I’m good at two kinds of problems. The first is documentary: finding the record that establishes what actually happened. The second is human: finding the person still alive who can tell you about it.

I’ve sourced material from government and university archives, along with period newspapers, court filings, genealogical records, and oral histories. I’ve also done preliminary research for History Channel’s The Food That Built America, fact-checked a book chapter and podcast episodes, and interviewed people about experiences they had never described on the record.

The record usually exists. It’s rarely filed where you’d expect.

Services

Archival and historical research Government and university archives, criminal and civil case files, personal correspondence, government reports, business directories, period newspapers, and academic literature. For Lost Women of Science, that means reconstructing the lives and careers of women scientists from registrar records, departmental papers, patent filings, laboratory notebooks, and family papers: the scattered places a life survives when no one thought to keep a file on it. For the Angola 3 reporting that meant working through a case history that ran four decades.

Documentary and television research Development and background work, character identification, narrative arcs, research memos. For History Channel’s The Food That Built America I worked at the development stage, identifying the themes, moments, and characters a series could be built around.

Podcast research and story development Pre-interview research, source and character finding, archival sourcing, scripting.

Finding people and interviewing Descendants, witnesses, practitioners, and the specialists nobody thinks to call. A living relative of a Filipina chemist who died in 1945. A co-founder of a restaurant that closed in 1978. A casket supplier who could say how many Irish publicans still bury the dead. Including difficult interviews: for a New York State Psychiatric Institute project I conducted participant interviews recording experiences of trauma. I’ll also find the scholar who has already spent a decade on your question and get them on the phone, which is usually faster than any database.

Fact-checking and verification Scientific, historical, biographical, and contextual claims checked against primary and scholarly sources. I fact-check profiles and episodes for Lost Women of Science and worked on The Lost Women of Science (Bright Matter Books/Penguin Random House, 2025).