He’s Gone: Remembering Influential Author & Beloved Deadhead Steve Silberman

Steve Silberman, the acclaimed author and indefatigable Deadhead who transformed the modern understanding of autism, was many things to many people: husband, brother, son, teacher, colleague, mentor, inspiration.

To me, Steve was a very dear friend.

Silberman, who passed away last week in San Francisco at the age of 66, was one of the most respected journalists of his generation, and a pioneer of science reporting who improved the lives of countless people through his ground-breaking research and reporting on autism.

Silberman’s husband, Keith Karraker, told me via a phone interview Thursday night that his longtime partner and best friend died last Thursday, August 29, of natural causes peacefully in his sleep.

“We were together for 30 years,” Karraker told me, in a JamBase exclusive. A mild-mannered Bay-area high-school chemistry teacher, Keith spoke openly with me about losing the love of his life. “We had a great life together. I’m a private person, so it took me a few years to adjust to the fact that Steve was a celebrity.”

Steve Silberman was indeed a celebrity – perhaps best known for his ground-breaking 2015 book Neurotribes, which systematically shattered myths and shibboleths about autism that had prevailed in the medical community since the 1950s.

Neurotribes was a New York Times best-seller and winner of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize. The response from the autism community to Steve’s passing speaks for itself.

Silberman was also known as a Deadhead par excellence – his first show was Watkins Glen ‘73, when he and his teenage friends from New Jersey snuck into the venue and changed their lives.

A former mentee and research assistant of Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Silberman was an early and enthusiastic adopter of psychedelics and demonstrated how they could be used productively. Later, Silberman would study with Oliver Sacks, who provided the intellectual roadmap for Steve’s work on autism and cystic fibrosis.

Not surprisingly, Steve was a brilliant writer and editor. “Steve made my writing better,” said David Gans, the legendary Deadhead, author and radio host. “I trusted him with my copy because he was that good.”

Needless to say, Steve was a popular guy among Brooklyn Deadheads. “I came away from every single interaction with Steve feeling enriched and excited and more curious,” said Jesse Jarnow, a Brooklyn-based writer and radio host. “Let in on a cosmic punchline that felt like a conspiratorial callback, and just generally happier about existence.”

Jesse is, and was, not alone.

The sheer range and breadth of Silberman’s interests and expertise was, indeed, astonishing. Yes, he wrote the most authoritative book about autism in a generation, but he also wrote one of the best articles ever written about Bill Evans, the celebrated jazz pianist.

“Steve was so passionate about so many different subjects,” said Seth Mnookin, Director of MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. “But above all else was his passion for people. He loved meeting people and listening to their stories, and then telling those stories in a way that was helpful and accessible.”

Steve’s interests were wide and varied, from film and art to literature and pop culture, and even food. We’d be rapping about the best Keith Jarrett Carnegie Hall show one day, and the next day he’d be complaining about abortion restrictions in Georgia while we were in line for Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street. Steve contained multitudes. The situation was in charge.

Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist at Wired and elsewhere, Silberman consistently moved towards marginalized, underserved and threatened communities. He was like a gay Clark Kent who kept running into danger to help people previously kept at the margins of US society. Autism, disability rights, LGBTQ rights, human rights and democracy. Steve was our champion.

Drawing on his own research into the work of Hans Asperger and others, Silberman was able to popularize the idea of autism as a spectrum disorder – one that most of us are on at one end or the other – and therefore help destigmatize the condition. We’re all in this together!

Steve was such a beloved and steady figure in the Grateful Dead community that his sudden death was shocking to everyone, especially his husband Keith.

“He was here and doing well, living life as normal, working on his book,” Karraker told me during our interview Thursday. “And then it was like a trap door opened up and he was gone.”

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Sam Gustin is a New York-based journalist focused on the intersection of business, technology, media, and public policy. He has worked for VICE Motherboard, TIME, WIRED and other publications. Sam has a BA in political science from Reed College and a MS in journalism from Columbia. From 2014 to 2015, he was a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. Sam has discussed his work on numerous media outlets including CNBC, NPR, and C-SPAN, and has appeared as a speaker at South By Southwest, Civic Hall, Freedom to Connect, and Hackers of Planet Earth.

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