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New Lines Magazine •

How a Sufi Saint’s Coffee Recipe Took Senegal by Storm

You could sample every concoction on the Starbucks menu. You could drink your way around the world’s coffee capitals: Addis Ababa, Rome, Seoul and Istanbul. You could buy a fancy espresso machine, learn to brew Vietnamese coffee or even experiment with a French press at home. And still, after all that, cafe Touba would taste like nothing you’ve ever had.It’s a potent, spicy beverage sold on seemingly every street corner in Senegal. Local vendors tend to kettles, boiling water over charcoal fires...
WIRED •

He Built the Definitive Epstein Database—and It Consumed His Life

In February, a user named EricKeller2 posted on Reddit. “I mapped every connection in the Epstein files,” he wrote. He had built a website and database of more than 1.5 million files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. A giant interactive network graph showed the connections between 1,000-plus people in Epstein’s social world—through flight manifests, email exchanges, and other documents that connect them. The post included a link to the site: Epsteinexposed.com.That post got 5.5 million views....
History •

This war-torn village is fighting to keep Christ’s language alive

And Maaloula’s long history of interfaith peace between Christian and Muslim residents has been strained too. After the 2013 battle in Maaloula, the village’s Muslims were barred from returning home by Assad’s forces. Now their Christian neighbors, a religious minority in Syria who make up the majority of the village, fear for their safety in light of rising sectarian violence and a new government composed of the former rebels,which assumed power quickly in 2024.Local linguists have translated t...
Foreign Policy •

The Uncomfortable Truth About Climate AI

In recent years, new technology has transformed the tools available to mitigate the effects of climate change. Specifically, artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become a widespread instrument in the climate fight—even as it consumes exceptional amounts of energy and water itself. Today, militaries and nonstate actors, including the United Nations, are leveraging AI to foretell climate-related disasters, optimize energy use, and monitor ecological degradation.Over the last two decades, clima...
New Lines Magazine •

The MAGA Battle Over the Epstein Files

The White House is haunted — not by the ghosts of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln, but by the scandal-infested legacy of billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Once described by Donald Trump as a man who “never dies,” Epstein’s shadow now looms over the presidency, even from beyond the grave. And it’s thrown the Trump administration into deep disarray.There’s a clear reason for that. It’s a PR nightmare for anyone to have the kind of intimate, decades-long ties to the likes of Epstein —...
New Lines Magazine •

Superman Was Always a Social Justice Warrior

Superman fought the Nazis in 1941. He squared off against the Ku Klux Klan in 1946. And, in 2025, Superman seemingly took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To have a beloved fictional character like Superman confront real-world villains invariably ruffles feathers. It did then and it does now. The latest film incarnation, “Superman,” released earlier this month, was branded “Superwoke” by Fox, for what it saw as “pro-immigrant” themes. A former adviser to President Donald Trump,...
New Lines Magazine •

Syria’s Druze Grapple with Israel and Militancy

When Zaher raised the Syrian flag in Antarctica last December, he was not yet aware that, some 8,000 miles away, a revolution was culminating in his native Syria.Zaher recalls that upon learning that President Bashar al-Assad had fled to Russia and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group had stormed into Damascus, he felt cautiously hopeful, sailing among the icebergs.“Of course, I was happy for my people, because Assad’s terror was over,” he told me from his kitchen in Denver, Colorado, in M...
New Lines Magazine •

The Congo’s Dinosaur of Discord

Central Africa’s steaming rainforest canopies stretch, like a green ocean, to the horizon. Below, long, winding rivers thread through the wilderness — sometimes a silty shade of brown, other times a clear blue beneath an open sky. Forest elephants stomp through the undergrowth, hornbills circle overhead and silverback gorillas brood in the shadows. And somewhere in this primordial expanse lurks a dinosaur. Emmanuel Mambou, a fisher who lives in the interior of the Republic of Congo, says he’s se...
Environment •

What’s behind the strange rash of ’dinosaur’ sightings in the Congo?

