Who is Richard Conniff?
I write about the intriguing behaviors of humans and other animals, anywhere from the Peruvian Amazon to the Himalayas of Bhutan. I write for lay readers & scholars alike, and I aim to keep it insightful & entertaining for all.
I am a National Magazine Award-winning feature writer for Smithsonian, National Geographic, The Atlantic, and other publications, a past Guggenheim Fellow, and a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.
My books include The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth (W.W. Norton), Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales of the Invertebrate World (Henry Holt), and Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion (MIT Press).
The New York Times Book Review says, “Conniff is a splendid writer -- fresh, clear, uncondescending, and with never a false step; one can't resist quoting him.”
My work has taken me everywhere from swimming with hungry piranhas (hence the title of my book Swimming With Piranhas at Feeding Time—My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals) to driving in a demolition derby.
Why Subscribe to My Substack Page?
I hope you’ll laugh now and then, sometimes cry, and often think and re-think. I publish a story, usually once a week, occasionally more often. Most of my articles will be about developments in the natural world. But I am also passionate about public health. (Since most of our infectious diseases are zoological in origin, the two subjects tend to overlap.) A free subscription gets you the newsletter. A paid subscription gets you the newsletter, full access to my Substack archives, plus an occasional treat.
Stay Up-to-Date
Never miss an update. I send each new post directly to your email inbox, and I aim for early Saturday morning, when people are a little less distracted by work. For a spam-free, ad-free reading experience, plus audio and community features, it’s worth getting the Substack app on your phone. (Caveat: the robotic audio versions of my stories on the app make me cringe.) You might also want to visit my home page online, to browse around among recent articles, or to comment on an article.
Be Part of a Community
Other readers of my substack probably share many of your own interests. It helps me, and other readers if you comment now and then, even if it’s to disagree with me, and especially if you’ve got a good correction. All of it helps get a conversation going.
One of the things I liked best when I started writing opinion pieces for the New York Tiimes was how smart the readers were, and how-well-informed. I once wrote a piece wishing there were a German word for a certain unseemly emotion and the readers ran with it, one saying such a word existed, another denying it, a third saying it was a word made up by a famous novelist, and so on by a series of exchanges among readers step by extraordinary step to a car and driver heading for a cliff and…
But I think I’ll save that one for a post.
