CONTRIBUTORS
Josh Dean
“I like interesting people taking big
swings in worlds we don’t know
about,” writer Josh Dean says. The
subject of his PopSci feature is cer-
tainly swinging big: a man on a quest
to be the first person to reach the
deepest points in each of Earth’s five
oceans. This type of story drives
Dean as a journalist. In books like
The Taking of K-129 and magazine
articles, he takes readers along to
esoteric settings such as a deep-sea
wreck in the Pacific, or an elephant
polo field in Nepal. But he’s most in-
trigued by the determined humans
he finds in those places.by Jessica BoddyCOURTESYCONTRIBUTORSFrancesca Baerald
Growing up, Italian artist Francesca
Baerald was inspired by video
games such as Age of Empires. “I
remember the wonder of having the
chance to see and interact with a
world coming to life in front of you,”
she reflects. An illustrator and car-
tographer, she now invents her own
universes for video and board
games as well as magazines.
Baerald often constructs these fan-
tasy realms with oil or watercolor
paints. In this issue of PopSci, she
used the latter on cotton paper to
create an image of a flat Earth.p. 74p. 48To m Mc Na ma r a
How should we communicate with
civilizations living as far off as
10,000 years from now? Tom
McNamara’s feature explores the
answers to that question; they
include a disc holding 1,500 lan-
guages, a clock built into a Texas
mountain, and samples of blood
stashed on the moon. As PopSci’s
senior multimedia producer,
McNamara thinks about expressing
ideas visually, as well as through
music, as he crafts award-winning
science and nature videos. “I get a
picture in my head,” McNamara
says. “And then somehow, I make it
real—I love that feeling.”p. 60
8 FALL 2019 • POPSCI.COM