Today marks the first anniversary of Phenomena, the blog network that I started with Carl Zimmer, Virginia Hughes and Brian Switek a year ago. It’s been a privilege and a delight to be part of National Geographic. Our benevolent overlords—special thanks to Jamie Shreeve and Brian Howard—have treated us very well, given us a lot of exposure, and (as is important with blog networks) relaxed and let us do our thing without any impositions. And my esteemed co-bloggers, Carl, Ginny and Brian, continue to set the bar for what good science writing should look like; they inspire me to do better.

I’ve felt under much less pressure here, so I’ve felt able to devote more care and attention