About Me

Award-winning longform journalist working in print and audio. Made a Peabody-winning podcast in my closet: "The Divided Dial," with WNYC's "On The Media," all about the history, politics, and economics of conservative talk radio. Print features in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Washington Post, National Geographic (Magazine, History, and Traveler), Bloomberg, and others. Audio on 99% Invisible, NPR, BBC, Minnesota Public Radio, and many more. Archive sleuth whose background in history informs all my work, with an equal dedication to finding most intriguing and least heard-from interviewees today. Hellbent on breaking down the deeply human and dizzyingly systemic stories behind infrastructure, cities, and media — or, per one of my editors, “telling incredibly interesting stories about very boring things.”

Former Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow. Returning reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Repeat recipient of reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Otherwise playing guitar, bass, and touring in punk rock bands.

Awards & Honors

2023 | Peabody Award for Radio/Podcast
2023 | Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism
2023 | Mirror Award Finalist
2023 | Fund for Investigative Journalism Reporting Grant
2020-2022 | Fulbright Alumni Ambassador
2021 | Fund for Investigative Journalism Reporting Grant
2021 | Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists’ Special Project/In-Depth Series Award
2020 | Minnesota Historical Society Legacy Fellow
2020 | National Geographic Society Storytelling Grant
2018-2020 | Visiting Scholar at the University of Bath
2018-2019 | Fulbright – National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow
2019 | Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists’ Sports Journalism Award
2018 - ongoing | Resident at Bristol, UK’s Pervasive Media Studio

sKILLS

Research. Reporting. Interviewing. Investigation. Writing. Line Editing. Copyediting. Script Writing. Audio Editing. Sound Design. Conversational Mandarin Chinese. Trint, Descript, Reaper. Wordpress, Drupal, Microsoft Office, Google Docs. Bicycle Repair. Light Construction. Years of kitchen work. Falling off my skateboard. Making radio about it.

On the other side of the mic (or camera)

Peabody Awards, The Divided Dial (2023)
Razorcake, Katie Thornton Interview (2023)
KQED’s Forum, What Does AM Radio Mean to You? (2023)
WNYC’s On the Media, AM Radio’s Decline Will Hurt More Than Conservative Talk Shows (2023)
MSNBC’s 11th Hour, The Divided Dial (2022)
WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, The Divided Dial: On the Media's Exploration of Far-Right Talk Radio (2022)
NPR’s The Takeaway, The “Divided Dial” of Talk Radio (2022)
Minnesota Public Radio, Shock Jocks and Talk Radio (2022)
Minnesota Public Radio, Katie Thornton Knows a Lot About Skyways (2022)
Forbes, Stories Are As Old As Humanity—And May Be The Key To Saving It (2021)
National Geographic, Storytelling for Impact: Audio (video-based audio storytelling course) (2021)
Star Tribune, Minnesota Historian Raises a Glass to Women, Bars and Suffrage (2020)
National Geographic Magazine, Magazine Profile (2019)
Fulbright’s 22.33 Podcast, The Needs of the Living (Profile) (2019)
National Geographic UK, Is It Time We Changed the Way We Remember the Dead? One Historian Has Been Investigating (2019)