I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Kevin Dickinson at Big Think: "Ancient Akkadian is an early Semitic language that was the mother tongue of the Akkadian Empire, which arose around 2300 B.C. through the conquests of its founder, Sargon the Great. Hundreds of thousands — by some accounts more than a million — Akkadian texts
Drik Schulze-Makuch writes for Big Think: "In the mid-1970s, NASA sent two Viking landers to the surface of Mars equipped with instruments that conducted the only life detection experiments ever conducted on another planet. At the time of those landings, scientists had very little understanding of the
From Bryan Burrough at Texas Monthly magazine: "They found her naked body 36 years ago now, her head sunk into a bathtub full of black water, hands tied behind her with a tank top. She had been a quiet, shy woman, five foot seven, with lustrous brown hair cascading
From Tara Isabella Burton for the Smithsonian magazine: "In the autumn of 1878, Thomas Alva Edison had a problem. He hadn’t invented the light bulb—yet. Or, to put it more precisely, he had invented a light bulb, but he couldn’t keep it lit for more than
From Gillian Brockell for the Washington Post: "The mystery of what happened to Emanuela Orlandi has been a national obsession in Italy for 40 years, as of this month, but it went international last year with the release of the Netflix documentary “Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi.
Alex Goldman writes: "For years, there has been a popular conspiracy theory that goes like this: in 2016 the folks in charge at Disney, much like large swaths of the country, believed Hillary Clinton would win, and even before she was elected were hard at work on a Hillary
From Allison Meier at JSTOR Daily: "In the fall of 1886, New Yorkers were transported to the Battle of Gettysburg. That is to say, they flocked to a circular structure in downtown Brooklyn. The inside walls of the curious room were covered with a 360-degree painting, on which
Noh Hyun-soo writes for The Guardian: "I’d been to Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art years ago, but last April was my first visit to see the artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, which is a banana duct-taped to a wall. It’s a work of conceptual
From Rick Reilly for the Washington Post: "His name is Tom Stuker, and he’s the biggest mistake United Airlines ever made. In 1990, United offered a lifetime pass for $290,000. Stuker jumped on it and has pretty much lived in seat 1B — his favorite — ever since. He
Dan Barry writes for the New York Times: "The Picasso fell off the proverbial truck. It vanished from a loading dock at Logan International Airport in Boston and wound up where it didn’t belong, in the modest home of one Merrill Rummel, also known as Bill. In fairness,
From Mark O'Connell for The Guardian: "Among Irish people old enough to remember the summer of 1982, Malcolm Macarthur is as close to a household name as it is possible for a murderer to be. He grew up in County Meath in the east of Ireland, on
Franks Mayancha and Francesca Mezzenzana write at Slate: "The story of four children’s 40-day survival after a plane crash, in a remote stretch of the Amazon rainforest in Colombia, has gripped the world’s imagination since their rescue on June 9. Traumatized by the loss of their