I’m Spencer Wells, a scientist, author and explorer living on the island of Lombok in Indonesia. In my past life I’ve been an academic, a writer and documentary filmmaker, an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and a successful entrepreneur. My training is in population genetics, which I’ve used as a tool to study human prehistory — particularly our journey as a species to populate the world over the past 100,000 years — though these days I’m far more likely to be found at an archaeological site or floating over a remote Indonesian coral reef than in a lab.
My wife Holly and I have have lived on Lombok since April 2020 (we moved here at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic), and I now spend my time exploring fascinating places, primarily in Southeast Asia, driven entirely by personal curiosity and a desire to understand more about the biology, history and cultures of the region.
The remit in the tagline is science, history, travel, food — the good stuff… and that’s as good a description as any of what you’ll find here. Feel free to dive into my posts and, if you like what you read, please subscribe and join me in my explorations.
Spencer
