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FeaturedPopular ScienceI'm the editor in chief of Popular Science. It's the best job I've ever had, and every trip into our archives deepens my love for the place. Here's an example: I recently discovered that at the same time we were sending Werner Von Braun, father of the space program, all over hell and gone as a correspondent, we published a plea by John Steinbeck to abandon space and instead pour NASA's budget into exploring the oceans. |
Published
In 2004, David Roberts, a second-year clinical-psychology student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had a summer job teaching social skills to a group of...
Filmed
I've recently begun work hosting two television shows. I can't say much about them yet, but one is about money, and the other appears likely to get me arrested.
Recorded
BBC
I was interviewed by the BBC about the launch of the online Popular Science archives, indexed by Google.
Other Projects
I was asked to speak at GRID, the Bonnier Corporation's annual "big think" event in Stockholm. I appeared alongside the director of "Supersize Me," the creator of Angry Birds...
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En route to Kennedy Space Center for a look around, days before the first SpaceX NASA mission leaves there. -
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The first vanity plate I've admired in a long time. Perhaps ever. http://t.co/md3DgX1z -
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World War II fighter found in desert, perfectly preserved, with awning rigged from parachute. http://t.co/y4vZZnBS
Taking a Muscle Car to a Funeral
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
There was a time, at my job at Popular Science, when I got to test-drive a lot of new cars. It's a strange and sticky business. You basically have a handler in whatever city you're going to be in, and he or she offers up one of a few new vehicles in the "review fleet" that automakers maintain for the purposes of putting a journalist or a celebrity behind the wheels of new cars. The handler is trying to give you a car that hasn't had enough press (hence a weekend I once spent driving around Long Island in a Kia Soul), while you're hoping to score the hottest thing in the lot (hence the twelve hours I once spent in possession of an Audi R8, a white death beam of cool at which passersby not only stared but actually hooted and flailed their arms). And all the while you're both trying to avoid the clear truth of the matter: that they're giving you something fun to play with in almost direct, mercenary exchange for good press.
In 2008, I was headed West for the funeral of my grandfather's best friend, Skip Blair, a former police officer and generally beautiful person, who passed away by the sea in Cambria, California. One typically flies to Cambria either by way of San Francisco or Los Angeles, and my father and I agreed to drive together from SFO.
So I arranged, through a very humorless but very helpful handler in San Francisco, to pick up a car. This was when the Dodge Challenger had been on the road for a couple of years, and had become the preferred ride of the Hemi set, and I was offered a prerelease version of the Charger, a two-door fist of a car, complete with sport package and a beautiful red paint job.
My father and I were on slightly stiff terms at the time, and the idea was that this...