Hello, susbscribers! If you’re here for the science talk, you may want to skip this one. Today, I’m answering a frequently asked question about money and work: What’s it like to do history outside of the academy? First things first, lest there be any misunderstandings: I do not actually makeContinue readingReal Talk

Secrets are valuable, scientific secrets especially so. But science hasn’t always been considered an appropriate topic for intelligence agencies. Scientific intelligence had to be defined as a concept and operationalized into practice. In the United States, one of the key moments in creating scientific intelligence came when Wallace Brode, anContinue readingThe Scientific Order of Battle

I’m still in Southern Indiana, getting ready for my parents’ postponed 50th anniversary celebration. It’s my favorite kind of farm visit, with combine rides and antique tractor repair and plenty of fireflies. Right now, the landscape looks like an imagined ideal of a Midwestern farm scene: rolling fields, mostly green,Continue readingIs it Infrastructure Week Yet?

Sometimes I choose the topic of this newsletter, and sometimes it chooses me. On at least three separate occasions in the past week, someone has asked me about science communications, aka, scicomm. (Maybe it’s because I keep talking about UFOs.) In any case, these questions have focused on two separateContinue readingHistory, not Histcomm

On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Senate confirmed Eric Lander’s nomination to become the 11th director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The unanimous voice vote was brokered as part of a deal to postpone what had become a heated debate over the so-called Endless Frontier Act,Continue readingWe Are All Conspiracy Theorists Now

Scientific collections are haunted. Storage shelves in anthropology museums groan under the weight of stolen objects and remains of stolen lives. Pottery, coins, clothing, weapons, funerary objects, sacred objects, blood, bones, hair, teeth, and skin—you can find all of this and more in the storage rooms associated with major collegeContinue readingSo Many Bones

A spot of yellow in a tree at first appears to be an upturned leaf, before it squeaks and flits away. The breeding plumage of a yellow warbler is astoundingly bright, all hot dog mustard with red streaks, topped with olive wings. Or is that a prothonotary warbler, similar, butContinue readingNature Spectacles of New Jersey

Last week, the New York Times published a fascinating article on what it is that presidential science advisors actually do. Officially, the hook was that the confirmation hearings for Eric Lander, President Biden’s nominee for science advisor, have finally begun (and have been surprisingly feisty). But the timing seems mainlyContinue readingScience Policy is a Vibe

Yesterday, for the second time in a single month, the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania issued an apology for its callous and careless handling of human remains. Last Wednesday, media outlets reported that Penn had not only been holding on to the remains of two teenage girls since theirContinue readingTwenty-First Century Body Snatching