I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
I was born with sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder. In December 2023, I went to a hospital in New York City with flulike symptoms and the onset of a sickle cell crisis, for what I thought would be a routine stay. But I did not receive the care
It was 1905 and 19-year-old Carter had just started his ten year sentence – arrested for burglarizing the station in Karlstad, MN, while hopping trains westward. He’d taken $24 to buy food and shelter. Not much is known about John Carter — in fact, that’s a penname and
It’s 2036, and scientists are working on a new class of drugs. These medications are mirror-image versions of the molecules your body uses to fight disease. Their big advantage is that reverse compounds last longer because destructive enzymes don’t recognize them and rip them apart. The scientists
For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other. Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by
Bubbles is a chimpanzee once kept as a pet by the American singer Michael Jackson, who bought him from a Texas research facility in the 1980s. Bubbles frequently traveled with Jackson, drawing attention in the media. In 1987, during the Bad world tour, Bubbles and Jackson drank tea with the
Wearing a green hat, spectacles and ear protectors, a man loads .44 Magnum bullets into the chamber of a gun. He hands his car keys to another man and twirls the gun cylinder while invoking Matt Dillon, the fictional marshal of Dodge City in Gunsmoke. He proceeds to turn the
You probably never knew there were TWO Fitzgeralds, did you? No one did. See, that was the problem. If they had known about the first one, things might have been different. The first Fitzgerald survived thirteen years on the Great Lakes, the second one, seventeen years. One was made of
In September 2022 the board of the Isocrates foundation gathered in Florence for its annual meeting. Its founder, Nicolas Puech, was the largest individual shareholder in Hermès. From 2004 he owned nearly 6% of the company, a stake that would now be worth €13bn ($15bn). Puech, who is part of
For almost fifty years, Paul English has spent his nights literally watching Willie Nelson’s back, as his drummer. The rest of the time he has functioned as Willie’s more figurative back—a job that runs 24/7. From the drummer’s chair, English sees everything, just like the
Why is there a cow buried on the campus of the University of Illinois, complete with a memorial plaque? Because she was the greatest milking cow of all time, that's why, and set new records for production that have yet to be broken. Illini Nellie (1927–1940) was
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are engaged in a courtroom clash of the titans over the origins of OpenAI, now one of the most important artificial intelligence companies in the world. In San Francisco federal court, they are suing each other in a dizzying series of claims and counterclaims. In
Belgian child prodigy Laurent Simons has officially become a doctor in quantum physics at just 15 years old. On Monday, he successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Antwerp, VTM Nieuws reported. According to VTM, Laurent believes he may be the youngest person ever to obtain a PhD.