On the back cover of KQED's member magazine this month! www.pbs.org/show/life-un...

My life as a filmmaker: Currently traveling with 36 terabytes of storage in my backpack across four devices, all maxed out.

Wow indeed! Coming to PBS on April 1.

Happening tonight (3/12) in Salt Lake City! Get a sneak peek of LIFE UNEARTHED, an Antarctic documentary from the fabulous @arielwaldman.com!

If you are in/around Salt Lake City, Utah tomorrow (Thursday), come to a sneak peek screening of the first episode at the Clark Planetarium. I’ll be there doing a Q&A after! www.eventbrite.com/e/science-ut...

Nathan is the best of the best. Couldn’t have made this PBS series what it is without him.

I am the proud one-person audio post-production team on this project. So thrilled by what @arielwaldman.com has accomplished, and honored to have bring her explorations and discoveries to life through sound.

Announcing: Coming to PBS on April 1! LIFE UNEARTHED with Ariel Waldman is a visually striking science-driven nature series that reveals Earth’s ecosystems through radical shifts in scale—from microscopic wildlife to the planet’s most iconic species, and even the potential for life beyond Earth. 🧪🦠

Like how experienced women lose their jobs to the mere potential of inexperienced men?

I’m speaking at Wildscreen’s Science in Storytelling! An event that brings scientists and filmmakers together in a symbiosis of minds to learn, collaborate and share. Full program at wildscreen.org/wp-content/u... Get tickets via wildscreen.org 📅 19th & 20th March 2026 📍Online event #scicomm

I filmed a full PBS nature documentary entirely by myself with no film crew in Antarctica. Am I doing this right? I guess it's not so random. mailchi.mp/arielwaldman...

It’s true! 👀

Antarctic microscopist @arielwaldman.com presents research and footage to the National Geographic Explorers Festival. Includes tardigrades! www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Ej...

2016.

We killed 85 schoolgirls. We are not the good guys.

This is directly affecting my work being greenlit or not :/

A year ago today, 168 of my NSF colleagues were fired suddenly & illegally. Half got their jobs back after an intense legal fight, but none of this is over for our small/mighty agency. Even while there are so many things happening everywhere all at once & it’s exhausting, I’m glad to keep pushing.

Welp. gizmodo.com/white-house-...

FDA's decision not to accept Moderna's flu vaccine filing has sent shock waves through pharma. "When there’s uncertainty about the path to approval & the reliability of the process, that really has pretty serious consequences,” one player told @jasonmast.bsky.social. www.statnews.com/2026/02/12/f...

Not to detract from the rest of Mark's point, but a recurring theme from reporting last year I encountered was the damage done by uncertainty. Without long term assurances, PhD offers were rescinded, new grants were scaled back at NSF & NIH. At Harvard people left before the grants came back.

One Boston Children’s Hospital researcher said, “This is like asking, how do you think dropping an atomic bomb on New York City will affect the future of Broadway musicals? This is a generational loss of innovation, technology, and economic power.” www.bostonglobe.com/2026/02/09/m...

ICYMI: #FDA has refused to review #Moderna's mRNA #flu vaccine licensure application, suggesting the company should have used a different comparator vaccine in its Phase 3 clinical trial. Moderna suggests the regulatory agency moved the goalpost. www.statnews.com/2026/02/10/f...

Whether it’s Hank Green, Khan Academy, PBS, or NPR, I think our media and educational content should be a non-profit, public good. Going to clicks, ad revenue, and investor returns always gets in the way of the mission. And we all lose out.

😱 creepy awesome sea slime strikes again 🦐

This is true because most of us on Bluesky lived through an era of just posting about what we were having for lunch that day or blogging about a conference we attended.

Thank Judges and Lawyers for Standing Up for Democracy These brave professionals need to know that the public is behind them A federal judge told us that the postcards were a much appreciated reminder that they are not alone.  Learn the details at our blog: buff.ly/tLdMURD

I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what's happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.

As of tomorrow, the US will be out of #WHO. It's leaving the organization with a large unpaid bill — 2 years of unpaid membership dues, including from the last year of the Biden administration. www.statnews.com/2026/01/21/t...

It's that time of year again: we're looking for our next Antarctic team! If you can imagine a job that’s needed to keep a small, remote community safe and running, we have it. Escape the ordinary and apply for the job of a lifetime in Antarctica ⬇️

You have to block them immediately. The full nuclear. They are only here to make folks angry, and that can’t happen if we lock them out.

We are at the “Minnesotans are spray painting their broiler pans for body armor” stage of the fight

Not on NASA social: The latest Surface Temperature Analysis "Earth's global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than 2023, but within the margin of error. Since record-keeping began in 1880, the hottest year on record remains 2024." data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Daily reminder that all of us in Minneapolis AND Saint Paul AND across Minnesota are having our rights massively infringed upon. Our schools are focusing on children’s safety rather than educational excellence. It is a daily outrage and we won’t be quieted.

The joys of being a filmmaker: watching multiple video tutorials just to figure out how to split audio channels correctly for broadcast.

Well this sucks. I gave a couple of lectures at CCA and considered teaching there a couple of times. A big loss for San Francisco and all the students.

Do you care about the future of the US NSF and science in general? The agency is seeking feedback on the draft Strategic Plan. www.nsf.gov/od/updates/n...

12 months after the 2024 election: National Science Foundation lost 29% of its staff. NOAA lost 20%. NASA lost 6%. Source: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Saw this crowd with my own eyes at Bryant Park 💪

The Now: editing tardigrades that I filmed earlier this week. www.patreon.com/posts/147914... 🧪🦠

Had a dream last night where a familiar song came on and I pulled out my phone in the dream to Shazam the song, but it gave no results 😑

In this week's newsletter we talk about things that make us feel wonderful. Not because we’re copping out, but because remembering, and holding on to things that make us feel wonderful are fuel. buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

I’d watch the hell out of this.

The proliferation of hummingbird feeders has become a “major evolutionary force” for the Anna’s hummingbird species in the western US. “Over just a few generations, their beaks have dramatically changed in size and shape.” [science.org]

The destruction doesn't make for a photo-op like tearing down the East Wing of the White House or bulldozing the Rose Garden, but it's every bit as bad. Generations of American children learned to spell and count, learned the Preamble to the Constitution, from watching shows produced by the CPB.

The microcosmos is fun. Ciliate I filmed today working on its juggling act. Filmed on a Nikon E600 DIC microscope, 20x objective, using a Canon R5C. 🧪🦠 youtube.com/shorts/-uCZG...

The microcosmos is fun. Ciliate I filmed today working on its juggling act. Filmed on a Nikon E600 DIC microscope, 20x objective, using a Canon R5C. 🧪🦠 youtube.com/shorts/-uCZG...

A guy broke up with me and I just said "ok" and walked out. My boss* nicknamed me "balls of steel" after telling him that story. (*He's on Bluesky so he might see this 👋)

Each day, we've been sending out videos showcasing each chocolatier's creation along with a little bit from me about the many amazing moons in our solar system that I curated for the calendar. It's a delightful way to treat yourself and learn something new each day. What’s your favorite moon?

This legitimately happened to me in 2009 and so I offer my real-life runner-up: “And what do you do?” (I knew 🥴)