In this audio Science writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum speaks with EnlightenNext Magazine's Tom Huston about her book, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Blum's work brings to life the still unresolved struggle between the scientific method and the spiritual experience. Her main character, the Harvard psychologist-philosopher William James, exercised a lifelong interest in some of the Victorian era's favorite diversions: levitation, phantom apparitions, poltergeists, telepathy, and telekinesis. James' sincere explorations into these areas were subjected to intense scrutiny and often ridicule by his peers, but he was ever unrepentant, writing toward the end of his life: “I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of better-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am willing to take the risk.” The earnest study of the unexplainable reaches of human consciousness and potential persists to this day, thanks in part to the work of James and those who followed in his footsteps. Blum, a science writer by training and trade, brings warmth, humor, and a richness of detail to the subject of her book, as well as to the substance of this engaging interview.
BIO
Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and has been a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1997.
Blum earned her bachelor's in journalism from the University of Georgia, with a double minor in anthropology and political science and her M.A. in journalism from UW-Madison. While at the Sacramento Bee, she won the Livingston Award in National Reporting and the Olive Branch Award from New York University for her nuclear weapons series in 1989. Then Blum wrote a series on the ethical issues and dilemmas of primate research, “The Monkey Wars,” which won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, the 1992 science-writing award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the 1992 Clarion Award from Women in Communications. It also led Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, to name her an honorary member for her service to science. In 1995, she wrote her last series for The Sacramento Bee, called “Only Human,” which explored biology of behavior and which won the national Sigma Delta Chi award for non-deadline reporting. Blum expanded her newspaper series on primate research into a book, also called The Monkey Wars, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1994.
She is also the author of Sex on the Brain (1997), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named a Best Book of the Year by Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly and Discover Magazine, and is the co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers. Blum's latest book is Ghost Hunters: William James and the Scientific Search for Life After Death.
Blum has also written for publications including The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover, Psychology Today, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone Books, The Utne Reader and More magazine. She was president of the National Association of Science Writers from 2002-2004 and currently serves on advisory boards to the Council for Advancement of Science Writing and the World Federation of Science Journalists. She is a member of the Board on Life Sciences for the National Academy of Sciences.
