Marc Abrahams is editor and co-founder of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), host and main writer of the Improbable Research weekly podcast (distributed by CBS), and author of This is Improbable Too and other books. He edits and writes much of the web site and blog www.improbable.com, and is a longtime regular columnist for The Guardian newspaper. Marc is the father and master of ceremonies of the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, honoring achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes are handed out by genuine Nobel laureates at a gala ceremony held each autumn at Harvard University and broadcast on the internet and on National Public Radio. the Washington Post called Marc "the nation's guru of academic grunge." The Journal of the American Medical Association called him "the Puck of Science." He has been called many other things.

Christie Aschwanden is the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight. She also writes a health column for the Washington Post and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including Smithsonian, Popular Science, New Scientist, Discover and [NPR.org](http://NPR.org._ She blogs about science at The Last Word On Nothing and is a 2015 Journalism Fellow in Complex Systems Science at Santa Fe Institute. She's the recipient of a 2014 Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She won the NASW Science in Society Award for Commentary or Opinion in 2013 and was a 2011 National Magazine Award finalist.

Abhijit Banerjee applies science to combating poverty. He and Esther Duflo are directors of the MIT-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab J-PAL, a global network of researchers driven by a belief in the power of scientific evidence to understand what really helps the poor, and what does not. Banerjee, Duflo and their colleagues conduct randomized evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of policies and programs and disseminate their results to policymakers, nonprofit organizations and foundations. The lab and its directors were recently awarded the 2014/15 Albert O. Hirschman Prize by the Social Science Research Council. In addition to his research publications, Banerjee's books include, with Duflo, Poor Economics, chosen as Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year for 2011. Past president of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of the Econometric Society, he has also been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and was appointed in 2012 to the U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. In 2014 Banerjee was honored with the Bernard Harms Prize, awarded every two years by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Jennifer Bleyer is a senior editor at Psychology Today. Previously, she was an independent journalist whose work appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Self, Cosmopolitan, Tablet, Real Simple, and TheAtlantic.com among other publications, and an adjunct faculty member at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

Pitch Guidelines

I’m interested in stories from the behavioral sciences, so psychology, social neuroscience, cognitive science, psychobiology, social psychology. Also, I look for mind-body health stories, really interesting mental health advances (an upcoming story we’re doing, for instance, is on interventions for First Episode Psychosis), nutrition and sex stories based on empirical research. I’m looking for stuff that makes a newsy 800-1000-word story, or great narratives that can be 3-4,000 word features.

Alex Blumberg is the CEO of Gimlet Media. Before Gimlet, he was a radio journalist at This American Life, and the co-founder, along with Adam Davidson, of the This American Life/NPR co-production Planet Money. Blumberg left a long career in public radio to launch Gimlet, a for-profit podcast network focusing on narrative journalism and story-telling. Gimlet produces three podcasts: StartUp, the true story of what it’s like to launch a business; Reply All, a show about the internet; and Mystery Show, a podcast where the host solves everyday mysteries. His work has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including the Polk, the duPont-Columbia, and the Peabody. Blumberg's award-winning documentary on the housing crisis, The Giant Pool of Money, which he co-reported and produced with Adam Davidson, was named one of the last decade's top ten works of journalism by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Blumberg co-founded Planet Money with Adam Davidson. Planet Money, through podcasts, radio stories, documentaries and blog posts, delivers economic journalism in a fresh, accessible, humorous, yet hard-hitting way. Blumberg executive produced the interactive project "Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt," which won almost every major online award including an Emmy.

Pitch Guidelines

Gimlet Media is the premier media company focused on narrative podcasts. Our scope of interests is broad. For an idea of types of narratives that interest us, please listen to our initial 3 shows: StartUp, a documentary radio show about what it's really like to start a business, Reply All, a show about the internet, and Mystery Show, a show where host Starlee Kine solves everyday mysteries. For the full story of Gimlet’s creation, listen to season one of StartUp. Of the three, Reply All is the one that deals most often with science topics, particularly computers and mobile technology and their impact on society. We're constantly looking for narrative stories for that show. They should involve the internet, have a human at the center of them, and be surprising in some way. In addition, we have several new shows that we'll be launching over the next several months involving science. One explores family history with occasional dips into evolutionary biology. Another examines popular fads through the lens of science. Another will deal with medicine and health care. Finally, just to put it out there, we're constantly on the lookout for smart, narratively savvy journalists and producers, preferably with radio experience, to hire.

Brooke Borel is a freelance science writer and author based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is a contributing editor at Popular Science and has also written for Slate, Aeon, and Nova Next, among others. Her first book, Infested: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World, was published in 2015 from the University of Chicago Press with additional support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is working on a fact-checking guide, also for Chicago, which should publish in 2016.

Ed Boyden leads MIT's Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops tools for analyzing and repairing complex biological systems such as the brain and applies them systematically to reveal ground-truth principles of biological function as well as to repair these systems. He also co-directs the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, which aims to develop new tools to accelerate neuroscience progress. Among other recognitions, he has received the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences (2015), the Schuetze Prize (2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award (2013), the Lundbeck "Brain" Prize (2013), the NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2013), the NIH Director's Transformative Research Award (2012 and 2013), and the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize (2011). In 2012, he was among those on Wired's Smart List "50 People Who Will Change the World." He has launched an award-winning series of classes at MIT that teach principles of neuroengineering, starting with basic principles of how to control and observe neural functions, and culminating with strategies for launching companies in the nascent neurotechnology space. His group has hosted hundreds of visitors to learn how to use neurotechnologies. Boyden earned his Ph.D. in neurosciences as a Hertz Fellow at Stanford University, where he discovered that the molecular mechanisms used to store a memory are determined by the content to be learned. Before that, he received three degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics from MIT. He has contributed to more than 300 peer-reviewed papers, current or pending patents, and articles, and has given more than 300 invited talks on his group's work. Twitter: @eboyden3