Jonathan Feakins

Freelance science and history writer with a love for our absurd, astonishing, and fabulous world.

My Latest Work

The Logic •

AI is Helping Bring Indigenous Languages Back from the Brink

For decades, efforts to revitalize Canada’s Indigenous languages through education have met with mixed success. The goal of developing speakers who “carry the soul of the language” remains unfulfilled, said Sara Child, a member of the Kwakiutl Nation and Indigenous education facilitator at North Island College in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. Kwak’wala, the language of her people, is “trapped” in systems of education that still operate on a colonial framework, she added.
Eos •

Pay Dirt: How Colonialism Left Its Mark on the Soil of the American Southwest

Shortly after Frank Telles arrived at Northern Arizona University to start his Ph.D., researchers announced that they had just radiocarbon-dated a set of fossilized human footprints found within the gypsum dunes of New Mexico’s White Sands National Park. Sandwiched between two layers of ancient grass seeds, the fossils revealed that people were living in the region as long as 23,000 years ago.
Eos •

The Fiery Tornadoes That Could Mop Up Oil Spills

It’s been more than a decade since Michael Gollner and his colleagues first watched a viral YouTube video of a fire tornado fueled by Jim Beam bourbon.

A warehouse in Kentucky had just been struck by lightning, funneling almost a million gallons of the flammable spirit into a nearby retention pond. As the flames whipped across the surface of the water, however, something in the atmospheric stars aligned: The flames coalesced into a towering fire whirl, more commonly known as a fire tornado.
Offrange •

The Grain Pest Detectives

Back in 2015, a somber-faced beagle named Emeril, working as an agricultural K-9 at O’Hare International Airport, perked up his nose at a passenger’s unassuming baggage. Although the traveler had neglected to declare, further inspection of their belongings uncovered a smorgasbord of illicit food items, ranging from pickled mutton to rice to curry leaves.

The fermented sheep meat, as it turned out, did not actually warrant much concern. The invasive Khapra beetle in a bag of rice, on the other hand...
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