Christopher Joyce
Christopher Joyce is a correspondent on the science desk at NPR. His stories can be heard on all of NPR's news programs, including NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Joyce seeks out stories in some of the world's most inaccessible places. He has reported from remote villages in the Amazon and Central American rainforests, Tibetan outposts in the mountains of western China, and the bottom of an abandoned copper mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over the course of his career, Joyce has written stories about volcanoes, hurricanes, human evolution, tagging giant blue-fin tuna, climate change, wars in Kosovo and Iraq, and the artificial insemination of an African elephant.
For several years, Joyce was an editor and correspondent for NPR's Radio Expeditions, a documentary program on natural history and disappearing cultures produced in collaboration with the National Geographic Society that was heard frequently on Morning Edition.
Joyce came to NPR in 1993 as a part-time editor while finishing a book about tropical rainforests and, as he says, "I just fell in love with radio." For two years, Joyce worked on NPR's national desk and was responsible for NPR's Western coverage. But his interest in science and technology soon launched him into parallel work on NPR's science desk.
In addition, Joyce has written two non-fiction books on scientific topics for the popular market: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (with co-author Eric Stover); and Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest.
Before coming to NPR, Joyce worked for ten years as the U.S. correspondent and editor for the British weekly magazine New Scientist.
Joyce's stories on forensic investigations into the massacres in Kosovo and Bosnia were part of NPR's war coverage that won a 1999 Overseas Press Club award. He was part of the Radio Expeditions reporting and editing team that won the 2001 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award and the 2001 Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Joyce won the 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science excellence in journalism award as well as the 2016 Communication Award from the National Academies of Sciences.
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Until now, the earliest signs of humans in the Americas dated back about 15,000 years. But new research puts people in California 130,000 years ago. Experts are wondering whether to believe it. -
Native cutthroat trout, an iconic part of the mountain West, thrive in cold streams. But warmer weather has allowed invaders to move in — and it's killing off the cutthroats. -
The idea behind "clean coal" is technology that would capture for reuse most of the carbon dioxide emitted by coal-burning power plants. Entrepreneurs aim to use similar tech to clean natural gas. -
Scientists eavesdropping in trees have decoded a high stakes game of hide and seek. Katydids rely on ultrasound to find mates and listen for bats, which use ultrasound to find the bugs, and eat them. -
President Trump is expected to ditch the Clean Power Plan this week. The CPP regulations would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Without it, the U.S. won't live up to its pledge, made in Paris in 2015, to make deep cuts in emissions. That could jeopardize the Paris deal, in which nearly 200 nations made similar pledges.
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The idea of plumes of moisture curling above our heads might seem beautiful, but new research shows atmospheric rivers to be among the most damaging of weather systems. -
Researchers say the ice is melting more quickly than they've ever seen. They think it's because warm water is circulating under the ice shelf, and that the melting process appears to be irreversible. -
Capuchin monkeys in Brazil have been seen making sharp stone flakes. It was previously thought that only humans and their ancestors had flaking skills. -
Nearly 200 nations agreed last December to the most ambitious deal to slow climate change ever. It looks very likely that the requisite number of countries will actually ratify the deal this week to make it official. That will set in motion the difficult process of making sure both rich and poor countries deliver on their promises to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
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Flood managers suspect August's big rainstorms and floods in Louisiana are becoming more common there and elsewhere because of climate change. One clue: Much of the damage was beyond the flood plain.
