Bethany Brookshire Archives - Knight Science Journalism @MIT

by Elizabeth Gamillo / March 15th 2023 / KSJ News & Events

KSJ Alum Bethany Brookshire Shares the Backstory Behind ‘Pests’

Bethany Brookshire can recall planting tomato seeds in her garden one spring, with the full intention of harvesting them for a beautiful pasta sauce or a salad. And she can recall her arch nemesis, a scheming and slick squirrel she refers to as F***ing Kevin, taking a bite out of each one before they ever made it to her plate.

Some might look at F***ing Kevin and see a mere garden pest. For Brookshire, a former Knight Science Journalism fellow, the rodent was the inspiration for her debut book, “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.”

Rats, pigeons, mice, snakes, deer, coyotes and sparrows are just a few of the pesky creatures that make up the book’s cast of characters. Split into five major sections, “Pests” takes readers on a journey from the Karni Mata Temple in India, where rats are worshipped, to python hunts in the everglades of Florida, where snakes are killed as soon as caught. It is as much about what our relationships with pests can tell us about ourselves as it is about the maligned animals themselves. “They are a reflection of who we are [and] what we want,” Brookshire told an audience of Knight Science Journalism Fellows and guests in a seminar at the KSJ offices in February.

At the event, Brookshire gave the audience an insider’s look at the structural and stylistic choices she made in writing the book, from the book’s five-part structure, which she calls “The Daisy,” to the technical tricks she deployed to ensure the book would be briskly paced. Inspired by Michael Pollan and his book, “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,” Brookshire said carefully mapped the rising and falling of the narrative before ever striking the keyboard, alternating between heavier and lighter material to make sure the narrative didn’t sag like soggy clothes on a flimsy clothesline.

Late in the talk, Brookshire turned to the topic of the anxieties that can weigh on writers when they compare themselves to their peers. She has come to think of science writers like blacksmiths, she said: Some blacksmiths create intricate iron fences, others create breathtaking sculptures, and others forge swords.

“I make horseshoes,” she said, drawing a round of laughter. “But it’s a damn good horseshoe.”

The message in the metaphor, Brookshire explained, was that writers should take pride in writing in their own unique way, and avoid measuring their successes by others’ accomplishments.

Said Brookshire, “Know yourself, not who you wish you were.”

Elizabeth Gamillo is a student in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing. She was previously a daily correspondent for Smithsonian and wrote for Science magazine as their 2018 AAAS Diverse Voices in Science Journalism Intern.

by Knight Science Journalism / November 2nd 2020 / Alumni News

Alumni Notes: An Essay Goes Hollywood, an Author Reimagines Pests, and More

Pagan Kennedy’s (‘11) June New York Times piece, “The Rape Kit’s Secret History,” landed like a heavyweight punch to the gut. The 8,000-word essay told the gripping story of Marty Goddard — the Chicago activist who was the driving force behind the 1970s invention of the rape-kit — and the men who would ultimately take most of the credit for her work.

The story was featured in Longreads and within weeks became the subject of a TV and film bidding war, says Kennedy, who fielded more than a dozen inquiries from actors and companies interested in adapting the piece. During one whirlwind week, she took calls with Amy Schumer, Rachel Wiesz, the producers of Law and Order, and several other Hollywood players.

Ultimately, Kennedy struck a deal with Touchstone/Disney for a TV series produced by a team that includes showrunner Sarah Treem. Golden Globe winning actress Claire Danes is set to star in the series, and Kennedy will be an Executive Producer.

Brookshire. Photocredit: Lanver Photography

Bethany Brookshire (’20) has signed a deal to write her debut book, “Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.” Brookshire’s signing was selected as the “Deal of the Day” at Publisher’s Marketplace, where the forthcoming book was described this way:

“… a study that combines science, journalism, and narrative in exploration of a new big idea: that those animals we deem to be pests — such as mice, rats, deer, pigeons and many more — are considered such not as a result of the animal’s behavior, but because of our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, and what this reveals about ourselves and our impact on the natural world.”

Pests will be published by Ecco, a New York-based imprint of HarperCollins. Brookshire is currently a staff writer at Science News.

Mićo Tatalović (‘18) was named a runner up for the 2020 European Science Journalist of the Year award, finishing behind Russian journalist Maria Pazi. The announcement was made in Trieste at this year’s European Conference of Science Journalism. A press release announcing the award lauds Tatalović as “one of the most prominent figures in European science journalism in recent years both as a writer and editor.”

Tatalović, who has previously worked for New Scientist, Nature, and SciDev.Net, is now a news editor at Research Professional News.

Valeria Román (´04) was recently named head of a new science-focused news section at Río Negro, a Spanish-language newspaper serving the Patagonia region of Argentina. Called Bio, the science news section brands itself as “journalism for the right to science.” Among the stories that have run so far is one about Fran Bubani, the first openly trans researcher at the Bariloche Atomic Center, a leading Argentine science institution. Watch Román’s interview with Bubani here.

