The last thing Reto Schneider (’98) remembered, before his car veered off the Pacific Rim Highway and into a ditch, was his wife and his 13-year-old son sleeping peacefully in the back seat. Schneider, who was at the wheel, fell asleep too. By the time he woke up, the car had rolled over and the ground was rushing toward him.
The harrowing incident became the subject of Schneider’s May 2018 feature “Die Strasse hat mir vergeben” (“The road has forgiven me”), for the German-language publication NZZ Folio. The piece was recently awarded a 2019 Zürcher Journalistenpreis, the most prestigious journalism award in Switzerland.
As Schneider describes it, his story explores “the nature of accidents in a technologically advanced society where amazingly little effort is sufficient to cause great suffering.” He adds that “it is also a reflection on the function of endless rumination and the deeply felt guilt for things that can no longer be changed.”
And don’t worry: Schneider and his family survived the accident, and he says they are all doing well.
Ibby Caputo (‘15) is among the three journalists selected to receive a $6,000 reporting award from New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute this year. Established in 2009, the award supports journalism that is “significant,” “underreported,” and “in the public interest.” Caputo’s reporting project emphatically checks off all three of those boxes: She’ll use her stipend to investigate racial and ethnic disparities in bone marrow donor registries.
Caputo has also been busy at work on a new podcast, “Overheard at National Geographic,” about the unusual conversations that go on around National Geographic’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Eager to give it a listen? You need wait no longer: The first three episodes are now available for streaming at the National Geographic website.
Here’s what other alumni are writing, a compendium from Federico Kukso (’16):
Karen Brown (‘13): “How Much Does DNA Change Our Life Story?” The New York Times.
Debbie Ponchner (‘04): “Why Some Amazonian Societies Survived and Others Perished amid Pre-Columbian Droughts,” Scientific American.
Federico Kukso (‘16): “Kaijutitan maui: the Godzilla of dinosaurs,” Tangible (In Spanish).
Mićo Tatalović (‘18): “‘I wash all my food like crazy’: scientists voice concern about nanoparticles,” The Guardian.
Mićo Tatalović (‘18): “The Newest Lab Rat Has Eight Arms,” Hakai.
George Musser (‘15): “Machine Learning Gets a Bit More Humanlike,” Scientific American.
Cynthia Graber (‘13): “Will Food Delivery Ruin the Perfect French Fry?” The Atlantic.
Angela Swafford (‘01): “The ground you step on: the new geological map of South America,” Muy Interesante México (In Spanish).
Dan Falk (‘12): “What is gravity?” NBC News.
Teresa Firmino (‘09): “Anthropocene: ‘Humans are becoming a geological force’,” Publico (In Portuguese).
Herton Escobar (‘07): “Brazilian government accused of suppressing data that would call its war on drugs into question,” Science.
Adam Rogers (‘03): “Let’s Build a Global Skyscraper Network to Save the Planet,” Wired.
Valeria Román (‘05): “Biomedicine: 5 trends that will transform healthcare in the next decade,” Infobae (In Spanish).
Robin Lloyd (‘99): “Cured in Place? An Underground Pipe Repair Raises Questions,” Undark.
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