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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Every year, 8 million tons of plastic wash into the oceans. The biggest sources are in Asia. In the Philippines, one man is going head-to-head with multinational corporations to stop the plastic tide. -
Almost 100 million years ago, when the South Atlantic Ocean was young, giant reptiles prowled the seas. Scientists have found a trove of these ancient creatures in the African nation of Angola.
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A scientific panel, convened by the U.N., lays out a challenging path to keep the global climate from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius — the red line for dangerous consequences.
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Scientists have been analyzing bones first uncovered by a utility crew digging at the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. The remains provide insights into surgery during the Civil War.
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Hurricanes, fires and even hail contributed to billions of dollars in damages. The government study also finds that it was among the warmest years on record.
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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.
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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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The National Park Service is racing to record soundscapes of each park that capture nature for the ear. "If we start to lose sounds of wilderness, we start to lose a piece of us," one scientist says.
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On Saturday, world leaders approved what's being hailed as a historic deal to reduce greenhouse emissions. NPR's Christopher Joyce gives the details.
