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Hi readers, Kim here. You may have seen the viral TikTok videos of women pondering which we would rather encounter if we ever find ourselves alone: a man or a bear. Overwhelmingly, the preferred choice — according to my informal poll among female friends and their friends — has been the bear. Give us a bear over an unpredictable creep that oozes serial killer vibes any day. Earlier this month, I found myself wishing for the opposite. On a trip to Western Montana, I had a very, very good chance of seeing a grizzly in the wild. I was bunking alone in a quiet cabin right outside Glacier National Park during the tourist off season, questioning my sanity over the plan for hiking alone the next morning. I consider myself an experienced outdoorswoman — for more than a decade, I’ve done multiple backpacking trips and countless solo hikes. But I had never ventured acapella in grizzly country, and this was my first time visiting the Northern Rockies. It didn’t help that the property manager, whom I called up tearfully asking for advice, said she personally knew someone who was mauled to death by a grizzly here. So terrified I was, that whenever I stepped out of my cabin to use the bathroom, I trained my bear spray can like an FBI agent storming an abandoned building. In the end, I caved. The night before my hike, I reached out to hiking groups on Facebook asking to buddy up with anyone hiking the same way. More than a few commenters chastised me for going alone. One even quipped that single women face greater danger from men than bears, an idea which I found was growing to be increasingly tedious. Then, one guy reached out, who also shared similar concerns as I did about bears. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet at a trailhead the next morning. I drove up the gorgeous Going to the Sun Road, shaking behind the wheel the whole way. As the thick morning fog rolled up the mountains and made the next bend impossible to see, several times I stopped at the turnouts desperately wishing to turn back. It was only my promise I made to another person that kept me going up the mountains. In the end, I worried for nothing. While still not quite a crowd, several posses were also at the trailhead, so I could have tagged along with any one of them. The fog lifted, and although the skies always threatened rain the whole day, the mountains rewarded hikers by revealing themselves in all their splendor. My hiking buddy, Peyton, also kept his promise to show up, and we had a pleasant time on the trail together. I encountered neither serial killer nor grizzly. In fact, I felt a tad disappointed for not seeing the endangered species in their natural habitat. Looking back, I would have been capable of holding my own on the trail. After all that anxiety-fueled prep, I now feel sufficiently prepared to face a (non-hungry, cubless) bear. I’m constantly amazed by how much people underestimate solo female hikers, and I can’t help succumbing to their lack of confidence as well. During my time in Glacier, quite a few other men and women were hiking solo, too. So, man or bear? For me, now the answer is this: I’d be happy to meet either. Seeing a bear in the wild is a privilege, I now remind myself, and it is I who is intruding on their home. On the other hand, what’s to fear about a fellow hiker? We’re all there trying to soak in the views of one of the prettiest places on Earth. Moreover, I try to remember that people can carry such interesting stories and thus make excellent conversation partners — after all, that’s partly the reason why I’m a journalist in the first place. Just like how I should have more confidence in myself, the same goes for holding faith in people. Toward each other, be it bear or human, may we all try to be a little less jaded. Yours, Kim P.S. Have you encountered a wild animal on a hike before? How did that go, and how did that make you feel? Shoot us a message at hello@sequencermag.com. And a warm welcome to our new subscribers! Feel free to reach out to us anytime; we love hearing from our readers. What we’re working on:Maddie: For what it’s worth, I would pick human over bear. My reasoning is thus: I feel like I have a good handle on the spectrum of bad outcomes with a human. Truly I have no frame of reference for a bear, and that unknown unknown is what worries me. Although humans are more carnivorous than bears, on the whole! Lots to chew on. I have a wonderful physics x art Q&A in the works. Keep your eyes peeled. And today (Friday) I’m participating in a panel at Science Writers 2025! I’m representing Sequencer Mag with a couple of legends from 404Media and Defector, respectively. As the runt of the litter, we are certainly punching way above our weight, and I’m honored to even be included in the same sentence of those worker-owned legends! Max: Three cheers for Kim for facing her fears and not getting mauled by a bear. I get anxious enough hiking and camping in black bear territory…going solo in grizzly territory would freak me out big time. I just published my first print feature for MIT Technology Review in their BODY issue. I haven’t picked up the physical copy yet (please do if you see it!) but I’m stoked about this story for several reasons. It was genuinely one of the most fun reporting adventures I've had, learning all about how our bodies react to extreme hot and cold. Scientists hope to prevent deaths from climate change, but heat and cold are more complicated than we thought. I met anthropologists and physiologists and climatologists. I learned my own body, as you’ll read in the intro. At every turn I felt like I came across a new challenge to old preconceived notions about the way our bodies work. Specifically about the way our bodies handle extreme temperatures. Here is a gift link to get around the paywall shhhh don’t tell 🤫 And here’s the start of the story if you need more convincing. It’s the 25th of June and I’m shivering in my lab-issued underwear in Fort Worth, Texas. Libby Cowgill, an anthropologist in a furry parka, has wheeled me and my cot into a metal-walled room set to 40 °F. A loud fan pummels me from above and siphons the dregs of my body heat through the cot’s mesh from below. A large respirator fits snug over my nose and mouth. The device tracks carbon dioxide in my exhales—a proxy for how my metabolism speeds up or slows down throughout the experiment. Eventually Cowgill will remove my respirator to slip a wire-thin metal temperature probe several pointy inches into my nose.
