Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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America's urban search and rescue teams are facing financial and political pressure. However, their work has never been more in demand, as weather disasters become increasingly common. -
Dozens of countries had called for a clear "roadmap" to transition away from the use of coal, oil and natural gas. The U.S. did not participate in the negotiations. -
Scientists are increasingly concerned that the planet is headed for massive, irreversible changes due to global warming. In some cases, those changes have already begun. -
Some of the country's highest home insurance prices are in the central U.S., a region generally considered to be protected from climate-driven disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. -
Home insurance is getting less affordable, and less available, as insurers raise prices and pull back from areas with extreme weather. That's forcing families across the country to make tough choices. -
Under President Trump, the U.S. has taken steps to roll back climate policies. Here are six significant changes. -
Hurricane Melissa will hit Jamaica as a massive Category 5 storm, and dump huge amounts of rain. Climate change makes large, rainy storms more likely.
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How high will the ocean rise under climate change? By 2050, scientists have a pretty good idea. But why does it matter where you live? And what can humans do to slow it down? This episode is part of Nature Quest, our monthly segment that brings you a question from a Short Waver who is noticing a change in the world around them. Our question comes from Peter Lansdale in Santa Cruz, Calif. To see what future sea levels will look like where you live, check out NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer here. Noticed any changes in *your* local environment that you want us to investigate? Send a voice memo to shortwave@npr.org telling us your name, your location, and the change you’ve noticed – it could be our next Nature Quest episode! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave. -
The banned words list applies to all work done at the largest federal funder of clean energy technology. -
The government's colossal failure to respond after Hurricane Katrina led to major reforms at the nation's top disaster agency. Now, the Trump administration has reversed some of those changes.
