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The site of the 1945 bombing that killed my grandmother. Helllo friends of The Man Who Calculated Death! If you've listened to the podcast, you know it's a deeply felt, deeply investigated piece of my family ancestry and as I work on the second half of the story, I continue to process the first half. And I wondered: what would happen if I just wrote off-the-cuff chapter-ettes that explored it in more detail, as only long form writing can . So I started a Substack. I write fas

Ever heard of Sophie Scholl? Seen here with a daisy tucked into her lapel, she was a University of Munich student in the 1940s—a kid, really, my son’s age. A kid with convictions and a moral compass stronger than most adults ever find. At 21, Sophie and her brother Hans, 24, joined Der Weisse Rose—The White Rose—a non-violent, intellectual resistance group that dared to call out Nazi crimes at the height of Hitler’s power. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, painted defiant

Hey friends. I want to say thank you for voting for The Man Who Calculated Death in the Signal Listener's Choice award because not only did the podcast win that one, it also won the Signal Gold for Best Indie! And if that wasn't good enough, we also brought home a win in the Best History/Biography series at the W3 awards. Now, granted, this is not a Pulitzer, but these awards do recognize the best of the best in the podcast medium and I am proud to be among winners like Trav

The Man Who Calculated Death has been selected as a finalist in the Signal Awards, which celebrate the best of the best in the...

That jet you took last week??? You may think Lusser’s Law only applies to space shuttles and submarines, but here’s the truth: it applies to you . Every single day. Your car? Thousands of parts. Your smartphone? More transistors than stars in the galaxy. The jet you took to Vegas last weekend? Over six million components. Lusser’s Law says that if even a handful of those parts are unreliable, your entire system—your vehicle, your gadget, your plane—can fail in ways that are