This week: A coronavirus baby boom? / The Legacy of Bill Withers / A doctor’s view of ground zero / Seasonal wildflowers pose a new danger / The man who saved millions of lives
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1. Will the coronavirus lockdown lead to a baby boom?
The Economist | April 2020
“Deadly epidemics seem to depress birth rates in the short term”
2. New Mystery: What Happens When Animals Get Infected by Humans?
By David Axe | The Daily Beast | April 2020
“Animal experts, especially those working with non-human apes, are worried that the virus is set to spread.”
3. What’s Become of the Arctic
By Tom Kizzia | Columbia Journalism Review | Spring 2020
“Alaska is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the country. Will journalists find a way to tell the whole story?”
4. Bill Withers: The Soul Man Who Walked Away
By Andy Greene | Rolling Stone | April 2015
“In 1970, the singer was a guy in his thirties with a job and a lunch pail. Then he wrote ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ and things got complicated”
5. California’s Wildflowers Are Blooming, Will Influencers Resist the Urge for a Selfie?
By Winston Ross | The California Sunday Magazine | April 2020
“The blooms in California’s poppy and wildflower fields have started, making some nervous that even a fraction of last year’s crowds could be a major problem.”
6. Women in War: On Great Correspondents Past and Present
By Jacqueline Winspear | LitHub | April 2020
“From Sapper Dorothy in WWI, to the Citizen Journalists of Today”
7. ‘A Matter Of Common Decency’: What Literature Can Teach Us About Epidemics
By Melissa Block | The Coronavirus Crisis :: NPR | April 2020
“Professor Alice Kaplan has been scrambling to revise her lectures for the French literature class she teaches at Yale University. … She is one of many readers who are revisiting and rethinking literature about mass disease in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.”
8. Flat Earthers: What They Believe and Why
By Steve Mirsky | Scientific American | March 2020
“Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society in the U.K., talks about flat earth belief and its relationship to conspiracy theories and other anti-science activities.”
9. The Doctor Holding the Camera
By Patrick Schnell and Anna Silman | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | April 2020
“‘Today, I was there for maybe five hours. In that time, five patients died.'”
10. The Man Who Tried To Feed The World
American Experience :: PBS | April 2020
“In 1966, drought and an exploding population confronted India with the imminent threat of a severe famine. … India turned to Norman Borlaug, an unassuming plant breeder from Iowa whose combination of scientific knowledge and raw determination had made him a legend among a small handful of fellow specialists.”
Stillness of Heart 
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