Jeff Wise is an American author and television journalist who currently lives in New York City. His main topics are science, technology, aviation, and adventure. He is the author of the book Extreme Fear and has had articles published in: Bloomberg Businessweek, The Huffington Post, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Nautilus, New York, The New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Psychology Today, Slate, Time, and Travel + Leisure.
Jeff Wise began his freelance writing career after graduating from college, at first focusing on travel and adventure. In a 2010 podcast interview, he describes why he switched fields from biology to journalism:
“I wasn’t so interested in the test tube work or going out and spending five years investigating the life cycle of a barnacle, but the story of the life cycle of the barnacle can be absolutely fascinating. So, I was very happy to spend … a half an hour reading the paragraph about the barnacle. But, I didn’t want to be the guy in the boat watching the barnacle.”
Print and digital publications
As of 2016, Jeff Wise has written one book and two shorter electronic-only publications:
Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger —book, 256 pages
Jeff Wise advocates scientific materialism and has explained in an interview with Alex Tsakiris in 2010, using Freud as an example, that a successful explanatory theory requires a mechanism:
“ scientific theory is something that tries to increase our understanding by making a prediction, by saying ‘Okay, we’re going to say that the earth orbits around the sun, therefore we would expect to see this motion of the planets,’ or something like that. I think the thing that’s often overlooked is that the theory requires a mechanism. And I think this is why Freud ultimately I think was cast aside, because Freud had a lot of interesting ideas and suppositions about how the brain works, but he never offered any mechanisms.”
In the same interview, discussing the difference between science and popular, but non-scientific, ideas, Wise said:
“When you mention these guys who claim that they’ve found evidence that near-death experiences cannot be explained through materialistic explanations and so forth, it’s not that I’m afraid to look into it. But it doesn’t really fit into my schema for how I basically have come to conclude the world works. It’s not fear so much as it doesn’t really mesh into how I believe the world fundamentally works.”
Political views
Dismayed by the Trump presidency, administration, and Republican control of Congress, Jeff Wise has tweeted:
1/21/2017, sarcastically commenting on a retweet playing up the Trump/Russia dossier, in Russian: “США наши!”
2/1/2017: “As economy cratered in '08, Americans vowed: "We'll find out who did this! & 8 yrs from now, we'll give them the presidency, Senate & House”
2/9/2017: “... Trump voters elected a president who has no basic understanding of what his job is or how US govt works”
2/14/2017, commenting on a retweet reporting that the House Republicans voted 23-15 to not request copies of Donald Trump’s tax returns: “Really, Republicans? Really?”
Personal life
Jeff Wise is married to Sandra Garcia and has two sons. He is an amateur pilot and lives in New York City.
