I am, truthfully, incredibly nosy by nature and always have counteracted my own fears by obsessing over true crime, even as a kid. Career-wise, I am an investigative journalist by trade, mostly writing for Rolling Stone, Vice, HuffPost, and most recently, Atavist. But I've always really been a story hunter. Around 2018, I began investigating the Remnant Fellowship/Gwen Shamblin story, and felt it was more meant for a docuseries than an article. So I and approached Ross Dinerstein at Campfire, who I knew through my editorial work, and together we ended up producing my first docuseries, The Way Down on HBO Max, in 2021. Death in the Dorms is the second douseries I've created and EP'd!

How did you get into documentary producing? Have you always been interested in true crime?

In most cases, if the family didn't want to be involved we chose to shelve that story and pursue others instead. Out of the six episodes in season one, there is only one episode where we didn't interview family members, which is Michael Deng. In that case, it was our understanding through family representatives/contacts that the parents are supportive of efforts to share their son's story, but just personally are no longer able to handle the stress of interviews. So we still moved forward with the story, and just leaned on people like Doug Fierberg, who worked with the family during that time.

How do you deal with the families that do not want to be involved due to it being for media yet are critical to your investigation.?

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In 2021, I wrote an article for Atavist called Girl in the Picture, about a young girl named Alexis (later Aundria Bowman) who was killed by her adoptive father, as discovered by her biological mother and an incredible online sleuth name Carl Koppelman decades after the teenager went missing from Michigan. We are currently working on a docuseries adaptation of that story that I am really looking forward to sharing. I also have another article coming out in Atavist at the end of the month to look out for! And a few other docs in development, ranging from a suspected serial killer to a social media scammer.

Oh, sorry I didn't see the original answer. Thanks for pointing it out.

What projects are you working on next? Can you shed light on any of them?

There are, unfortunately, a plethora of cases that fit the parameters for this show, and more it seems every week. We tried to keep all of our cases fairly modern, but there are two older ones that I wish more people knew about: Jeanne Cleary, who was murdered in her dorm at Lehigh in 1986, and whose parents went on to get the Cleary Act passed to protect other students; and Betsy Aarsdsma, who was killed in the book stacks in the Penn State library in 1969. Her murder was never solved.

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Are there any victims that you considered adding to the show who didn’t end up in the final cut that you can talk about here?

We started by compiling a list of cases that weren't just random murders of college students, but where the college environment, culture, location, relationships, etc had played a significant role. We then started by reaching out to the families or representatives for the family to gauge interest, and see whether they saw potential value in sharing their loved one's story (often focusing on families who, like that of Yeardley Love or Samantha Josephson, went on to start foundations or nonprofit organizations). We only wanted to pursue cases where the family was in support of what we were doing.

Where did you begin first in starting your investigations for the documentary? How did you pick which students you focused on besides Andy?

Most of the metals found in baby foods are absorbed by the plants they are made from as they grow.

Think of it like this: Processes like mining and manufacturing release tiny particles of metal into the air. Those particles eventually fall to the ground, get in the groundwater and end up being absorbed by crops like rice and carrots as they grow.

When those crops are picked they already contain most if not all of the heavy metals the final, manufactured baby foods will contain. That's why Health Babies Bright Futures just released a report on managing the foods in even homemade baby foods.

Two things happen during the food manufacturing process that can increase that content. First, simply concentrating the vegetables or grains also can concentrate the levels of metals. That jar of baby food doesn't contain one carrot, it's a lot of carrots. The second is that vitamins and minerals added to baby foods can also contain small amounts of heavy metals. - Gary

You can check what levels are allowed for various foods in Europe here which tend to be on the conservative side.

At the moment, research does not seem to be strong. For example, according to the quoted source:

> We systematically reviewed relevant studies published through December 30, 2018 and identified 14 studies on iAs and 37 studies on Pb exposure and their respective associations with ASD. Among them, 8 (53.3%) and 19 (51.3%) studies reported a positive association for iAs and Pb, respectively, and none reported a sole inverse association.

Even though the article says there is "consistent evidence supporting a link between early exposure to the heavy metal and a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder".

Wow! Thanks, it was an experience for sure!

