I moved to the Bay Area to join Astera Institute as an independent fellow.
This job has no requirements. I will spend all my time writing, reading, and researching my own interests. I’ll host dinners, start a podcast, and finish my first book. I’ll talk to people, travel back to China, and build out my biotechnology manifesto.
I’ll obsess over big problems, like how to cure all infectious diseases; how to make life multiplanetary; how to safeguard life here on Earth; how to lower the cost and increase the speed of experiments; how to understand a single organism such that we can accurately simulate it; how to tell better stories.
I’ll write up my findings and share them freely. And when I spot problems that feel particularly important yet tractable, I’ll try to raise money and give it to scientists trying to solve them.
Astera seems like a good fit for this work because they are broadly funding many different things in bio- and neurotech. I’ve enjoyed getting to know people like Michael Nielsen, Eli Dourado, and Prachee Avasthi over the years. And, being situated in the Bay Area, it feels like a good “hub” from which to instigate and build teams around big, important problems.
Asimov Press will continue. We have articles finished and scheduled through May. We are also 80% done with our third book, Making the Modern Laboratory, which tells the story of why research laboratories look the way they do and how they could be better.
Running Asimov Press is the most important thing I’ve done, and it wasn’t an easy decision to let it go, even if only for awhile.
I still remember that first COVID summer, when I moved from Los Angeles to New York to become a writer. I enrolled in NYU’s science journalism program and rented a small apartment around the corner from Katz’s Deli, at 188 Orchard St, for $2650 per month.
As a young journalist, I had idealistic notions about writing and reporting; about making a career as a “pure” writer telling unapologetic stories. Holding these lofty dreams in my mind wasn’t easy, though.
First-year journalism students were told to lower their expectations, both in terms of impact and career. Professors told me not to expect my published articles to have tangible impacts. Many pieces have been written about pollution in the Hudson, they said, but few have led politicians to actually act.
The job market was also bad and scary. Staff positions were elusive even then, and are moreso today. Healthcare and benefits? Absolute luxury! Dreams of becoming an editor? Maybe in five years! Starting your own media company? Fuggedaboutit.
That Asimov funded me to start a small media company just two years out of journalism school, then, feels insane. Here was a for-profit company that gave me the reins to their name — and reputation — without ever dictating the stories I publish. I’ll always feel grateful to Alec Nielsen, the company’s CEO, for believing in me more than anybody had before.
As I quickly discovered, though, running even a small media group — with just two full-time employees — takes a lot of time. We constantly have about 20 articles in the publishing pipeline. Every piece needed to be written, edited (usually 4-5 rounds of feedback), fact-checked, and copyedited. We also make artwork for each piece, record voiceovers, mix the audio, scour the web for images (or make our own) and publish. Writers must be paid; freelancers must be commissioned; social media posts must be written.
It is not easy to manage all these little pieces while trying to write my own things; especially a big book project. It is also difficult to hew to a grand ambition or “path” when you’re balancing opinions from lots of readers and teammates. I’m proud of Asimov Press, but do think we steered too much toward history and not enough toward pieces that shape discourse. Moving to Astera is a chance for me to rectify this.
The Bay area will also be a nice change. I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half living in Kansas, on the border line where suburbs meet farmland. I’ve tried all the restaurants in a five-mile radius at least three times. I’ve shipped thousands of books out of my garage. I’ve enjoyed hundreds of quiet afternoons listening to the birds or flapping wings of bats, which flock through the air at night. And yet, I’ve been socially starved, aching for face-to-face meetings and candlelit dinners and monthly Poker tournaments. If you’re reading this, let’s meet up: My email is nsmccarty3@gmail.com.
I’m not entirely sure what the future holds, but I have recently found inspiration in Stewart Brand. At the bottom of Brand’s website he writes: “What do I usually do? I find things and I found things.”
“Things I find include tools, ideas, books, and people, which I blend and purvey. Things I’ve founded and co-founded include the Trips Festival (1966), Whole Earth Catalog (1968), Hackers Conference (1984), The WELL (1984), Global Business Network (1988), and The Long Now Foundation (1996).”
It was Brand who brought The Grateful Dead to San Francisco and mentored Kevin Kelly, the former executive editor of WIRED magazine. Brand has also written many books; about The MIT Media Lab, about Maintenance, and even about architecture and buildings (something he apparently knew little about when he began, but mastered over time).
In other words, Brand seems to be comfortable being uncomfortable; in moving around and trying new things. His ethos, of finding and founding, seems to describe a life well lived.
