Media

May 5, 2022, Kristiansand, Norway

I was deeply honored to host the The third European Conference on democracy and human rights:  Securing democracy and human rights in the digital age. 

 Venue: Kilden Performing Arts Centre, Kristiansand

Full event video

Ivana Trump's house at 10 East 64th Street, which she purchased for $2.5 million in 1992 after her divorce from Donald Trump, is modest compared with the former mansions of Gianni Versace and David Geffen on the same block. Twenty feet wide with a 1920s limestone-column-and-pediment façade, it could pass for a small nation's consulate or a mausoleum. Inside, it was all Ivana: red carpeting, gilded paneling, and animal prints. She was especially proud of the grand curving staircase with a mural, she once told People magazine, "painted on so it looks like it's a balcony, looking into French-Roman gardens" -- the backdrop for countless regal publicity moments with her posing in ball gowns, peddling a relentlessly queenly idea of herself almost to the very end, even as her realm had shrunk.

REad the Rest at New York Magazine

From nursery rhymes to Springfield, Illinois, to New York and beyond, talking with Marvel Harrison, the publisher of Mimbres Press about my career, here. 

Published in Rolling Stone.

By now, the story of Jeffrey Epstein is well known. When the accused sex trafficker died -- officially ruled a suicide by hanging in his jail cell almost two years ago -- the public was left baffled alongside victims that were denied justice. There seemed to be much more to the story than the satisfaction of one man's carnal needs. What about the mystery of his money, videotapes, rumors of spies and blackmail, and boldface names deleted from court records?

Then a keeper of the key to those secrets was arrested in New Hampshire last summer. British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell swanned around Manhattan for decades, but the general public first got to "know" her in August 2019 when a New York judge released some 2,000 pages of previously sealed pages of a defamation lawsuit against her.

Read the rest here.

Election, ballot snatch with narativ.liv.

Trumpy Women on narativ.liv

Talking Trump Women on the Leslie Marshall Show

The Trump Women: Part of the Deal on Liquid Lunch

Zoomed in from New York state. Watch it here and here.

List of Burleigh lectures at the University of Agder, August-November 2019

"How God's Warriors Captured Washington"

An hour-long lecture detailing the people and institutions that remodeled Washington DC into a hotbed of religiosity, in which all Presidents and political leaders are now expected to show up at a "National Prayer Breakfast" annually, federal judges are selected by an Opus Dei cult Catholic, an Evangelical Christian billionaire family, has built the biggest museum in Washington called the "Bible Museum," one block from the national mall, and how this regressive movement will affect real lives. Her talk introduces the zealous individuals who worked quietly behind the scenes, crafting organizations and power networks over the last several decades to take over Washington with the goal of battering the Constitutional separation of Church and State for once and for all.

(Sept. 14 and Oct. 12 Lorsdag University Lectures, Kristiansand and Flekkfjord)

"The Lying Pen of Scribes" Brown Bag Lectures

A four part brown bag lunch series, lectures, followed by Q and A discussions, exploring various ways the white evangelical Christian political movement in America has compromised basic Christian principles of mercy charity and love, aligned itself with an anti-democratic, authoritarian political movement and often corrupt private individuals and political leaders. (Aug-Nov 2019)

1: "Fakes, Forgers, Con Men and Collectors"

A discussion about how the Hobby Lobby Green family collected, planned, built and then filled the National Bible Museum with fakes and illicit objects, lighting up the illicit Middle Eastern antiquities market along the way, all in the pursuit of sharing proof for faith -- within a few blocks of the U.S. Capitol.

2: "Unholy Business Revisited"

An update on the close ties between antiquities dealers and scholars in the high-end Biblical antiquities world, from the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Inscription to new revelations regarding forged Dead Sea Scrolls fragments.

3. "Money, Money, Money, Money!"

An introduction to the principles in and expansion of "The Prosperity Gospel" and to the megachurch millionaire pastors and televangelists who advise the President and his evangelical cabinet members, and an exploration into how these men and women have inserted their creed directly into Congress, the White House, and Washington DC generally, embedded deep inside the power centers of the Capitol, dictating policy on social welfare, education, and even foreign policy.

