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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Scientists have been analyzing bones first uncovered by a utility crew digging at the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia. The remains provide insights into surgery during the Civil War. -
The two satellites, which are collectively called GRACE and will replace two retired probes, are one of the most important tools for understanding the effects of climate change. -
Scientists hope MethaneSAT will show where the potent greenhouse gas is coming from. Tracking methane in the air is difficult because it rises and spreads from the source. -
Scientists say some of the earliest cave art found in Europe was done before humans arrived; thus, Neanderthal art, suggesting that our "brutish" cousins were capable of symbolic thinking. -
Hurricanes, fires and even hail contributed to billions of dollars in damages. The government study also finds that it was among the warmest years on record. -
A discovery of the remains of two infants in central Alaska provides evidence of the earliest wave of people to move from Asia into the Americas. -
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? -
The Sea Grant program, which funds research on coastal environments, is slated by White House for elimination in 2018. If it goes, a project that finds leaking septic tanks goes down the drain, too. -
A new survey shows that the sound of cars and planes and other forms of noise pollution are rampant across the American wilderness. In many cases, man-made noise is drowning out the background sounds.
