James Nestor is a science journalist and author who writes about architecture, alternative fuels, and popular culture for Dwell Magazine, National Public Radio, The San Francisco Chronicle, Outside Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, and more. He has spent the last decade researching how humans as a species have lost the ability to breathe properly, with grave consequences to our health. He traveled the world to figure out what went wrong and how to get it back. The answers, it turned out, weren't found in pulmonology labs but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. There, Nestor tracked down the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teamed up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
Nestor's book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was an instant New York Times bestseller and will be published in more than 30 languages in 2021.