4. "Christian Zionism and American foreign policy"

How and why did Iran become the next Iraq? A discussion of the long and strange alliance between Evangelical Christian Zionists (who believe Jews will all convert) and the Israeli ultra-right, culminating in finally seizing full power through Donald Trump, who, under the influence of his son in law, a long time Netanyahu ally, and other deep-pockets Israelis like Sheldon Adelson, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, effectively ended American leadership on finding an equitable solution for Palestinians and secular Israelis.

"Flag and Statues: The Fight over Symbols of a Racist Past"

(Sept. 4 Abuses and Uses of History class for Christa Santini Wirth)

"The 'Discovery' of Egypt"

(Sept. 5 Migrations class for Christa Santini Wirth)

"The effectiveness of white identity politics."

(Sept. 25 Contemporary American and British politics and society, for Jan Erik Mustad )

"Big data and Facebook surveillance as new political strategies using 'Fake News'"

(Sept. 11 English culture, literature and didactics, with Jan Erik Mustad)

"Religious Extremism: Roots and Solutions"

(Oct. 9 Religious radicalisation, extremism and violence with Pål Ketil Botvar)

"The challenges of "Fake News" for Journalism"

(Sept. 25 Kristiansand Katedralskole)

"Tracing Streams of Scientific Misinformation in the News Media"

(Nov. 1 UiA Media and Communications Seminar, Lillesand)

"Sorting the true from the false: sources of fake news and real information"

(Nov. 20-21 PhD Course in Research Communication with Årstein Justnes & Josephine Munch Rasmussen)

"Trump and American politics"

(Oct. 15 Faedrelandsvennen, Kristiansand)

"After Hours: Election Night 2016"

(Nov. 12, Speakeasy event, Public Theater, NYC)

"The Challenges for Journalism in the "Fake News" era"

(Nov. 20 UiA Scholars at Risk conference)

"The Fascinating Fascist Wife: A Taxonomy"

(Nov. 22 UiA Library)

The great Amanda Foreman invited me to give a monologue on stage at the monthly Speakeasy event, part of her project raising money for literacy and promoting reading generally. I went over my time recounting my rambles on Election Day 2016. They kindly waited a full ten minutes before sending out the hook.

Here is an interview I did with Speakeasy before the show.

What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing?

My mom or dad reading poetry to me from the My Book House books. My dad scribbling in his little notebook (he was a poet) and quoting grave things at me like "Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman pass by!" That's Yeats, Under Ben Bulben. I was writing poems in second grade.

What is your favorite line from your current work?

Hard to pick a favorite. Opening to a random page I find this amusing.

"Marla eventually found inner peace in a Dixieland gumbo of every late 20th Century pop-spirituality, from Hollywood Kabbalah to color therapy and yoga, but during her years in hiding, she got spiritual succor from Emmanuel's Book, in which author Pat Rodegast, channeling an occult philosopher named Emmanuel opines on "the limitless power of love."

What is your favorite first line of a novel?

I am sorry but I really don't remember first lines in novels. " It was the best of times it was the worst of times"?

Much better with lines of poetry.

Wordsworth: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven."

Ginsburg: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,"

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Try to maintain a three to one ratio of activity or being outdoors to sitting in the chair. But sitting in the chair (or standing at the standup desk) is truly the only way to do it. Write until it hurts, then walk away for a while.

What writer past or present do you wish you could eat dinner with?

Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa - in Sicily. Author of Il Gattopardo. I never would have imagined having an interest in the last days of the Sicilian aristocracy but he writes it like a painter, you can feel the peeling gilded paint and the crumbly madonnas.

I imagine he would know the best food and wine to order too.

What writer do you wish you could share with the world?

I sometimes walk around quoting Robert Frost in my head. The rhythms and his pastoral imagery soothe me.

What are you reading right now?

Andrew Marantz, AntiSocial,

Meghan Daum, The Problem With Everything.

Hannah Arend, Eichmann in Jerusalem

Border by Kapka Kassabova

What fictional character do you most closely identify with?

That changes all the time: Nancy Drew, Pynchon's Oedipa Maas, Michael Dibdin's world-weary detective Aurelio Zen, James Salter's men and women in Light Years, Sally Rooney's girls.

If you could live inside a fictional world, which one would you choose?

