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Emerging Form - Lisa S. Gardiner on Learning From the Past

Jesse La Plante/J. La Plante, Ltd.

How can looking at the past help us understand what to do about a current crisis? “I’m a firm believer that history can help give us perspective here,” says science writer Lisa S. Gardiner. She’s speaking about her research with coral reefs, but it’s an apropos metaphor for how our past experiences with creative endeavors can help inform our current struggles. In this episode, we talk about the importance of the book proposal (and tips for getting one done), the art of weaving the self into a story that’s not memoir, and how essential our curiosity is to, well, everything.

Lisa S. Gardiner is a freelance writer, geoscientist, and educator. She is the author of Reefs of Time: What Fossils Reveal about Coral Survival and Tales from an Uncertain World: What Other Assorted Disasters Can Teach Us About Climate Change. Her writing has appeared in Nautilus Magazine, Scientific American, bioGraphic, and Audubon, among other places.

Christie Aschwanden is the author of the New York Times bestseller, GOOD TO GO: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery.