCE “Propulsion,” the nine-year-old says as he leads his dad through the gates of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “I just want to see the propulsion stuff.” A young woman guides their group toward a full-scale replica of the massive Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon. As [...]
Scientist in a Strange Land
POPULAR SCIENCE This should have been Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s moment in the sun. But as the television crew takes positions, the 34-year-old scientist glances at the gray, churned-up lake behind her and gathers her collar around her neck. On cue, she begins her explanation of this lake’s unique chemistry, her voice rising in volume and pitch [...]
Dangerous Medicine
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE When the old Czech prop-plane lurches to a halt at the side of the military airstrip, the six doctors unfurl their stiff legs, disembark, and begin unloading. They shift 47 boxes—a metric ton of laboratory gear—onto a truck and drive toward town, trailing a spiral of orange dust as they pass army [...]
They Shoot Poachers, Don’t They?
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE The story, as I first heard it, had the zing of a Hollywood pitch: Led by a soft-spoken doctor, a band of American conservationists had persuaded the president of the Central African Republic to let them raise a militia and take over the eastern third of the Texas-size country. Their mission was [...]
John McAfee’s Flying Circus Wants You!
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE “And now, I’m going to count from one to five,” John McAfee says, his baritone dharma-salesman’s voice resonating through the small theater filled with meditating pilots. “And when I get to five, go ahead and open your eyes. Ready?” I’ve always considered myself an überskeptic, immune to the whole range of hypnotic [...]
Virus Hunter Nathan Wolfe
MEN’S JOURNAL It’s nearly midday when Brice Bidja steps out of the tangled forest surrounding the African village of Messok in southeastern Cameroon, gripping a Russian 12-gauge shotgun in one hand and the limp body of a mustached monkey in the other. Bidja usually returns alone after his hunts, but on this morning a handful [...]
The World’s Toughest Trucker
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE Hidden under the rainforest canopy at the top of Australia’s Cape York Peninsula, Pajinka Wilderness Lodge is a tropical retreat for wildlife lovers, bird watchers and fishermen. The lodge lies at the northernmost point in Australia, at the tip of a slender green finger that stretches up from the wide brown continent. [...]
The Outlaw’s Guide to Iceland
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE “This boy Grettir—well, he was trouble from the very beginning.” High atop Drangey Island, Jón Eiriksson stood at the nub of a jagged rectangle of stones, looking out at the fjord and the mainland beyond. Above him, sea birds wheeled in the salt wind over Drangey, a green-capped spike of rock thrust [...]