I'm a sucker for fictional elegance set in the 1920s and '30s. Amor Towles Rules of Civility, Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Alan Furst's sexy Paris in Kingdom of Shadows.

Are there any quotes you use to inspire you?

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Samuel Johnson

God, Guns, Trump, Queens of Trumplandia, Hillary, #metoo, atseroids, sea level rise, Antarctica, moonlanders and more. Read them all at the archive here.

PDF HERE.

DVeight article.pdf

Journalist and book purveyor Aaron Hicklin wrote this profile about me, for DVeight, "the magazine of modern living in the Catskills." It's accurate and snark-free but you can only read it on PDF or paper ... .

Need some brilliance to fill your ears while you get a $400 body polish!

The Tucson Festival of Books is one of the most successful book events west of the Rockies, and I've been fortunate to have been invited over the years. Sitting in the sun in early March is only one of the many benefits to a visit.

Here I talked with C-Span about Trump and women.

Hanna Rosin interview me for New York Magazine, and we had a lively discussion about the transactional relationship, Donalds misogynistic and primal disgust at female biology, the influence of his mother, and much, much more. Read it here.

I talked to Katie Rogers of the New York Times, and she wrote this .

Watch it here.

I talked to Dave Marash on his Santa Fe, NM, radio program for a full hour about Antarctica, exploration, the science of ice and melting ice shelves, climate change, sea level rise, penguins and much much miore. Listen in here.

This was a fun exchange.

Watch. Of course, the power of words and images is exactly why the assassins went into the offices of Charlie Hebdo today. Sticks and stones break bones, but words and images change minds-- images like the satirical pictures that the murdered French cartoonists excelled at scratching out on blank sheets of paper.

Those images are what the gunmen wanted to eradicate. But they wanted to destroy something else, too: wit and laughter, a sense of the ridiculous, the freedom to think, to read what one wants, to wear what one wants, to live and work and bear children how and where and when one wants, and the freedom to speak truth to power.

Many men and certainly most women on this planet will never have power. That's why speaking truth to power is so important. And why laughing at power should be a human right.

After ISIS took over Mosul, Nina Burleigh talked about Iraq on CNN here.

Nina Burleigh talked to Chris Cuomo about the latest ruling in the Amanda Knox case, and the motivazione released by Judge Nencini of Florence.

I tried, in the time allotted, to explain why the latest ruling out of Italy contains no news, and makes even less sense than the original conviction, which was based on poorly conducted CSI and relied on the testimony of a man with, literally, Meredith Kercher's blood on his hands.

For the record, when I talk about this, I am not serving as Amanda Knox's advocate. I am simply explaining what I learned from my research, performed to the best of my abilities as an investigative journalist, and which I present in a book that I hope not only explains the case, but the circus around it, and why the case became such a media phenomenon.

And, I think I'm right, Here's the clip and the New Day blog about it.

Nina Burleigh participated in an MSNBC roundtable discussion to discuss her Rolling Stone article on Obama, Syria and the President's restrained foreign policy style. The links are here, here, here and here.

I talked to Brooke Gladstone about my book, and the role the media has played in the Amanda Knox case. Listen.

I talked to the BBC about Amanda Knox, here's the link.

With the re-conviction, apparently the Italians are working on Amanda Knox, the Opera.

Here, for CNN, is my take on the latest re-conviction.

Katja Meier, a Swiss expat living in Tuscany, writes about the region in which she's made her home. She interviewed me about my almost-month residency in Siena, we talked about expeditions, biking, shopping, Italian literature, climate, art and cheese.

Here's the link.

Siena, with its medieval reliquaries, including Saint Catherines skull and index finger, was the perfect setting in which to discuss the Jerusalem relic forgery trial that put archaeology in the dock. Here's an article on it, for you Italophiles.

FEDE, SCIENZA E FALSI ARCHEOLOGICI: NINA BURLEIGH E "UNHOLY BUSINESS"

SIENA. Nel 2002, un collezionista Israeliano rivelò l'esistenza di un ossario con un'iscrizione - "Giacomo, figlio di Giuseppe, fratello di Gesù" - che catalizzò  l'attenzione del mondo accademico, scientifico e religioso: poteva trattarsi della prima prova archeologica dell'esistenza di Gesù. Ma dopo due anni, le autorità Israeliane lo dichiararono un falso - "la frode del secolo" - dando il via ad un'indagine che ha rimesso in discussione l'autenticità di centinaia di altri reperti dell'era biblica.

