Chip Walter
Chip Walter is a Science Journalist, Filmmaker, National Geographic Fellow, and former CNN Bureau Chief whose books include Immortality, Inc, Last Ape Standing, and Thumbs, Toes, and Tears. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and National Geographic, to which he contributed the January 2015 cover story The First Artists. He has been interviewed on All Things Considered and Michio Kaku’s Science Fantastic.
Together with William Shatner, he is the coauthor of I’m Working on That, in which they present technologies from Science Fiction by visiting noted scientists from Caltech to MIT to explore the once considered improbable tech and show how it just might be possible. He is best known at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) as the man who introduced Randy Pausch to Captain Kirk.
In Thumbs, Toes, and Tears, Chip brings together the complexity theory, the latest brain scanning techniques, anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and robotics to explore how the smallest of changes over the past six million years, all shaped by the forces of evolution, have enabled a primate to evolve into a human.
Chip was one of the original employees at CNN when it went on the air June 1, 1980, and later became its youngest bureau chief when he created CNN’s first Southeast Bureau in 1981 before heading up the network’s San Francisco Bureau in 1982.
He is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s professional writing program where he teaches science writing, is senior manager of strategic communications and public information at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), and Senior Manager in charge of strategic educational initiatives at Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Green Science. where he is also Author in Residence
He has consulted with several nationally recognized organizations to develop creative online business strategies, content, and services in an effort to help tap emerging technologies.
Chip’s Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived draws on new scientific discoveries to explain how our survival was linked to our ancestors being born more prematurely than others, having uniquely long childhoods, evolving a new kind of mind that made us resourceful and emotionally complex, how our highly social nature increased our odds of survival, and why we became self-aware in ways that no other animal seems to be.
He has been lucky enough to travel to six continents as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, from the Amazon Rainforest and outback of Australia to the Serengeti and remote islands of the Pacific. His books have so far been translated into eight languages reaching readers from Kyoto to Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Chip is the author of Space Age and has also written, directed, and produced several award-winning science documentaries for PBS. He wrote and sold three screenplays in Hollywood to Columbia-Tri Star, Universal, and Warner Bros, among them, was also his documentary on the evolution of intelligence Fires of the Mind.
Previously, Chip was National Programming Executive at WQED-TV, Vice-President of Production at Engage Games Online, CEO of Digital Alchemy Inc, Consultant for National Geographic Society, Ketchum Inc., Education Management Corp., and Blattner Brunner Advertising. He has also served as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon in three separate schools: the Mellon Institute, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the School of Computer Science.
While at Digital Alchemy he developed learning games for the National Geographic Society including its popular GeoBee game inspired by the National Geography Bee.
Chip’s latest book with National Geographic, Immortality, Inc., has been written after more than three years of research that took him from the Arctic to the Islands of Greece and from the offices and laboratories of Silicon Valley into the minds of the scientists looking to solve the greatest killer of all, aging.
This book presents conversations about life, death, aging, and the future of the human race. Chip dives into stem cell rejuvenation, advanced genomics, artificial intelligence, and new discoveries finding the very roots of aging and youth.
In an age where Silicon Valley billionaires are investing in laboratory advances to prove aging unnecessary and death a disease that can be cured, the idea of living hundreds of years might sound absurd or even morally wrong. Chip’s journalism concludes it isn’t science fiction.
The book explores today’s scientific pursuit of immortality, with exclusive visits inside Silicon Valley labs and interviews with the visionaries who believe we will soon crack into the aging process and cure death.
Chip gained exclusive access to the champions of this radical cause, delivering a book that brings together for the first time the visions of molecular biologist and Apple chairman Arthur Levinson, genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter, futurist Ray Kurzweil, rejuvenation trailblazer Aubrey de Grey, and stem cell expert Robert Hariri.
Chip has spoken at Xerox PARC, NASA, Harvard Law School, the Chautauqua Institution, Carnegie Mellon University, and many smaller organizations around the country on a wide range of topics, and has twice moderated scientific panels at the United Nations on child brain development at the request of UNICEF Director Anthony Lake. He recently moderated a third in Beijing. He has often been a guest on radio stations and websites around the world including National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Michio Kaku’s Science Fantastic, Irish National Radio and The Wall Street Journal. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America and the National Association of Science Writers.
Chip earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in English Literature from John Carroll University.
When he’s not traveling he lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Cyndy where they both try to keep up with their four adult children — Molly, Steven, Hannah, and Annie.
Read Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s review of Immortality, Inc. in Chip Walter chronicles the cutting-edge quest for immortality. Read This Sci-Fi Novel Imagines What a Massively Lethal Version of Corona Virus Would Look Like, Five Good Questions from Inspired Business by Boler College of Business John Carroll University, and The Voice Inside Your Head: The Origin of “You”.
Read Chip Walter is dying for you to read his new book on immortality. Or is he? and Financial Times’ Immortality, Inc — Chip Walter on Big Tech’s immortality quest.
Watch Chip Walter discusses his book, “Immortality, Inc”, at Politics and Prose and at the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library.
Listen to Author Stories Podcast Episode 859 | Chip Walter Interview, Future Grind: The Business of Life Extension with Chip Walter, My Immortal: The Quest To Live Forever, and Go Hack Yourself: The Future Of Human Self-Optimization.
Read Why Are We the Last Apes Standing?, Future Tech: Reverse-engineering the brain might finally lead to smarter computers, and his MIT Technology Reviews Contributions. Follow his contributions at Medium.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, Healthy Masters profile, Wikiwand page, Wikipedia page, his Personal Page, and his Academia profile. Follow him on Scientific American, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, IMDb, and Twitter.
