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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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. -
The cartels that run the ivory trade try to cover their tracks — among other things, they smuggle tusks from the same elephant separately. But DNA testing can help find patterns. -
Florence is wetter, wider — and maybe slower, due to climate change, according to new research. And flood insurance isn't keeping up with how climate change is altering hurricanes.
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The world's oldest drawing was made 73,000 years ago in a South African Cave on a rock with an ocher "crayon." -
More than 40 researchers concluded that climate change would make ecosystems such as deciduous forests, grasslands and Arctic tundra unrecognizable. -
The spread of air conditioning may have kept some people from dying in this summer's extreme heat. But studies project more heat-related illnesses as the climate warms. -
A massive ice pack that normally clings to northern Greenland's coastline is splitting apart and floating out to sea. Climate change is to blame, scientists say. -
Plastic trash less than 5 millimeters long is in the things we eat and drink, and the air we breathe. Scientists are just beginning to study where it comes from and how it might affect our health. -
The way we design and inhabit cities is making them retain heat.
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The engineer views a landfill as a living ecosystem, and the plastic that clogs it as a serious threat that crowds out life and never goes away. Can we eliminate the waste before it smothers us?
