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About me

I am a journalist, editor, photographer, video editor and sometimes on-screen host. Senior journalist and special projects editor at the BBC's international website BBC.com, I also write for publications including Powder, the New York Times, Guardian, Globe and Mail, National Geographic Traveler and more. My specialties are in narrative and feature reporting and digital multimedia.

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My intense curiosity about the world — particularly its lesser-known stories — has taken me from investigating Miami's fight against sea level rise to seeking out plague pits in London. I'm also interested in better ways to think and live: I've recently written about subjects like the case for giving up on goals, why we should work less and the dangerous downsides of perfectionism.

 

Of course, it hasn't all been so serious. In the name of journalism, I've paraglided in Macedonia, ducked dive-bombing birds on the desolate Scottish island of St Kilda, done a free fall deep underground in an abandoned mine, scuba dived wartime shipwrecks and ski raced the world's oldest, longest downhill. 

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I am also the founder of the website Revealed Rome; a host for videos on the BBC Travel website and for the Travel Show, the flagship travel program on the BBC World News television channel; one of the main interviewees for two upcoming seasons of Roman Empire: Reign of Blood on Netflix; a main storyteller on the History Channel's documentary "Caligula: 1400 Days of Terror"; and the author of the book The Revealed Rome Handbook. 

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A graduate of Yale (B.A., history) and Cambridge (M.Phil, international relations), I previously worked as a political reporter in Washington, D.C. 

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