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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As researchers and engineers analyze the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, it's becoming clear that Houston's runaway development had a big role to play in flooding. -
With the help of federal flood insurance, many homeowners will rebuild after disasters. Some properties already have flooded many times. It'd be cheaper to buy owners out, but that's not happening.
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The problem is that just to the west, a huge slab of the Earth's crust called the Cocos Plate is grinding relentlessly toward North America. And it's running under another slab to the north. -
Federal maps help determine who on the coast must buy flood insurance, but many don't include the latest data. Maryland is now making its own flood maps, so homeowners can see if they're at risk. -
A team of scientists and economists claims they've come up with the most thorough analysis of the cost of climate change in the U.S. Most of the country will suffer economic loss in addition to higher mortality from heat waves and loss of agriculture productivity by 2100. But like all predictions far into the future, this one has a wide range of outcomes and could be overshadowed by new technology still to be invented.
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Eggs evolved over 300 million years ago and now come in all kinds of shapes, from Tic Tacs to teardrops to pingpong balls. After studying some 50,000 eggs, a team of researchers thinks it knows why. -
Scientists who found the fossils believe they are the remains of five people and far older than all previous finds. But how do the remains really fit into the bushy family tree of modern humans? -
President Trump played to his base, ignored the advice of scientists, industry titans and world leaders and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.
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President Trump announced on Thursday that the U.S. will leave the Paris climate deal. They are many things that could be affected by that decision, we explain.
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President Trump announced Thursday the U.S. will leave the Paris agreement. The decision is likely to have a big impact on both the climate and environmental policy around the world.
