Amanda Ripley received a B.A. in government from Cornell University in 1996. She is a journalist whose stories on human behavior and public policy have appeared in Time, The Atlantic, and Slate and helped Time win two National Magazine Awards. She is the author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why, which was turned into a PBS documentary, and The Smartest Kids in the World - and How They Got That Way. She is currently an Emerson Fellow at the New America Foundation.