In Harm’s Way
The Marshall Project, October 2023.
How decades-old decisions to build two California prisons in a dry lakebed and a chaotic climate left 8,000 incarcerated people at risk.
The Quest to Build Fire-Resistant Homes
MIT Technology Review, May/June 2023 issue.
The first sparks that ignited in the Montecito hills above Santa Barbara, California, on November 13, 2008, were stoked by ferocious sundowner winds gusting at up to 85 miles per hour, pushing the flames down into the densely populated canyon. Westmont College, with a legacy of large canyon wildfires and only two winding roads as routes of escape, had planned for just this kind of disaster.
After Fire in Malibu
Dwell, January/February 2023 issue. Photos by Emanuel Hahn.
Four years after the devastating Woolsey fire, Malibu residents who lost everything are still waiting for approvals, and contending with complicated mortgage and insurance processes, underlining what starting over really costs.
Who Owns the Flood?
WIRED, May 2022 issue. Photos by Nicholas Albrecht.
Don Cameron went all in on a trickle-down survival tactic. It could help save America’s agricultural heartland—even if he doesn’t survive the new water war.
Illustrated columns
MIT Technology Review, 2022 issues.
The climate-saving limits of planting more trees; the post-Roe future of reproductive health, technology and embryos in America; the insect apocalypse.
How Hospital Monopolies Broke the Health Care System
The Nation, December 14/21 2020 issue, cover feature.
Corporate consolidation has left the United States with a health care system built for profit, not people.
Watered Down
The Guardian, February 2020. Photos by Talia Herman.
Amid the worst drought in its history to date, California regulated the groundwater many of its residents and farms rely on. But the journey to sustainability will be a slow one, and stands to reshape the state forever
Fire-starting weed or ecological scapegoat? The battle over California’s eucalyptus trees
The Guardian, December 2019
The fight over a celebrated toxic plant highlights questions over California’s future amid the climate crisis.
‘Fire is medicine’: the tribes burning California forests to save them
The Guardian, November 2019. Photos by Alexandra Hootnick.
For millennia, native people have used flames to protect the land. The US government outlawed the process for a century before recognizing its value
Humans have made 8.3 billion tons of plastic since 1950. This is the illustrated story of where it’s gone.
The Guardian, June 2019.
Until recently we didn’t know how much plastic was piling up around us. When we found out, the picture wasn’t pretty
California’s Changing Fire Country
Curbed, October 2018. Photos by Carlos Chavarria.
As urban development and wildfires meet, residents reckon with new risks.
United States of America v. 15.919 Acres of Land (More or Less)
ProPublica, December 2017.
In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security began building 654 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. To complete the job, the agency had to seize land from private landowners, most living in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. A decade later, some landowners have yet to reach agreement with Homeland Security on the amount they are due for the land they have lost. This is the story of one such case.
Would You Take Out a Loan for a Pair of Jeans?
Racked, November 2017.
A new kind of high-interest financial product aims to disrupt how you shop, and how you owe.
