The World from PRX

Marlisse Silver SweeneyMSS

Marlisse Silver Sweeney

Marlisse Silver Sweeney is a freelance journalist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her writing has been published in print and online across North America, including in The Atlantic, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Columbia Journalism Review and The American Lawyer. When not typing, she can be found teaching public speaking and business writing at The University of British Columbia.
Scientist works on vaccine
Science
Repurposing drugs: How old vaccines are finding new uses
Jerry Seinfeld
Arts
Why comedians are refusing to put on shows on college campuses
Coal power plant
Environment
World leaders announce goal of fossil fuel freedom by 2100 at UN Climate Change conference
Casts of the jaws of Australopithecus deyiremeda
Science
How a new fossil discovery changes the perceived evolutionary path for humans
Beefsteak tomato
Science
Why your beefsteak tomatoes are getting beefier
Keystone XL protests
Justice
Even protesting the Keystone XL pipeline could land you on an FBI watch list
Coal in West Virginia
Environment
Appalachia is being hammered by the fall of coal
Sunscreen being applied
Health
Don’t forget, wear sunscreen. Why SPF is more important than ever
A mock-up of an atomic waste barrel is pictured at the entrance of the annual meeting of German utility giant E.ON in Essen on May 3, 2012.
Environment
‘It’s worse than any site I’ve been to:’ radioactivity and a Missouri neighborhood
DJ Jazzy Jeff speaks at an event where hip-hop DJs Grandwizzard Theodore, Grandmixer DXT and Grandmaster Flash are inducted into Guitar Center's RockWalk in Los Angeles on March 6, 2014.
Science
Science crunched Billboard’s charts to determine music’s most revolutionary year. It was 1991.
An agriculturist prepares to plant "Golden Rice" seedlings at a laboratory of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Laguna.
Science
Forget chemotherapy — try some genetically modified lettuce to fight your colon cancer
The container ship MSC Tomoko Panama in the Santa Barbara Channel in 2009. Ships like these pose deadly threats of pollution and collision to blue whales in the area.
Environment
How do you save the whales? Slow down the ships
Adam Sandler with direction Jason Reitman at the premiere of thier movie, "Men, Women & Children," Los Angeles on September 30, 2014.
Arts
Adam Sandler shows how not to make a comedy about Native Americans
Former astronaut Mark Kelly, left, stands across from his brother, Scott Kelly, the current commander of the International Space Station.
Science
A study of astronaut twins will give NASA some key genetic insight
An orca whale breaching off the coast of British Columbia, Canada.
Environment
Noisy waters are bad news for the orcas of the Pacific Northwest
Workers pick strawberries in a field on a farm in Oxnard, California, on February 24, 2015.
Environment
Agriculture is thriving in bone-dry California, and that’s not a good thing
"Female" robots Tessy and Tess wear white stiletto heels and pole dance during a demonstration at the Tobit Software stand at the 2014 CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, Germany.
Technology
The ‘sexy robot’ idea has a long history. Is it also the future of loneliness?
NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory flies above the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.
Environment
How California is surviving its new water crisis
A screenshot of the interactive Submarine Cable Map, which tracks active and planned submarine cable systems and their landing stations according to the Global Bandwidth Research Service.
Technology
What links the global Internet? Wires inside tubes no bigger than a garden hose.
A work boat passes an oiled marshland one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Bay Jimmy near Myrtle Grove, Louisiana.
Environment
Five years later, the Gulf of Mexico is still recovering from Deepwater Horizon
A Blackpoll warbler sits on a person's hand.
Science
How does this tiny bird make a nonstop, three-day flight? Become a ‘flying meatball’
Allen Leonard, research associate with Texas A&M AgriLife Research, uses a custom spray rig to apply herbicide to Roundup Ready alfalfa test plots.
Science
Weed-killing sprays may also be killing our ability to fight bacteria
John Cameron Mitchell as the title character in the Broadway run of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch."
Arts
The creator of ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ finally takes the Broadway stage