Episode 02: Melanie Warner

Author and journalist Melanie Warner’s career started in the business sector, where she was writing for Fortune magazine, including chronicling the (first) dot com boom in Silicon Valley. Her career changed direction when she started writing about food for The New York Times. The success in her career has made it possible for her to write about food and science on a freelance basis and she has published two non-fiction books. Her first book, Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over The American Meal, is a startling and thoroughly researched exploration of the processed food industry. Melanie has managed to write a book using both a fine-tooth comb and an open-mind, meaning the results are balanced and rooted in science. Next came The Magic Feather Effect: The Science of Alternative Medicine and the Surprising Power of Belief. We do love a literary reference here on Babble, the magic feather being the feather Dumbo carried in his trunk which he thought was making him fly (it was, of course, his confidence and the feather was just an ordinary feather). Melanie gets to the heart of the placebo effect, the appeal of alternative medicine versus the science of it, and her experiences researching the range of healing practices out there.