Here’s what other alumni are writing, a compendium from Federico Kukso (‘16):

Betsy Mason (‘16): “Election Maps Are Everywhere. Don’t Let Them Fool You.” The New York Times.

Ibby Caputo (‘15): “A Perfect Match: The inequalities in US healthcare exposed through a deeply personal story,” BBC.

Herton Escobar (‘07): “‘Another piece of populist propaganda’: Critics slam the Brazilian government’s new COVID-19 drug,” Science.

Andrada Fiscutean (‘20): “How Indiana Jones, Rambo, and others ended up in 1980s Czechoslovak text-adventures,” Ars Technica.

Federico Kukso (‘16): “White memory: The fight for the search, rescue and restoration of the audiovisual material registered in the Argentine Antarctica,” La Nación (in Spanish).

Teresa Firmino (‘09): “Seven doctors face disciplinary proceedings for spreading disinformation about Covid-19,” Publico (in Portuguese).

Amina Khan (‘19): “Coronavirus Today: The sacrifices of nurses,” The Los Angeles Times.

Valeria Román (‘05): “The pandemic can be an opportunity to deal with mental health problems that were not previously treated,” Río Negro (in Spanish).

Jason Dearen (‘19): “White House puts ‘politicals’ at CDC to try to control info,” The Associated Press.

Thiago Medaglia (‘20): “SMOKE SCREEN: An in-depth analysis of fire and deforestation data in the Amazon,” Ambiental Media.

Steve Mirsky (‘04): “Nobelist Talks CRISPR Uses,” Scientific American.

Wycliffe Muga (‘07): “Nothing matters more than agriculture policy,” The Star.

Chris Mooney (‘10): “After a college town’s coronavirus outbreak, deaths at nursing homes mount,” The Washington Post.

Richard Friebe (‘07): “The non-Nobel Prize winners: An unknown Lithuanian and a biotech wunderkind,” Der Tagesspiegel (in German).

Rowan Philp (‘10): “Tracking the Superspreader Events Driving the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Global Investigative Journalism Network.

Maryn McKenna (‘14): “In the US, 50 States Could Mean 50 Vaccine Rollout Strategies,” Wired.

by Jessie Hendricks / April 2nd 2020 / Fellowship Life

Meet This Year’s Fellows: Bethany Brookshire

The Science News reporter is digging into what makes mice and other pests so successful at living with humanity, despite the lengths we go to to get rid of them.

Three years into her Ph.D research on drug addiction and the brain, Bethany Brookshire started to experience the “grad school slump.” Biomedicine wasn’t quite working for her.

So one day, Brookshire snuck away from the lab to attend a lunch on alternative careers. She kept it a secret. “To admit you were pursuing alternate careers,” she explains, “was to say that you were failing at your plans.”

More than a decade later, Brookshire is anything but a failure. An accomplished science writer and podcast host, she’s spending the 2019-2020 academic year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow, studying human-animal interactions at the urban and suburban interface. And it all began, as she tells it, with her surreptitious lunchtime excursion.

At the event, Brookshire remembers running into an editor of Scientific American and boldly asking if she could write for the magazine. “To his credit, he did not laugh in my face” she says. It was 2008, and the editor suggested she start a blog. She did. Successfully. Her second blog post, on Sigmund Freud’s experience using cocaine, ended up in The Open Laboratory’s anthology of the best science blogging of the year.

In 2011, things came full circle when Brookshire’s blog, written under the pseudonym Scicurious, moved to Scientific American. By then she was doing postdoctoral research with mice at the University of Pennsylvania. Writing under a pseudonym allowed her to keep her alternate career as a science writer secret. But in a May 2013 blog post, Brookshire decided to let the cat out of the bag. A few months later, she announced she’d be taking a new full-time job with Science News. Her secret side gig was now her main gig.

Despite leaving her mouse research behind for a career in journalism, Brookshire continued to be intrigued by vermin. Before coming to MIT, she published an article on the self-domestication of house mice, which launched an interest in writing about pest-human interactions. “I love the idea that there are animals in this world who have moved in and taken advantage of what we leave behind,” she says.

At MIT, Brookshire has been digging into what makes mice and other pests so successful at living with humanity, despite the lengths people go to to get vermin out of their lives.

Brookshire credits supportive mentors at Science News for helping propel her career to where it is now. As a multi-media science journalist for Science News for Students — Science News’ digital magazine for young audiences — she writes, creates audio segments, and makes videos to inspire middle schoolers. Brookshire is aware that her work has the potential to inspire future scientists. So during her year at MIT, she has been working to become a better mentor. “I never want to say no when someone says ‘Hey can we have a phone call?’” she says.

Brookshire says she is especially interested in mentoring women and underrepresented minorities. “By the time I am old and retired and quit and decide to become a fancy mouse breeder in my old age — I want the world of [science communication] and science journalism to be the least white male place you’ve ever seen.”

This is the ninth in a series of profiles of the 2019-20 Knight Science Journalism fellows, written by students in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.