Over the years I have assisted numerous television, radio, and documentary film creators with their historical presentation, usually on a pro-bono basis for moderate amounts of work. I have also done consultation-for-hire for larger amounts of work, depending on personal interest in the project and my other time constraints. I am always happy to talk with people who are interested in possible consultation work. Below are some of my major consultation projects.
MANHATTAN
In 2014-2015, I was the historical consultant for season 2 of the WGN America/Lionsgate television show MANHATTAN, an alternate history of the atomic bomb. In this capacity I worked with the show’s writers from the very beginning, helping to answer historical questions (“How could one die at Los Alamos?“) as well as helping give plausible historical frameworks for their fictional plot. I also read scripts to check for anachronisms, errors, and so on. I have written at length about the experience on my blog; more than any other television or film consulting, it benefitted from having me be integrated early on into the process, and having a role other than mere “fact-checker.”
Intrepid Museum
From 2016-2018 I was a guest curator for the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum in New York City, helping to design a new exhibit centered around the USS Growler, one of the first nuclear-armed submarines deployed by the United States in the Cold War. A View from the Deep is a permanent exhibit at the Intrepid Museum, and contextualizes nuclear submarines within the history of nuclear weapons, as well as giving specific information about the deployment of the Growler and the people who served on it. I helped in the research and writing of the exhibit (the captions of which won an award Excellence in Exhibition Label Writing from American Alliance of Museums), as well as the development of several of its interactive and data-driven visualizations, including an animated map and timeline of US and Soviet nuclear weapons deployments over the early Cold War, a museum-version of the NUKEMAP, and connecting the Intrepid with colleagues at Stevens’ SCENE Lab who helped create innovative aural exhibits for experiencing the sounds of a diesel submarine.
City of New York
In February 2023, I was appointed to the Nuclear Disarmament and Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone Advisory Committee of the City of New York by Mayor Eric Adams. This committee was created by the City Council to consult on questions relating to the Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone state of New York, as well as other matters relating to nuclear disarmament.