I report on all things pharmaceutical and scientific from Durham, North Carolina, home of the Research Triangle Park. My academic background: I earned a BS in toxicology from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science in 1985 and a PhD in pharmacology and therapeutics from the University of Florida College of Medicine in 1989. After a postdoctoral fellowship in medical oncology and molecular endocrinology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (1990-1992), I joined the faculty of Colorado's School of Pharmacy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. From 1992 to 2001, I taught the basic principles of pharmacology and drugs that affect the central nervous system, including commonly misused prescription and illicit drugs. I also taught various aspects of herbal and dietary supplements. I was fortunate to receive 11 teaching awards, including election as a President's Teaching Scholar of the University of Colorado. My cancer research laboratory focused drug discovery from natural sources, such as plants, fungi and microorganisms, and the bioactivity of herbal medicines. Our work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NCI, NIGMS) and the American Cancer Society. After being awarded tenure in 1999, I did a year of sabbatical research at Duke University. I later moved to North Carolina full-time and held four other positions starting as senior research pharmacologist at Research Triangle Institute (RTI International, 2002-2008) and professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Carolina Central University (2008-2011), a historically black college/university (HBCU) in the University of North Carolina system. In 2012, I joined the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences as science communications director and taught news writing and science journalism in the Department of English at North Carolina State University (2012-2014). My dean there believes that I was the only PhD pharmacologist in an English department anywhere in the country. I think that's a good thing. I've been interested in journalism and mass communication ever since writing as a music critic for my high school newspaper, then carried this interest into my professional career. I've been writing science blogs since 2005: Terra Sigillata was hosted at ScienceBlogs and American Chemical Society CENtral Science, while Take As Directed was hosted at the PLOS network. I've been a graduate advisory board member and lecturer for the MS in Medical and Science Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina since 2004 and have been working as a full-time science and medicine journalist since 2014. Forbes Senior Editor Matt Herper invited me to write here at Forbes beginning in October 2010.