Melissa Pandika is a San Francisco Bay Area-based journalist who has covered a broad range of topics, including health, food, race, identity, immigration and social justice. In her writing, she seeks to illuminate narratives about communities that often go untold. Her news and feature stories, as well as her personal essays, have appeared in Discover, VICE, the Los Angeles Times, Bon Appétit’s Healthyish, New York Magazine’s The Cut and SELF, among other outlets. Before making the leap to journalism, Melissa investigated how aggressive brain tumors evade drugs that block the growth of their blood vessels as a research associate at the University of California, San Francisco. She holds a B.A. in molecular and cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in communications from the Stanford Graduate School of Journalism, where she won the Nicholas Roosevelt Environmental Journalism Award. She is at work on a memoir.
Hallelujah, we're no longer landlocked. Here's where you can travel safely.
Please don't attempt TikTok's parasite cleanse
Why are teen girls developing tics after watching Tourette Syndrome TikToks?
Getting sick from COVID is about to get way more expensive
Colin Powell's death makes a case for vaccination, despite what the right claims
What to know about Molnupiravir, the pill designed to treat COVID after infection
Could a psychedelic ego death bring you back to life?
Slacker’s Syllabus: The Land Back Movement
Disease, violence, and PTSD: How hurricanes impact survivors long after making landfall
It’s time to reclaim the whitewashed narrative of specialty coffee
Could TikTok force the fashion industry to finally acknowledge its wastefulness?
What can we expect from this flu season?
Slacker’s Syllabus: How to save money sustainably
Inside the wild, unregulated world of life coaching
YouTube is banning anti-vax content — but is it too little, too late?
Can hash gummies really give you a heavenly, holistic high?
Yet another COVID variant has dropped. Here's the lowdown on R.1
Amazon wants to legalize it
How to save your skin from climate change
An anti-vaxx school employee came to work in blackface, apparently comparing herself to Rosa Parks