Cowgill and a graduate student quietly observe me from the corner of their so-called “climate chamber.” Just a few hours earlier I’d sat beside them to observe as another volunteer, a 24-year-old personal trainer, endured the cold. Every few minutes, they measured his skin temperature with a thermal camera, his core temperature with a wireless pill, and his blood pressure and other metrics that hinted at how his body handles extreme cold. He lasted almost an hour without shivering; when my turn comes, I shiver aggressively on the cot for nearly an hour straight.
I’m visiting Texas to learn about this experiment on how different bodies respond to extreme climates. “What’s the record for fastest to shiver so far?” I jokingly ask Cowgill as she tapes biosensing devices to my chest and legs. After I exit the cold, she surprises me: “You, believe it or not, were not the worst person we’ve ever seen.”
Another thing I’m working on is just “posting through the cringe,” as they say. Self-promotion is icky enough. Doing it on TikTok makes my skin crawl. But oh well!!! If you want to support you can follow me here and spray every video with likes and comments thanks love you 🫶 Kim: Sort of similar to Maddie, I will also be on a panel at SciWri25! My panel, about cultivating good editor-writer relationships especially as a freelancer, will be in-person at the conference in Chicago on Nov. 8. If anyone else is attending, feel free to say hi! What we’re reading:Dan: When a cell is infected by a virus, a common response is for the cell to just up and die, rather than risk turning into a viral factory and passing the infection. Viruses, on the other hand, obviously don’t want to happen and will try desperately to evade, block, or otherwise disrupt any alarm signals that the cell might notice that could get in the way of ill-gotten replication. To that end, when a herpes or flu virus infects a cell, shit goes completely haywire in the cell, is really the only way I know how to put it. One thing that happens, according to a paper I saw in Nature a few weeks ago is that bits of RNA start shearing off of transcripts in the cell, and they’re twisted backwards. During a viral infection, according to the paper, the genes that cells transcribe from DNA to RNA start growing in length, in one case that the researchers found 16 times longer than it should’ve been, adding on regions of the genome frequently made of the DNA parasites that make up huge portions of the genome. Double-stranded DNA and RNA normally has a right-handed twist—imagine a piece of rope and the fibers its made of twisting around a central axis. If you grasped the rope, or the DNA or RNA, with your right hand and the curve of your fingers was the same as the curve of the rope, it’s right handed. 99.99999% of DNA is right-handed (rough estimate I just made up).  See how the fingers on the left hand wrap in the direction of the helix? And same on the right? Twist. Source. These bits of the transcript are called Z-RNA and are wound to the left, the wrong way round, with left-handed twist instead of right-handed twist. The craziest bit about all this is that the cell notices the Z-RNA, the wrong-way twisted RNA and takes it as a sign that it is being infected. A left-handed twisted RNA is so rare, so unusual, so completely out-of-the-ordinary that a suite of specialized proteins that only detect it appear, take note of it, and then tell the cell to die. A bananas finding. Biochemistry is great. Maddie: I’ve written about “Car Talk” as my comfort podcast. Though in the weeks to come, I’m certainly looking forward to the second issue of Signal Hill, an audio magazine (support your indie creators!) Max: Some quick recs of stuff to read and watch: 🐺ICYMI, check out my essay about what we learn in the footsteps of wolves 🤖 People Who Say They’re Experiencing AI Psychosis Beg the FTC for Help (WIRED) 🤝 Old but interesting piece from academics about The Science of What Makes People Care 🕶️ 404media on “Creeper glasses just got creepier” 🏀 A new era of basketball is here and I’m so excited!!!!!!!! 🎺I’ve been loving these videos where a musician just plays solo trumpet outside at sunset. I throw it on the TV in the background when im working or cleaning and it’s fun to watch the color change in real-time. Kim: I second Maddie that the podcast/audio magazine Signal Hill is absolutely stellar. My High Country News colleague, Annie Rosenthal, is one of the editors there, and she’s absolutely killing it at both outlets! Check out her episode, “Caterpillar Roadshow,” which is about an unexpected friendship between an American entomologist — her mom — and a 12-year-old boy from Japan! Also, check out this cringey interview between a sharp journalist and Biden's former secretary, who doesn't seem to have a handle on her story she is trying to sell. Here's a good line of questioning done right.
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