The Tempest, and Why We Don’t Need New Slurs for AI Really, people! It's not! That! Hard! Have some respect for yourselves.

Detest A.I.? OK. But you really should read this before you start calling it names.

open.substack.com/pub/witherwa...

This.

2025:
New book under contract w/MIT
Nat'l Academies research award
2nd TEDxTalk
Aspen syrup project funded
Helped birth 2nd NYT best-seller
Bar featured on ABC/FOX/SLTrib/SLUG
Ep.300 of UnDisciplined
SFClimateWeek org. team
Wrote for LA Rev. of Books
Launched solutions reporting class
Back to boxing

Well played, @theathletic.com.

I became a climate scientist because I'm deeply attracted to tragedy. But I've come to believe that prediction-enabled adaptation is a force multiplier in a rapidly changing world. And I'm buoyant about what this science allow us to do—even in an inexorably warmer future.

youtu.be/ijBY4YrAvLU?...

Bro, your book is Arizona in a really spectacular Four Corners region of that bookstore table.

Never underestimate the possibility that a single act of kindness might make someone's day.

This century-old Sugar House home is SLC’s newest nonalcoholic speakeasy. Here’s where to find it. Where can you get a nonalcoholic cocktail in Salt Lake City? Look to this Sugar House speakeasy.

Where can you get a nonalcoholic cocktail in Salt Lake City? Look to this Sugar House speakeasy.

Truly proud to be among this group of journalists, researchers, and science communicators. Thank you, @nationalacademies.org and @schmidtsciences.bsky.social.

The other 23 people on this list are absolutely amazing researchers, journalists, and science communicators from whom I am already learning so much.

And then there's me.

In the immortal words of Thom Yorke: "What the hell am I doin' here? I don't belong here."

I am driving my parents’ white Subaru Outback in Utah today. This means that I have spent at least 47% of my day looking for this godforsaken car in parking lots filled with other white Subaru Outbacks.

A beautiful adage, but there is no record of Orwell saying or writing this.

UnDisciplined: The Patterns of Life, Part 1 Again and again, similar patterns show up in nature in different creatures at different times in their evolutionary histories. And when they show up, we often perceive them as beautiful. Why?

I’m completely enchanted with David Maitland and the way he sees beauty and purpose in this world. You’ll be enchanted, too. Here’s Part 1 of my interview with the zoologist and Nature Photographer of the Year award-winner.

www.upr.org/show/undisci...

These guys were a blast. Give a listen.

Tickets for TEDxSaltLakeCity are now available. I'll be speaking about how climate prediction can be a force multiplier in a rapidly warming world. www.tedxsaltlakecity.com/2025-events/...

I'm the guy who questions your interior decorating skills, tells you your dogs probably don't like you, and reminds you that you'll always live in Alex's shadow whenever you're in the north goal in Salt Lake City. But even I was worried about you after that collision. Glad you're back home. Rest up.

Alas, it just doesn't happen very much. If we miss the moment to resist in large-enough numbers (or resist violently, giving the state cover for assuming even greater control) then reality quickly sets in. Deep compliance follows. We've seen this is every dictatorship in the world. We're not immune.

Complicity Becomes Us | Los Angeles Review of Books Matthew D. LaPlante considers the perils of complicity in Boris Fishman’s novel “The Unwanted.”

Pleased to have been invited by
@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social to review Boris Fishman's latest, The Unwanted — an allegory about complicity that feels particularly relevant right now.

lareviewofbooks.org/article/comp...

UnDisciplined: Did a tragedy at a fundamentalist commune drive this Biblical scholar’s desire to put data over dogma? Dan McClellan loves the Bible. He doesn’t always love what it says. But he works hard not to try to mold it into something that he wants it to be — to meet it, he says, on its own terms. Doing anythin...

I didn't want to pathologize, and I certainly didn't want to traumatize, but there was something deep in Dan McClellan's past that seemed so speak to his motivations to put data over dogma. In part two of my conversation with ‪@maklelan.bsky.social‬, we dive into it.

www.upr.org/show/undisci...

Kilby has got Salt Lake City looking like a Riverside County thrift store fire sale rack in late April.

Ack! We spelled Dan's last name incorrectly in the show description. I'm fixing that now. (I give my students failing grades for mistakes like this. So judge me accordingly.)

UnDisciplined: Does the Bible really say it is the Word of God? Just about 60% of Americans say they identify as Christian. And just about 20% of Americans say they have read the entire Bible.

Part one of my two-episode interview with Dan McClellan (@maklelan.bsky.social) was broadcast this morning. In it we discuss a thorny question: Does the Bible ever say it's the word of God? And if it doesn't, by what authority do Christians believe it is?

www.upr.org/show/undisci...

Agreed.

Aspen Syrup Production Experimentation Network: Collecting the Sap YouTube video by Matthew LaPlante

Our little ag science project is going well.

I know that you're all excited about trying a Chicago pope for the first time, but I've always preferred my pontiffs with yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish, chopped onions, tomatoes, pepperoncinis, a pickle spear and celery salt on a poppy seed bun.

I particularly liked the appearance from Time-Traveling Conan O'Brien at 1:28.

ASPEN: ASPEN SYRUP PRODUCTION EXPERIMENTATION NETWORK: SAP FLOW YouTube video by Matthew LaPlante

It was a big day for the ASPEN project: After a lot of hard work, we finally reached sap flow today, collected 10 sample vials from our experimentation grove, and did a little taste test.

My autistic child played four years of varsity high school sports, wrote four plays, performed in many others, starred as Octavius Caesar in a local production of Antony & Cleopatra, and will graduate next week with a bachelor's degree—at the age of 17. Autism doesn’t destroy children. Ableism does.

UnDisciplined: Can holding leaders accountable to truth unlock a climate revolution? In his new book, climate analyst Mike Berners-Lee says there's one shift that would go far toward solving every climate bind we’re in: holding corporate and political leaders accountable to truth.

What's the one thing that would do more than anything else to change our woeful global warming trajectory? More renewables? Cap and trade? Accountability for carbon polluters? Nope, @mikebernerslee.bsky.social says it's the establishment of "a climate of truth."

www.upr.org/show/undisci...

I was there for the first MLS game on April 6, 1996. Like today, it was D.C. at San Jose, and there was a guy named Harkes on the field and a coach named Bruce Arena on the sidelines. Unlike today, it was unclear then if the league would make it. But soccer survived. And now it thrives in the USA.