I still have a scar from the first time I held an eagle! So it was a rough start. My arms were also sore because they are heavy and move around a lot. When I finally got a juvenile to work with on my own, it starts with holding and feeding and getting the eagle used to humans and noises/other animals. In eagle training, while each person of age is chosen to take on the primary training, the eagle is expected to be able to hunt and follow the commands of whoever is working with it. So, when I left if had already been hunting with other people, and therefore while I certainly missed him, he was probably just fine. As majestic and epic as we find it, it is still a working animal to them. He went into the care of the other family members (the father took him) and they keep the eagle for hunting.

For more details you can read some of my other responses regarding how I got to find them in the first place, but as a whole I’ve found the nomadic groups I was with are very open people. Strangers are welcome and often seen as a blessing. Anyone who comes by is offered a place to stay and sleep and food to eat. That’s usually other nomadic people of course, but in a harsh environment where you wander, I think humanity wins most of the time and you just lend a helping hand and open your doors- “who knows when it will be you needing shelter/the work just needs to be done” kind of mentality. There was only one older uncle who never really appreciated me being there (in Mongolia) but we just got on with our days because the work still had to be completed.

>The lawsuit by the Cantabrana family focusing on whether their son has autism continues.

The only scientifically proven predictor of autism is if one or more parent has a spectrum disorder, but hey, let's let a JURY decide what's good science.

>If my baby does “suck down” large amounts of the same baby food every day, should we be worried or not?

This is medical advice from reddit, so... um... ...yeah:

Variety is important, from a nutritional standpoint and from a risk standpoint. Going with one brand and one ingredient and one lot number every day means that you're multiplying all the deficiencies and excesses.

Tuna can have fairly high levels of mercury, but even at 1ppm (the concentrations in the OP's report are a thousand times lower) we excrete the metals in a full serving of mercury-tainted fish in under a week. Most adult humans can metabolize/excrete more than 0.021 milligrams of mercury a day.

Maybe don't feed your child on a steady diet of only Gerber Pureed Tuna.

As for biomagnification, we're extremely complicated machines. Even with similar doses and routes of exposure, metabolism, excretion, and any negative effects are dependent on levels of things like glutathione or peroxidase, some of which are triggered by the presence and action of heavy metals themselves. It's not chemical in, chemical stays, like the diagrams in textbooks.

> Well according to the article, a safe level of inorganic arsenic is 100ppb according to the FDA and zero of the baby foods they tested exceeded that.

Thank you, finally something substantial to start going by. Now two questions: Is what the FDA says consensus among the scientific community, and what about e.g. lead and cadmium?

> I'd also like to point out that heavy metals are natural, and whether a food product is allowed to be sold as 'natural' has no bearing on the amount of heavy metals present.

I understand, and I don‘t care. Whether it is considered „natural“ or not, whether it comes from soil or from anywhere else, has no bearing on the development of a brain. The only thing I care about is whether the levels are safe or not. However it got to that level: If it’s safe, good. If not, then it’s bad, and measures have to be taken.

Well according to the article, a safe level of inorganic arsenic is 100ppb according to the FDA and zero of the baby foods they tested exceeded that.

I'd also like to point out that heavy metals are natural, and whether a food product is allowed to be sold as 'natural' has no bearing on the amount of heavy metals present.

Only when I had to guide the sleigh that night.

I’m not sure what you mean by drainage. Plumbing? No. Human waste goes in a hole dug in the ground for “number two”. “Number one” anywhere not near camp or the water. With the reindeer in winter you have to scare them off while you go, or they will try to lick up the salt.

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This „any amount is bad“ does not help. Obviously there is at least a rough limit of lead per day consumed that will not significantly affect a developing brain, vs. an amount that does. I am interested in that limit, and whether it is exceeded here or not.

It’s really not a difficult concept. They might be right, you might be right, but so far I see nothing at all to convince me of either. I know how parts per billion work, I do not know what quantities of lead affect brain development or not.

Thank you for the “ “! It is tricky finding the wording to describe that way of life versus others! I knew I wasn’t going to stay forever, just to learn and help. For both people it just kinda came to a natural point where I’d either need to move on or become a full member of their society and stay. I was also a woman of a marriageable age, and didn’t want to go down that road because I didn’t want to stay forever. It was lovely but didn’t feel like home.