David Ewing Duncan

He is the author of 12 books[1] and a journalist for Vanity Fair, Wired, Scientific American, The Atlantic, The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, and other publications.

His mother, Patricia DuBose Duncan, was an artist, photographer, and environmental activist whose work helped lead to the establishment of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in 1996.

After cycling around the world and south to north through Africa in the 1980s, Duncan launched a career in journalism, writing for Life magazine and other publications, and serving as a commentator and contributor for NPR, mostly for Morning Edition.

[11] In 1998, he was hired by producer Elliott Kastner to write a screenplay adapted from Duncan’s biography of Hernando de Soto, set in the future in outer space.

[12] He reported the results in a series of articles for Discover, The Atlantic, MIT Technology Review, Conde Nast Portfolio, Wired, and other media.

In 2011, he gave a TEDx Brussels talk that led to a TED book on longevity titled When I’m 164: The Science of Radical Life Extension and What Happens if it Succeeds.

In 2001, his documentary on the dotcom boom and bust (GoldRush.com) tracked the rise and fall of a start-up and the frenzy of this era in the Bay Area that aired on ABC Nightline.

[15] From 2003 to 2008 he was co-founder, curator, and host of BioAgenda, a major gathering of leaders in the life sciences that was held most of those years in Palm Springs, California.

[17] In 2019, Duncan wrote Talking to Robots, a book of short stories that blended fiction and nonfiction and explored how technologies like AI and synthetic biology might turn out in the future.