I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Popular Mechanics: "After 500 years, researchers finally understand the anatomical function of a heart feature first described by Leonardo da Vinci. To find the answer, scientists used fractal theory, MRIs, and a lot of computational elbow grease to shed light on structures called trabeculae. They found this branching,
From The Smithsonian: "It’s arguably the most iconic photograph of the 20th century: the Earth rising above the Moon’s bleached and desolate horizon, a breathtaking jewel of color and life more than 230,000 miles away. In December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and
From Veterans Breakfast Club: "You’ve heard of Japanese Kamikazes in World War II, but probably not Kaiten, the underseas version of the famous suicide attacks on Navy warships in 1944-1945. Kaiten was a top-secret manned torpedo program where the Japanese pilots would be sealed into explosive-packed steel cylinders
From LitHub: "One of the most disturbing sporting events in history took place on January 1, 1946, when the US military staged an all-star football game on a field in Nagasaki, Japan—less than five months after an atomic bomb killed over 70,000 in that city, nearly all
From ProPublica: "Jill Dopf Viles — self-taught genetic detective — passed away recently at the age of 50. She became convinced she had a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Emery-Dreifuss, which causes muscle wasting, and an even rarer form of partial lipodystrophy, which causes fat to vanish from certain parts
From New York: "Woeltz and Duplessie transformed the five-story townhouse they were staying in on Prince Street into an after-hours nightclub, filling it with young employees from Brandy Melville around the corner. The parties were wild and sometimes unnerving; the hosts bragged about ties to intelligence agencies and showed
From Wired: "Tuvalu is preparing to carry out the first planned migration of an entire country in response to the effects of climate change. Recent studies project that much of its territory could be submerged in the next 25 years due to rising sea levels, forcing its inhabitants to
From the New Yorker: "Around sunset on a rainy Saturday in November, 1906, a woman walked the streets of Rochester, in western New York State, trying to off-load a stack of counterfeit two-dollar bills. She looked about forty, tall, broad in the beam, with dark eyes and dark hair;
From Nautilus: "On a brisk January evening this year, I was speeding down I–295 in northeast Florida, under a full moon, to visit my dad’s brain. As I drove past shadowy cypress swamps, sinewy river estuaries, and gaudy-hued billboards of condominiums with waterslides and red umbrellas boasting,
From Toronto Life: "From the moment he was born, Ryan Wedding was the family darling. He belonged to a sporty, tightly knit clan with a shared love of the outdoors. In the 1960s, his grandparents, Laurence and Marlyn Spiess, had purchased the Mount Baldy Ski Area, a ski club
From The Atavist: "The weeks leading up to the city’s election had been marked by a frenzy of political violence. Chicago’s flamboyantly amoral mayor, William “Big Bill” Thompson, who had recently won office on the populist slogan “America First,” enjoyed the backing of local gangsters, including the
From Scientific American: "If you haven’t accomplished as much this summer as you had hoped to, you can blame forces far beyond your control: a few of these dog days, by one measure, are among the shortest you’ve ever lived through. For most of humanity’s history,