Rachel Riederer
Selected Writing
The Lost Art of Looking at Nature, Dissent, Summer 2022
Ad Astra: The Coming Battle Over Space, Harper’s, November 2021 (cover story)
Life After Lynching in “Ashes to Ashes” The New Yorker, 1/13/21
Fighting COVID-19 in the Amazon, with Herbs and the Internet, The New Yorker, 12/11/20
Is Dolly Parton the Voice of America? The New Republic, December, 2020
The Ongoing Trauma of California's Wildfires, The New Yorker, 8/26/20
The Faces of Those Marching for Racial Justice in New York, The New Yorker, 6/20/20
Scenes from George Floyd Memorial, The New Yorker, 6/5/20
“Quiet No More” Shows How Grief Can Become Activism, The New Yorker, 6/5/20
How Zoom Colonized Our Lives The New Republic, May 2020
The Thankless Task of Being a Topless Anti-Dairy Protester, The New Republic, March 6, 2020
The Good Internet Lives On The New Republic, February 2019
Why Climate Change Is the Ultimate “OK, Boomer” Issue The New Republic, 12/9/19
The Stark Inequality of Climate Change The New Yorker, 10/17/19
Olga Tokarczuk’s Gripping Eco-Mystery The New Republic, 10/10/19
The Nihilistic Euphoria of the Fish Tube The New Yorker, 8/15/19
Can a Company Own the Moon? The New Yorker, 6/18/19
An Uncommon Victory for an Indigenous Tribe in the Amazon The New Yorker, 5/15/19
The Future of Artificial Intelligence The New York Times Book Review, 5/2/19
David Attenborough Delivers an Urgent Message The New Yorker, 4/13/19
The Other Kind of Climate Denialism The New Yorker, 3/6/19
What if Plants Were One of Us? The Nation, 3/1/10
The Vegan Future of Meat and the End of Animal Farming The New Republic, 2/13/19
The Optimistic Science of De-Extinction The New Yorker 12/27/18
The Not-So-Uplifting Year in the Animal Kingdom The New Yorker, 12/23/18
Narcissists in Space Jacobin, Fall 2018
Letter from Lancaster County: Nuns Square Off Against a Pipeline Pacific Standard, 9/10/18
Bear Cam's Captivating, Unedited Zen The New Yorker 8/6/18
Free the Whales: The History of Orca-Catchers in America The New Republic, 8/17/19
Blood Will Out: Theranos and the Shark Tankification of American Life The Baffler, 6/12/18
Can Rivers Be People Too? The New Republic, 5/9/18
Libertarians Seek a New Home on the High Seas The New Republic, 5/29/17
Innocent Intellect BOMB, 3/30/17
The Future of Remembering Vice, January 2017
It Takes a Lot of Money to Look This Cheap Dissent, Winter 2017
Who Gets to Be a Science Nerd? The New Republic, 11/29/16
Inky the Octopus and the Upsides of Anthropomorphism The New Yorker, 4/26/16
The Selfie Project The New York Post, 5/4/16
Jeb: An Elegy! Catapult, 2/26/16
The Rainmakers Meridian, Winter 2015 Nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize
Neil deGrasse Tyson is Your—And Everyone Else’s—Personal Astrophysicist Vice, 10/26/15
How the Rich Profit from Natural Disasters The New Republic, 10/5/15
The Climate Hackers Dissent, Summer 2015
On Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Tin House, Summer 2015
Aral Spring Audubon, 1/8/15
Whose Moon is it Anyway? Dissent, Fall 2014
Chasing a Comet Cafe, 11/18/14
Celebrate Corporate Personhood! Guernica, 5/23/14
The Teaching Class Guernica, 5/16/14
Will Space Mining Save the Earth? The New Republic, 5/19/14
Tournament of Books. The Morning News, 3/26/13
On E.F. Schumacher. Tin House, Spring 2013.
The Marvelous Mrs. Stanley & the Amazing Dr. Youtz. The Pinch, Spring 2013
Planetary Emergency. Guernica, 12/20/12
Rape and Rhetoric. Guernica, 8/22/12
Let's Get Radical. The Revealer, 7/13/12
Human Rights Horror Stories. Guernica, 6/22/12.
On Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Mother Jones, 4/28/12
Emergency in Slow Motion. Guernica, 4/19/12
Rockstars of Neuroscience Debate the Future of Brain Studies. Capital New York, 4/3/12
How the Million Hoodie March Quells our Unreasonable Fears. Guernica, 3/29/12
Uncommon Sense. Tin House, Spring 2012
No Such Thing as Giving Too Much. Treehugger, 1/27/12
The Beautiful and the Dammed: Part 1 & Part 2. Myoo, 11/10/11 and 11/20/11
Patient. The Missouri Review, Spring 2010. Anthologized in Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat.
In Next Round of Budget Talks, Big Cuts for Health Research. The Nation, 4/11/11
We’ll See What Happens Tonight. The Faster Times, 7/22/10
What We Talk About When We Talk About Progress. The Rumpus, 5/13/10
Collected Climate Reporting Portfolio