For centuries, locals have told stories of mokele-mbembe, a legendary creature said to lurk in the Congo Basin. But as forests vanish, sightings are on the rise—offering a glimpse into how folklore is changing with the landscape.Trees began to quake, monkeys shrieked, and birds fled skyward.Deep in the heart of Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Selah Abong’o froze, convinced she was about to encounter something out of legend: a mokele-mbembe, Congo’s mythical dinosaur.In 2003, the young Congolese con...
New Lines Magazine •

Could Vaccinating Gorillas Be Our Best Shot To Stop a Pandemic?

The “gorilla holocaust” began in October 2002. Or at least, that’s how Joseph Oyange and Selah Abong’o, a pair of Congolese naturalists, describe what happened.In the dense jungle in the Republic of Congo’s north that fall, they hacked through tangled undergrowth with machetes, swatting away mosquitoes from their sweaty faces. Two hours later, they found Meely, a young female gorilla they had encountered often since the late 1990s. But Meely, usually lively and curious, lay motionless on her bac...
Dame Magazine •

What the Western World Should Understand About South Sudan’s Water Crisis | Dame Magazine

This article was made possible because of the generous support of DAME members.  We urgently need your help to keep publishing.  Please join us for as little as $1.00 a month or make a one-time gift in any amount! Nyakuoth spent seven hours hiding in a muddy, hand-dug well after bullets started flying in South Sudan earlier this year. Cattle herders from a neighboring state, armed with AK-47s leftover from the civil war, had wandered into Nyakuoth’s community hoping to find water for their cows....
Mongabay Environmental News •

In Peru, conservationists and authorities struggle to get turtle eggs off the menu

IQUITOS, Peru — “Oh, they’re so delicious,” said Soledad Coronil, an elderly local woman, as she enjoyed a boiled tortoise egg earlier this year. “You have to open the shell and dig out the insides, either with your hand or with a spoon. I like to add a bit of salt, too.”

Coronil’s meal, which came from a yellow-footed tortoise (Chelonoidis denticulata) is not uncommon in a country that serves bull testicles, llama jerky and guinea pig. In the Peruvian Amazon, turtle eggs are a cherished — and...
POLITICO •

‘We Don’t Want to Be a National Laughingstock’: How Lauren Boebert Blew Her Safe Seat

“I still blame Biden and the Democrats for the skyrocketing costs,” Reid explained, “but I got a weird sort of feeling when Boebert was ranting about masks because, by that point, masks were irrelevant here. What mattered was the cost of gas and food and rent. It seemed she was out of touch.”In Reid’s view, Boebert was more interested in becoming a far-right pundit and political celebrity than anything else. The pro-gun, MAGA politics that once made Boebert so attractive no longer outweighed the...
The Denver Post •

As summer temperatures soar, people living on Denver’s streets struggle to escape the heat

Axton Sharpe and Ryan Lawson sat among the unsanctioned tent camps lining the sidewalk about a block from the State Capitol on a 95-degree day earlier this month, explaining how they deal with Denver’s oppressive summer heat.
“Man, it’s awful, just awful,” Sharpe, 53, said from under the shade of his makeshift tarp roof. “You see here, we’ve got no air conditioning or nothing like that. We just hope and pray that each day won’t be as hot as the last.”
Sharpe, originally a resident of Green Bay,...

About Me

With a focus on armed conflict, human rights, state and corporate power, climate change, rainforest and wildlife conservation, and U.S. and international politics, I’ve written and photographed stories for the likes of National Geographic, The New York Times, POLITICO, Foreign Policy Magazine, VICE, WIRED, Bloomberg, New Lines Magazine, The Denver Post, The Daily Sentinel, Mongabay, DAME Magazine, Adventure.com, and Africa Geographic, among others. My work has been republished in Apple News, Yahoo News, MSN, Flipboard, WIRED en Español, National Geographic France, National Geographic Czechia, National Geographic Polska, and Internazionale, where it has been translated to French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Slovenian, and Czech.

Watch my TEDx Talk

My recent TEDx talk, "How Social Media Erases Our Humanity," examines the way the digital world can, if we let it, distort our worldviews. And when that happens, it can inspire real world violence, from the United States to the Middle East and beyond.

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