Prende le mosse da questa vicenda e la racconta dal punto di vista di due dei principali protagonisti, un detective e un archeologo, il libro Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (2008), che l'autrice, la giornalista investigativa e scrittrice statunitense Nina Burleigh, visiting artist del Siena Art Institute per il mese di novembre, presenterà a "StARTers - Assaggi d'arte" martedì 5 novembre alle 18 (via Tommaso Pendola, 37, Siena - ingresso libero).

Fellow writer Deborah Kalb has a books-and-authors blog on which she interviews writers and she honored me with one of her Q and A's. She asked some thoughtful questions about working in the Middle East, and researching Amanda Knox and Mary Pinchot Meyer. Here is the interview. I highly recommend looking at some of her other interviews, with the likes of Jodi Picoult and Nathaniel Philbrick as well.

I talked with Author Central about how I write. Watch here.

We used to watch Sky News in the cafes of Italy and the tabacs of France. They interviewed me recently about the Amanda Knox trial. Here's the link.

I did an interview with our local Callicoon newspaper some years back. The reporter, Jeanne Sager, now has her own blog called The Stir, on Cafe Mom, and she's generally cool and brilliant. You can read her blog here.

And the interview, where we talked about Mary Pinchot Meyer, Ben Bradlee, CIA, James Smithson, living in Paris, writing, and researching like Nancy Drew - and having our great little babies, is right here.

Listen to Nina Burleigh talking to Leonard Lopate on WNYC about her book, Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt, and hear about the curious characters in the history of science who helped the West uncover ancient  Egypt. Listen here. 

I was truly honored to be invited to speak at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago on archaeological forgery, the James Ossuary case and the Syro-Palestinian-Judaica relic trade.
It was a thrill to be there. I wanted to be an archaeologist as a kid and I spent some childhood years playing in the backyard of the OI in Hyde Park.

Click here to watch the talk.

I talked with NY attorney Jim Zirin for half an hour about Italy, superstition, women in the media and Amanda Knox. View it here.

I talked with John Hockenberry and co. on New York's NPR here.

I participated a little bit in this project, and you can watch the excellent CBS investigation here.

Big props to Susan Zirinsky and producers Doug Longhini and Sara Ely Hulse, and Peter Van Sant, for the work they did bringing to light the problems in the Amanda Knox case early on. More than anyone, these professionals laid the groundwork for really investigating the case.

Bravo to all.

Some of the lessons we can take away from the Amanda Knox story, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

An article on the media, in Time.

. An essay on the misogyny, in the LA Times.

The Post excerpted a piece of the book that explains the origins of the sex  game theory.

My friends out in San Francisco at Redroom.com published this Q and A on writing The Fatal Gift, in which I talked about Perugia, the press and corresponding with Amanda Knox.

Discussing the book on GMA.

Discussing the Amanda Knox case on Today.

My MSNBC interview on the Amanda Knox case.

An NPR foreign correspondent pal of mine used to have a list of seven ways for journalists to grow old gracefully. His premise, which is self-evident to anyone who's been a reporter, was that daily news was an undignified thing to be doing in your 40s. I can't remember the whole of the list. It included writing op-eds for your newspaper (which seemed more or less like retirement), teaching journalism at a university (also retirement, but somewhat scorned by other hacks), and maybe the seventh was dieing. Undoubtedly the most prestigious way to proceed, according to that list, was to write nonfiction books. Nina Burleigh has a most graceful career, indeed. Read more at The Man of Twists and Turns.

Kent Gustavson Ph.D. interviews Nina Burleigh about Unholy Business and other events and projects in the author's life.

Investigative reporter Nina Burleigh talked about the James Ossuary and other contentious archaeological 'finds' from the Holy Land. Many of the archaeological digs in Israel are being financed and carried out by Fundamentalist Christians, Burleigh said. The person who crafted the James Ossuary played into their desire to find ancient objects that could confirm the validity of Scripture, she noted.

Unholy Business discussed at The Toronoto Sun