Life on Mars, Charlie Kirk's Last Questioner, Toxic Airplane Air, Costly Coffee, and the Return of Beards

What I'm Reading

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

Here’s a sampling of stories that caught my attention in the past few days:

There’s a rock on Mars that contains evidence of possible life on the Red Planet. As the Economist reported, it was found by a U.S. spacecraft and sealed into a titanium container for further study on Earth. But, frustratingly, the mission to bring home material found on Mars has fallen victim to a budget cut. The situation bears a bit of resemblance to the plot of “The Martian,” the nail-biting thriller from Andy Weir. Here’s the interview I did with Andy when the book came out.

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“I couldn’t have asked a worse question,” said the man who had queried Charlie Kirk just before the conservative influencer was assassinated in Utah. As the New York Times reported, Hunter Kozak “asked Mr. Kirk about mass shootings involving transgender people, and the two went back and forth for a moment before the shot rang out, killing Mr. Kirk. Mr. Kozak, standing a few feet away, at first thought the gunshot was a firecracker.” Like Kirk, Kozak is the father of two young children. “I disagree vehemently with thousands of things that Charlie Kirk has said. He is also a human being. That’s a dad. The fact that a son is growing up without a father — that is inexcusable.”

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Charlie Kirk was assassinated one day before the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As Gabe Fleisher wrote on Substack, “there are few tragedies that unite America anymore, as 9/11 did almost exactly 24 years to the day that Kirk was killed.