BEN CRAIR

ben.crair@gmail.com



I am a science and travel writer based in Berlin. My stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the New York Times.

Selected Work

🐙 “The Strangeness of Our Animal Bonds,” The New Yorker
Why do stories about animals so often turn into stories about children?

🐒 “The Origin of Culture,” Smithsonian
The monkey sites where scientists first studied animal culture.

🐝 “Love the Fig,” The New Yorker
An appreciation of nature's strangest fruit.

🐜 “The Secret Economic Lives of Animals,” Bloomberg Businessweek
What markets can teach us about nature.

🐆 “The Exhibitionist,” The New Republic
An investigation of a private zoo with some of the world's rarest animals.

🥊 “Mouth Full of Gold,” Grantland
A profile of Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s dentist.

🐠 “The Fishy Mystery of Lake Malawi,” Smithsonian
How did one lake evolve hundreds of species of cichlid fish?

🤬 “The Period Is Pissed,” The New Republic
The first article describing the now-familiar "angry period."

🏖 “Summer on the Stones,” Paris Review
Chekhov, Thomas Mann, and the longueurs of vacationing.

👣 “Screw Your Standing Desk,” The New Republic
A sitter's manifesto.

🍹 “Saving Summer's Trashiest Cocktail,” The Awl
Make way for the $21 Long Island iced tea.


I will add a complete list of published stories soon.