The US election is nigh. If you RAGE that it’s down to a few votes in a few swing states, I've got a story for you.

A political drama about just how close we came to abolishing the Electoral College. And BONUS, it’ll explain why we still use this old relic to pick Presidents.🧵 Story starts with a US Senator named Birch Bayh (rhymes with Guy).

When he started his term in 1963, he was young, dashing, ambitious, “the Kennedy of the Midwest.” His only problem was …

Last January, I noticed something peculiar in my 2yo’s bedroom that - after a year of obsessive reporting - led me to a profound cosmic revelation about what’s even possible in our universe. A 🧵. So about a year ago, I was putting my little guy to bed in his crib and I noticed a strange detail on the solar system poster up on his wall …

Last year, a coworker randomly asked me to hand-deliver an antique violin across the country. I said yes, because why not. I had no idea what I was getting into, and now I need your help. A 🧵 Last May, I went to a work retreat in upstate NY and a sound designer on our show @Jeremy_s_Bloom pulled me aside and asked me to do him a favor.

2022 is off to a rocky start. Will it be worse than 2021? And was that one worse than 2020? If you, like me, are sick of comparing and complaining about the last few years, here’s a fun exercise: name the worst year ever. As in, THE worst year to be a human on earth. A 🧵. Some obvious contenders: 1347 (Black Death). 1918 (Spanish Flu). 1929 (Great Depression). But the one that convinced me was a year I had NEVER EVEN HEARD OF BEFORE.

Today is 20 years since the first prisoners landed at Guantanamo Bay. The US government chose the site bc they thought neither American nor international law applied. They built it quickly and in a rudimentary way because it was meant to be temporary. /1 On the flight to Guantanamo from Kandahar Airport, the prisoners wore shackles, blindfolds, ear muffs, many were even tranquilized, because military folks were afraid they would get loose and "chew through a hydraulics cable" and take the plane down. /2

A tiny story about how tragedy ripples thru culture and history. /1 #OTD: May 4, 1970. Ohio National Guard fires on unarmed Kent State student protestors, killing four.  Among the crowd: art student Jerry Casale. He knew two of the students who got killed. /2

A thread of three terrific podcasts that are peepholes into how American students and school administrators are responding to COVID in real time. (I’m sure I’m missing more, so add to the thread.) PRIMARY/MIDDLE SCHOOL - My good friend @Christophere heads up Turquoise Trail Charter Schools in NM. Last year, he started sending me voice memos about stuff he was most nervous about. Then he turned those voice memos into a podcast. Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Proud to say that starting today and for the next six weeks our @Radiolab miniseries #TheOtherLatif will be broadcast in full on approx 500 public radio stations. wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radio… It’s the perfect timing as the Biden admin is now deciding what to do with Guantánamo and the 40 men still held there. nytimes.com/2021/02/12/us/…

The US election is tomorrow.  If you, like me, are tired of horse-race-style reporting, and need to zoom out, I wanna tell you a story. It’s about an ancient force influencing the election. And, as a bonus, it’ll give you an Easter egg to watch for as the returns come in. THREAD Before I tell the story, I should say I first heard it eight years ago from @rkrulwich. And I never forgot it.  Parts of this story might be obvious to some of you, but as a new US citizen, I knew very little of it …

This year has been unrelentingly bleak, so I want to tell you a real-life Cinderella story that started almost exactly ten years ago today. (A THREAD) In the summer of 2010, I was a lowly graduate student studying the history of science. I loved it, but I knew I didn't have a future as an academic. Not least because every paper I submitted to scholarly journals got rejected.

My Netflix show just went live! If I had to sum it up, it’s basically if Bill Nye and Anthony Bourdain had an awkward Muslim baby. But it’s also more than that ... It’s about space lasers and dating apps and Saharan fish and extragalactic potatoes and climate change and nuclear weapons and the breath you just took. But it’s about more than all that too ...

Such an honor to talk to these brilliant folks. In their honor, here's a quick thread of a few of my favorite @greatbigstory mini-docs to help pass the quaran-time:

https://twitter.com/marianocarranza/status/1250958719590060033

The Mad Genius Behind Sea Monkeys - @lennypane's doc somehow finds the exactly right length and style, given its tiny odd subject

Hey folks. Last ep of #TheOtherLatif due out early next week. (@Radiolab team is working remotely bc of Covid19, so needed extra time.) It's a solid ep, tho. Worth the wait. (Here's a snapshot to look forward to.) And meantime, to keep you sated in quarantine, some Gitmo recs: Have to start with @carolrosenberg, “the dean of Gitmo reporters.” She hasn’t written a book about Guantanamo (yet!) but check out the last big story she did here: nytimes.com/2020/02/26/us/…

New ep of #TheOtherLatif is now up! This time, we go to Gitmo. In lieu of a proper thread, I’m just gonna post a bunch of pics of stuff from the Gitmo gift shop, because why not.
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radio…

New ep! A ton packed in this one about #TheOtherLatif’s time in Afghanistan, including intvws with a former detainee who gave intel on Abdul Latif, & a CIA officer who hunted bin Laden post 9/11. But the juiciest interview of all I didn’t even do.
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radio… The journalist @jonleeanderson was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan during the battle of Tora Bora, where Abdul Latif allegedly fought. Shortly after, around Christmas 2001, he got a chance no other journalist had: to interview two Al Qaeda guys in an Afghan prison.

Just released ep3 about my gitmo namesake, #TheOtherLatif! It covers the first time he allegedly met Osama Bin Laden. (Acc to a US govt informant, he later became a top OBL advisor.) Instead of spoiling the ep, I'm just gonna tweet random facts about OBL: wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radio… OBL was obsessed with sunflowers. He experimented to try to grow the biggest and best 🌻 in the world. And he thought the ones he did grow deserved to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. (source: @lawrence_wright and @cathyscottclark)

Three yrs ago, I heard about a guy with my name locked up at Gitmo. Now I’m making a podcast series about him. Ep 2 of #TheOtherLatif drops tonight, and it includes one of the most jarring moments of my life. A thread. When I started reporting on this guy, there was virtually nothing about him online. I needed to know more. But how do you get to know a guy you can’t talk to, esp one locked in arguably the most secure prison on earth?

Ooof. I’ve been waiting to acknowledge something out loud for 3+ years. And today’s the day I finally can. It’s a story I’ve been working on called #TheOtherLatif. The story starts with a tweet and ends with a tweet. A thread. 3 years ago, I was here on Twitter procrastinating and saw a tweet about me from a non-profit law firm that I didn’t even remember following. Turns out, it wasn’t about me. It was about another guy who has my name. A guy who happens to be … Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay! (gulp)

Seen on the streets of Casablanca ... A few more ...